Continuity of conversation

Life with 2-year-old Syliva is such a treat.  That girl!  She sparkles like sunshine making diamonds on water.  She twirls and giggles and dashes off.  She snuggles down and tells you what she’s thinking about.  Her vocabulary and complexity of speech has been expanding amazingly these last months.  I often shake my head in disbelief as I hear her have adorable conversations with Andrew.

Sometimes, the flow of conversation with a 2-year-old is a little less than straight forward.  For example, here’s a snippet of dialogue from a couple days ago:

Me: “Sylvia, I sure do like you.  I’m glad your my daughter.”

Sylvia: (smiles warmly) -pause- “You, you, you, you like ham?” – pause- “You like monsters in the tubby?”

Also, I don’t think I gave it the full blog post it deserved, but Sylvia has a deep and abiding commitment to swim wear.  She wore swimming suits about 90% of the time this summer.  To bed, she wore a different swimming suit than she had worn during the day.  When we went out in public, she would agree to put on clothes over her swimming suit (in the car, just before going in), and then when we left the library/restaurant/market, she would immediately remove the offending clothing.  As the weather has turned chilly (it was 34 degrees this morning!), I’ve been a little concerned about how she’d deal.  Fortunately, she’s mostly self regulated.  I wear wool socks, jeans, a shirt, and a sweat shirt.  She wears a t-shirt, shorts, and bare feet.  Yesterday, she tried to play outdoors with a swimming suit, and she had lots of goosebumps, but she took personal offense to my suggestions that she try more layers.  Oh well!

In addition to loving swim suits, Sylvia has developed a somewhat compulsive habit of changing her clothes many times.  On days that she’s feeling a little “off,” she seems to pin the fault on her attire.  It’s totally normal for her to change her clothes six to eight times before lunch…perhaps looking for the outfit combo that will help her soul feel more peaceful.  Her room is strewn constantly with clothes and swim suits of all kinds.  I’ve pretty much stopped folding her clothes.

When we go out, it’s pretty common for little Sylv to get lots of looks and comments.  Today, she was wearing dress shoes with little heals and was carrying one of my purses.  Between her accessories and her incredible smile, and radiant joie de vivre, she elicits lots of smiles.  Alternatively, she elicits looks of shock and fear when her inner volcano erupts.  “Take cover, everyone!!”

Here’s a little note I jotted down a few weeks ago about a Sylvia dressing moment:

“Sylv puts on her non-PJ swim suit and a crown.  Then she realizes that it’s not the right choice and tries on a different swimming suit and then tosses the crown, saying, ‘I don’t need That!‘”

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of Sylvia from this summer.  What a wonderful world it is to have her in it!

In other news, Andrew still calls vitamins “Bite a Mins.”  So all is right in my world:)