Janie at 22 month!

Another month... Wow!  I can't believe that our sweet baby Janie Caroline is only 2 months away from her second birthday.  It feels like between beach trips, weekends away, having Grandma in town  the past month has been in turbo speed and that I was just posting her 21 month photos!

What a sweet little girl our Janie Bug is becoming!  She really has a nurturing spirit and is very affectionate.  She loves to feed her babies, and us.  If given a cookie she seems just as content feeding it to us as she is eating it herself.  She likes to give and receive hugs and kisses all the time and continues to like to cuddle and be held.  Most of the time I love this!

Janie talks mostly in sentences and is very willing to tell us specifically what she wants, and in some ways she can be particular.  She likes routines and things a certain way.  At bedtime, has an order she likes her songs and will correct us if we deviate, she likes to hold her blanket just so while we read our stories and she even wants us to make sure and set her binkie on the corner of the changing table while she has her cup of milk.  She makes her requests demands in such an adorable way, it is hard not always to give in! 

Most nights Janie is sleeping through the night, which is AMAZING compared to where we were not all that long ago.  She gets thrown off when she is teething or sick which have both happened in the past 2 months.  Most days she goes down for her nap easily, sometime even telling us she wants to go to sleep AND she has slept away from home, even in a pack-n-play a few times!  Progress!

If given her way, Janie would like to read books on Mommy or Daddy's lap for hours on end.  She has expanded her group of favorites, but at the moment is loving on a book of nursery rhymes which she calls "Humpty Dumpty."  Janie and Clara play more and more together every day.  Lately they like finding  place to hide out, like the space behind the love seat to kind of set up a mini fort.  They haul some toys over to it and have so much fun hanging out together in this space. 

They both have also been into art more lately and Janie seems to have a lot of attention for taking the cap off a marker, drawing a few marks and going on to the next color.  She will get on a roll naming her colors and then other times seems like she doesn't know any of them. 

With our backyard project underway, both our sweeties have had a lot of time outside helping out Daddy.  They both like playing in the dirt, digging up rocks, picking leaves of plants and running around the yard and into the woods behind our house.  The girls really enjoy playing at their water table and our Janie is usually wet within a few minutes of being outside. She is always up for whatever game Clara wants to play, and has a bit of a hard time understanding when Clara wants to play by herself.  For the most part, Clara stays really tender with Janie and tried to help her out or teach her new things.  Janie adores her sister and has started saying, "I love you, Clara," even in casual contexts, and kissing her on the top of her head.  It is the BEST feeling as a parent to get to watch these moments!!!