Hallowe'en 2011

Hallowe'en was so much more fun this year. We went to a neighbour's house yesterday after naptime to meet up with a couple other families and everyone's kids. K was so beautifully behaved. She had fun waving around her little ladybug wand and chowed down on crackers and cheese. She's a lot like her mother when it comes to enjoying her food, I have to say.
Our neighbour's toddler had a nasty runny nose and cough, and seemed to be having a bit of a hard time here and there with sharing her toys with two other toddlers. K was particularly drawn to A's babies, and at one point sat down beside me on a stair cudding both of A's dolls in her arms. A saw this and broke out in loud sobs, pointing at her dolls. I asked K if she'd please give one of the dolls to A, and she held one out without much hesitation at all. Of course, it turned out it was the wrong one and A pushed it away, so K was good-natured and traded it for the one that A really wanted to have. She was very very sweet. She got a little jealous when I took their 2-month-old for a little snuggle on my lap though, and insisted on sitting on my knee too.
K had fun at a Hallowe'en party with her nanny this morning, but Tita said that K was quite shy in all the commotion and didn't take part in circle time as usual, nor did she want to be held by anyone other than her own Tita (usually she has a couple of the other close nanny friends who she likes to cuddle with).
By this evening, she'd turned things around though. We didn't take her out trick-or-treating, because I felt like she was too young for it. Why go collect all sorts of candy we don't need, and that I wouldn't let her eat anyhow. We'd already seen our neighbour friends, and don't know so many of the others on our street anyhow. So we dressed K up again and had her help us hand out candy at the door. She was amazing at it! She got so excited as the kids started showing up. She started off fishing some candies out of the bowl and put them on the window ledge and then into my witches hat that she insisted on taking off my head. When more kids arrived, I started coaching her on distributing the candy, asking her to put one candy in each kids bag. She soon got very good at it, after putting two in one bag by accident at the start. She'd stand at the front door between visits after having refilled her little hands, and would screech when she'd see people walking on the street, whether on our side or across the street. She'd shriek some more when someone would come up our walkway and run back to me in excitement. Sometimes I'd prompt her to open the door, other times she'd grab for the handle herself in anticipation. After she'd handed out the candy, she's close the door again and reload her hands and stand staring out the window all over again. She even started saying "Bye bye" quite loudly. OMG was it ever adorable. I don't know when I've ever seen her so excited.
She never really tried to get the candy open. She wrecked a couple pieces by kind of chewing on them in their packages, but other than that didn't try to get any for herself. DH said she obviously got something from him - she loves giving gifts. Even at the park on the weekend, she tried to give a pretty red leaf she was holding to a little girl who seemed to be kind of stalking us. It was sad when the girl didn't take it from her and let it fall to the ground instead.
I was glad K took to the candy distribution well, because she can be fairly pig-headed about things she wants these days. After we finished playing at the park on Sat, we wanted to walk quickly to the library to return some DVDs and books. K decided she wanted to push the stroller by its handle, which she is too short to reach. DH lifted her up under her arms for a bit so she could hold on while we walked, but it soon killed his arms and back. I put her in her stroller and she screamed like we were torturing her. 2 blocks later, she was still frantically crying. I eventually picked her up, but that only slowed the frequency of the crying, and she still wasn't happy. She settled when she was able to push the handicapped door entry button at the library and when she could help me drop the stuff in the return slot. For a quick trip home for lunch, I tried again to pop her in the stroller. Nope, she was having none of it. She didn't seem to want to be carried, but suddenly got happy when I slung her upside down over my shoulder. I couldn't do that for too long though because it was straining my arm, but every time I stopped, she'd say "mehr" (more). DH then tried giving her a ride sitting on his shoulders, but she cried and reached for me. When we finally tried giving her a ride on my shoulders, she became very happy and was fine the rest of the way home. I hope she learns to talk more soon, because that want was sure a hard one to figure out!
I'm trying to think of more new words she's saying these days:  Fuk (Fuchs = fox), Fau (Pfau = peacock), horse, cow, Bau (Baum = tree), Batt (Blatt = leaf), Ega (Flieger = plane), and Pizza. She says "pees" (please) and "tank ew" (thank you) beautifully. The Thank You is just to die for, and she says it at the drop of a hat. She loves pointing to Mund (mouth) and Hals (neck) and saying the words, as well as nose and eyes. Haare (hair) is another recent acquisition. She spent Sun morning going around patting DH on the bum and saying "Po-Po" (= bum). She walks around saying "where a you" when looking for things, and I'm pretty sure Tita told me today that she can say "what dat". This evening when we were looking at a book together with DH, she counted "one, too, tee, for".
I can't believe how amazing she is. She regularly says "yes" instead of only no, like when I was putting her to bed tonight. I kissed her a few times and told her Mama has lots of kisses for her. Does she have any kisses for Mama? Then she kissed my left cheek (with a nice mwah sound), my right cheek, waited a moment and said something I didn't understand, and kissed my left cheek again. My heart melted. Then she leaned her head back a little, and I asked if she was ready to go to sleep - "yes". And she let herself quietly be put to bed.
I'm still so in love. Why can DH only see the downside to having #2? I think K'd be a great big sister, and I sure would love to have another squishy little one to cuddle as my big girl gets to be more and more independent.