My big girl

Since potty training is on the brain, w'll start with that - tonight, natalya was wearing some pj pants and her panties, along with a long-sleeved shirt. She hadn't gone to the potty in a long time and I kept asking her if she needed to go. No Mommy, she tells me. No, I good, she says. Several hours later, and no accidents, I tell her, let's go potty, I'll go and you can go too. Ok, she says. So in we go. She sits on the potty and nothing happens. Nothing, nothing, more nothing. Finally I said, ok Natalya, I guess you don't have to go (but I am a little surprised because it's been way longer than normal). So she gets up (on her little potty) and there's pee in there. I say, Natalya! Did you go pee pee in the potty earlier? She said, yes mommy, I pee pee earlier all by self! I pull down panties and pee pee in potty all by self.
Holy panties batman! I was in shock. What a huge step!

Music class is so much fun. Kindermusik, actually, but we call it Music Class. Natalya has made a friend, who is 6 months younger than her. Her name is Emery and every week Natalya says "are we going to see Emery Mommy?" Last week, during class, they were sitting in front of the teacher getting ready to hear a story and Emery was kind of looking around at the kids, who were all sitting, and the teacher said "Emery, would you like to sit down?" And Emery said ok, then sat on natalya's lap. Natalya was looking at her like, well, ok. Emery's mama and I laughed so hard! It was so cute. Then Emery decided to give Natalya a kiss. So she kissed her on the cheek, while Natalya was pulling back, wondering what she was doing. Tuesday night of this week, I told Natalya we were going to music the next day and she said, Mommy, see Emery? I said, yes, Emery will be there. She said, "Mommy, Emery give me kisses." And then she giggled. It was so adorable.

It seems like Natalya's sentence structure has grown almost overnight. Suddenly she is using all sorts of pronouns and fill-in words appropriately (like "the" "a" "of" etc) I just can't believe it. She is growing up so fast. She also recognizes her writen name, and knows about 2/3 of the alphabet. She loves to sing and will occasionally make up songs. She also has a memory like you wouldn't believe. She will hear a song once and sing the correct words to it several days later.

I just cannot believe she is already almost 28 months old, and at the same time, she seems so very much older.