Alexa is really growing up fast

I haven't posted much lately, so much has happened. Alexa is really growing up, she doesn't seem like a little toddler anymore at times!

Her words are still growing exponentially, she had her language explosion a few months ago and is enjoying stringing words together to form sentences and questions.

Some of her favorite things to say lately:

"Can I have that?"
"I want to touch it"
"Want to pray?" is another favorite! She ALWAYS remembers to pray when she eats and before bedtime, also at other random times!

Today, she learned "Happy Birthday" and she was singing "Happy Birthday" to herself as she played with cups on the kitchen floor, her singing voice is so adorable,really soft and sweet, she has a pretty high voice. She sang Happy Birthday to Nana last week and loves it now!
She likes the word "pumpkin" since it is almost Halloween.

Some other words she says very clearly and all the time: water, Nana, Ana, Madi, Peyton, Dan, Granny, Grandad, bed, JoJo, baby, potty, bath, moon, it's hot, it's a hot day, it's cold, boo, Jesus, amen, fries, apple, Dora, ...so many more, just some I can think of!

She can sing almost every word to all of the Yo Gabba Gabba songs on EVERY episode, along with most of the words to our adult choir songs on our practice CD's, the entire Avalon CD, Little Levite CD, and several other kids praise CD's. Also, she sings almost every word of many songs like "Twinkle Twinkle", "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and can almost get every letter in the alphabet.

Alexa is learning to read and write, too. She can write "A" "e" and "o" and tell you what letter it is, she also recognizes a handful of written letters, possibly more: A, B, C, D, E, J, O, S for sure.

She knows a few colors without any help, green, pink, blue, purple, orange, red.

Alexa is getting pickier about having messy hands, although she likes to get messy, she wants it wiped off rather quickly. She loves to wash her hands in the bathroom, all I have to do is say, "Let's go wash our hands" and she runs to the bathroom, gets on her stool, tries to turn on the water and sometimes can, uses soap and scrubs her hands and rinses.

She is like Daddy in that she loves to eat lotion, when he was her age, so did he! She esp loves Jergens, almond flavor, she comes and asks me "Can I have lotion?" and then say "MMMMM, yummy!" when she starts to lick it off her hands!

Alexa has such a great personality, although quite hardheaded at times, she is also a great listener and very compliant much of the time. She is easy going most of the time, but gets upset so easily at certain things, esp her sister. When she gets upset, she throws things, runs off and hits something, bites JoElle and me, bites herself, throws herself on the floor, but rarely cries when she gets upset. She is learning to cope with her emotions much better though, I try not to laugh as she attempts to work through them on her own.

I normally don't have to repeat my requests for Alexa, she does whatever it was the first time, but JoElle has to be asked over and over and over...ad nauseum. There are many times Alexa is defiant, but on all of the litle things, like "Go get your shoes on", time to go bye bye, turn off the tv, turn it back on, put that in the trash, go brush your teeth, close the door...etc etc. she is GREAT about!

Alexa is super friendly, she makes friends easily, loves to hold hands with other kids, even if she just met them, loves to smile at everyone and laughs when her new little friends smile back at her! She can usually get strangers to say hi back to her, like today at the mall, she got two men in the 20s to say hi to her, I didn't expect them to even acknowledge her!

Alexa is huge for her age and for being a girl, at her last checkup for 18 mo, she was measuring 90 percentile or so for height and for weight. She has outgrown her 18 month old pants/jeans in length by several inches and can wear 24 mo length. She has been wearing 3T shirts for quite a while now, although some 18 mo to 2T fit ok. At this age, JoElle had a tiny waist and was short, so she wore 18 mo clothes until Alexa was born, and she was 3 years old!

Alexa just entirely skipped a shoe size last month, she jumped from a 5 to a 7; she wore 6s for a few days, then they didn't fit, I couldn't believe it! The same day I had to buy her new sneakers, size 7, my sister had bought Madison new shoes, also size 7 and she is almost 3! But her feet look proportionate to Alexa's size, unlike JoElle's feet, they used to always look big for her size. JoElle wore size 10 shoe for almost a year, now she is in 12s I think. She needs 5T/ XS 5-6 size pants and shirts now!

Alexa loves to drink my coffee and she will fight more for it!