Owlet is going through another level-up in language; it’s just more precise in general. (Except for ‘pinnanose.’ “Play pinnanose, Mummy?” I almost don’t want to teach her to say pee-yan-oh, because hearing her ask to play “pinnanose” makes me giggle inside every time.) She’s slimming a bit (thank goodness), and her legs look longer as a result. She looks more like a little girl now than a chubby toddler. I had to buy her a new snowsuit (the second one this winter) one size bigger, with longer sleeves and legs. She’s wearing size 4 jeans and tops, and I have no idea what her shoe size is; she’s worn size 9 boots all winter, but I bought them large on purpose. Her two-year-old molars are finally IN, thank goodness.

Her favourite colour is “pupple.” Her favourite foods are yoghurt (‘yodirt’), gravy (on anything — I have to keep a container of it in the fridge to pour over anything at a moment’s notice), her Shreddies and Ohs (her word for Cheerios) with milk in the morning, and “TANDIES!” after supper. (She gets two M&Ms for dessert after dinner. She tries to ask for them after breakfast and lunch, too, but that’s not happening.) She dips her whole hand into HRH’s coffee and licks it off. He caught her gently putting my wineglass down the other day. She looked at him and kind of smacked her lips quietly.

She’s working on issuing commands, often at inappropriate times. She occasionally tries to put people, things, or cats into time outs at random moments, or scolds them sternly for something they did ages ago that she suddenly needs to work through again in her mind.

She is very into Hide and Seek. Like most toddlers, she is somewhat unclear on the concept, but loves what she does anyway. She’ll hide in the same place that she found Sparky just about every time, and of course he finds her right away. We had to explain to him that he needed to pretend to look. “Why? I know where she is,” he said. Well, buddy, we knew exactly where you were when you played it at her age, too, but we played along.

She is also very into playing babies: rocking them, giving them bottles, and burping them. Her imaginative play with her Fisher Price animals and her ponies is starting to take off, too. There are general storylines that are followed: one pony gets a crown or something, runs to everypony one by one and says, “Look! Look!” and the other pony says, “Oh, you look so pretty!” Then they run to the next pony together, and so on. With the farm animals, one of them comes running to me and says, “So-and-so pushed me.” We have to go through the process of calling the offending party over, asking if it pushed the aggrieved party, reminding it that we don’t push our friends, and requesting an apology.

She had a bad cold at the end of January that had her home from school for a week, and triggered a nasty round of croup. If I’d known her entire class was coughing, I’d have sent her back two days earlier; I was doing the good parent thing and keeping her home to avoid infecting anyone else, but it turned out they were all sick already. Oh, well. We had fun doing groceries, and watching Sesame Street, and making lunches and scones together. One day I had to drop off a round of daycare cheques for the next couple of months, and they sent home a craft for her to do that the other kids had done earlier in the week. She loved doing her “homework” while Sparky did his. She played with the iPad way too much while she was ill, and I had to institute a detox when she went back to school; that did not go over well at all. There was about a week of screaming before and after school, but then everything settled, and now she’s back to books and toys in her down time, thank goodness.

Her favourite books at the moment are Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch, and the Oliver Jeffers books, particularly The Way Back Home. Her favourite song is “Let It Go” from Frozen, which she sings remarkably clearly, surprisingly on-key for a toddler, and does all the motions she’s seen in the video. Her favourite parts to play out are when Elsa builds the ice palace, and when she pulls off her crown and throws it away. (Sparky is also in love with this song, and sings it particularly well.) She is going to absolutely love the film when we get it on DVD.