Leah Update

Since summer is coming to an end and things are slowing down a bit for our family, I thought I would do another post about Leah and what she's up to lately.

Life with a 2-year-old is rarely boring. Leah keeps us on our toes! She is always coming up with new ideas and always wants to do more and more things "all my myself" as she would say. She's pretty clever. She can open doors and uses a stool (or anything else she can find) to get up higher. So basically nothing is safe in our house unless it is really high up.

She definitely knows what she wants and has no problems telling Ross and I exactly what he wants or thinks. She's quite articulate these days. She talks in complete sentences and I can usually understand what she's telling me (as long as she's not crying or has her binky in her mouth). Her most common catch phrases these days include: "That was funny." "That was close." "I'm doing something." (that one always makes me nervous!) and "See if Mickey is on."

She loves to "play games." Which basically means she wants to get out a game and play with all the pieces. I try to get her to play with games that have letters or numbers in them (those are usually the ones she wants anyway). She can count to 13 by herself and sings the alphabet song by herself too.

These are pretty much all random pictures from my cell phone that I wanted to share and have with our "family history" records.

She loves to check the mail. These stickers came in the mail one day and she couldn't wait to use them.

 I love this picture of her. It has been my cell phone wallpaper all summer.

Leah LOVES to go to the park! There's one just a few blocks from our house. If we take her outside to play, there's a good chance she won't rest until she gets to go to the park.

I came home from mutual one night to this scene in the kitchen. She said she was making soup. She often pretends she is making something.

Most of the time she is a really happy girl. Especially when she gets to be outside.

I found her sleeping like this one night. It made me wonder if she was dreaming about having awesome ninja skills!

These girls belong to Ross's cousin. I watched them one day and the three of them had a great time together. I loved giving them all matching pony tails.

This is what happens when a 2-year-old is quiet for too long. You think they are just playing nicely, but in reality, they are up to mischief. Her poor baby (which she named "Cyleste" by the way) was covered in some stickers that she found.

She loves to take her baby (and sometimes her Kermit) for walks. Here she is giving her a wild ride. She must have taken that stroller up and down that stair over and over a dozen times or more before I finally made her go somewhere else to play (much to her dismay).

Sleeping with her Kermit! I love it when she falls asleep on the couch instead of on my lap. It rarely happens, but she is getting better about just laying down and falling asleep.

When she goes outside, she almost always wants to sit on our neighbor's bench and have her picture taken.

Here she is with two of her favorite neighbor friends, Ahsha and Parker. Too bad Ahsha has moved away now.

This is what happens when she won't listen to us and insists on jumping on the bed. This was an instant huge goose egg bump. You'd think she would learn from a bump like this, but no. She still LOVES to jump on the bed.

She is such a ham sometimes and is so full of personality. She is still pretty shy in public. But at home she rules the roost. It seems like we are often reminding her to not be bossy and to use her inside voice. She really enjoys hearing herself scream.

Here she has set up for herself a cozy spot to watch TV. I can almost guarantee she is watching her favorite show, "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse." She can't get enough of that show.

A couple of weeks ago, I took her up to go swimming at a water park with all of her cousins on my side. I didn't get any pics of them actually swimming. Leah loves to swim. I should have taken her more this summer. Oh well. Anyway, I did get a few pics of them all wrapped up in their towels. After a couple of hours in the water, they were pretty chilly.

This is six of the eight kids. The older two boys were showing my mom how they could jump off the big kid stuff into the deeper water.

Parker came over to get babysat one day. These two had a great time playing with the broom and mop. Too bad they aren't as helpful as they think they are being. I would have really put them to work.  

I took this picture of Leah and Kynee in their BYU shirts and sent it to my brothers just to get them going. They are big Utah fans. Leah is a big BYU fan. She loves to hear the BYU fight song, loves to find "Cougar Ys" when we're driving around in the car, and loves to see Cosmo and give him high-5's.

Like I mentioned earlier, Leah loves to pretend she is cooking something. So last week I actually let her help me make some muffins. She loved every minute of it. Now she thinks she needs to help me make everything.

I had both girls recently during the football game. These two love to play together and were on the go from the time that Kynee arrived. At one point, they had climbed in Leah's crib and were playing together. I left the room for a minute to take care of something. It got really quiet in her room, which started to make me nervous (as hyper as they were, I had to wonder if they had knocked each other out or something). Instead this is what I found. They were both laying down reading a book together. So cute!

Leah is also getting potty trained right now. (I will spare you any pictures of if because 1-I haven't taken any and 2-because who really wants to see pictures of someone else's kid -or yourself for that matter- sitting on the toilet???) But so far she is doing pretty well. She loves earning stickers for her chart. Hopefully we can be done with diapers soon!

Anyway, there's a little glimpse into Life with the Leslies lately. Hope you enjoyed it.