The family tree of Naomi's toys is very… tangled.

Family seems to be very important to Naomi and all of her animal and people toys are related to at least another one in some way. I've tried to figure it all out, and possibly diagram it for our own reference, but it's far too complicated and changes regularly.

She started out simple. Her dolls are clearly adults, kids, and babies so that made it easy. The black woman was mommy, and there were two white daddies which are the same except for one has a green shirt and one has a blue shirt. All the other ones were friends and the handful of baby figurines were just babies. Somewhere along the line, the babies that have blue onesies were adopted. I don't think the others ever were. One of the girl dolls claimed one of them, I think. When the grandparent figurines arrived, they took care of the babies too. Lately, Naomi has taken over the role of mommy for many of them, and most of the babies toilet trained by now. Of course, she still makes the babies sleep in the closet under the stairs for some reason.

The animals are a little more complicated. In general, the biggest animals are daddies, medium ones are mommies, and littlest animals are babies. If she has a lot of one kind of animal (like monkeys or bears) genders sometimes change depending on the relative sizes of the ones she's playing with at the moment.

She's picked up somewhat on genetics somehow, and uses this to determine lineage. For instance, one day Naomi way trying to figure out the parents of Peef's (the multi colored patchwork bear made by Santa). First she decided Christmas Bear (the white one with a snowflake on his belly) was the mommy. Then she told me Peef's daddy must be very colorful. When she found Tamisha's tie dyed'ed bear (we call him "sleepy" bear because of the state of his eyes…) he became the daddy. It all makes perfect sense.

When she has only one of one kind of animal, things get a little creative. I believe black bear was robin's mommy, for instance.

Not all families are perfect, though. A month or so ago, there was a family of three bears, and bears aren't always friendly in Naomi's pretend world. The baby bear was scared of the mommy bear because she kept growling at him. So while the baby bear was clinging to the daddy bear, we tried to get to the bottom of it. "She still loves her baby, though, right?" To which Naomi looked up at us with this concerned sad face and said, "I don't think so…" What do you say to that?

Sometimes non-animal things have families too. She had a little magnetic "T" that was talking, and then she gave me two pegs from her peg board and formed them into a big "T" and that was the daddy. The girl is inventive. I'm still waiting for her food to develop family trees...

My little girl passed another developmental milestone last night.

Naomi: Pointing at a commercial on TV, "Daddy, what's that?!?!"
Me: "That's the Muppets, honey."
Naomi: "The Muppets? I want to see more."
Me: "Sure, we can do that. I'll find some Muppets for you tomorrow."
Naomi: "I know, we can find Muppets on my iPad!" while scrambling off to get her iPad and bring it over.

We go into YouTube and I spell Muppets for her.

Me: "Ok, we'll start out with the basics." as she cuddles around the tablet.

"Mahna Mahna. ba dee bedebe. Mahna mahna…"

Naomi: "Look, mommy, The Muppets!"

I have the best kid ever.

This morning, Naomi woke up saying she wanted pink sheets. Since converting her toddler bed into a full size bed, she's just been using the sheets we bought for the guest room and other's we'd had from our pasts. Ironically, getting her her own sheets was one of our Christmas gift ideas, but since she's very particular sometimes, I wanted her to pick them out. Today was Thursday so it was Daddy Day (TM), she'd mentioned Tuesday that she wanted to go to the mall to see Santa, people should be done returning Christmas presents and stock levels should be back to normal, so that became the project for the day.

There's something foreshadowing about taking your daughter to the mall when it opens and she's only two. I knew Sears had sheets with all of her current favorite characters and that was at the opposite end of the mall where I usually park. But it's been cold out and we'd both been getting cabin fever so I wanted to turn this into a walking exercise trip as well. I brought her stroller, but she wanted to walk beside it instead.

She kept wanting to look down at the lower level and the people there. She also loves to point out any letters or numbers she sees, and the mall is filled with those. But you know what a really fun game is? Crouching down while your daughter excitedly points out everyday things below and seeing how many people stop and look to see what you're watching. We tricked several people into doing it.

Things in a few stores caught her eye so we had some detours along the way too. She was fine looking at the Yo Gabba Gabba toys through the window of Newbury Comics, she hung out and danced in front of Abercrombie & Fitch, but she wanted to go into the kitchen store and the shoe store specifically. The items that attracted her the most in those two store were a red teapot, and shiny red stiletto platform shoes from the Jessica Simpson Collection, receptively. Help us all.

Her favorite thing about the massive shoe store, though, was that it was filled with full length toddler mirrors - one of the end of every shelf. Sadly, Naomi can't pass up a mirror. "Hi Mirror!" "Look, Daddy! Another mirror!" Finally, and I truly apologize for not breaking out the video camera at this point, readers, she started dancing in front of one of the mirrors. Then my little Shakira faced me and started shaking her little butt off... while looking over her shoulder to admire her butt. This is a little awkward enough, but then, as Naomi's a fan of narration lately, starts saying in her outside voice, "Look, Daddy, I'm shaking my butt!" "Uh, huh, come on, let's..." "I'm shaking my cute little butt, Daddy!" And while I don't know how many of the seniors and middle aged women in the store were *actually* looking at me, it felt like the whole store. And Naomi likes dancing, "Daddy! Come shake your butt too!" Alrighty, let's go...

Finally, we got to Sears. The first thing Naomi saw when we got to the bedding area was a sample bed made up with bright pink Hello Kitty sheets. She was in love and wanted to get onto the bed to test them out. Since that's not into Hello Kitty as much as she used to be, though, I walked her down the aisle and showed her the Princess Tiana sheets, the Tinkerbell sheets, the Dora sheets, and the Ni Hao Kai-Lan sheets, showing excitement at each. She almost chose the Cars 2 sheets. At the end was the Hello Kitty ones and without a word, she grabbed the bag and started tugging to try to get them out. Considering it takes her forever to figure out what she wants to wear in the morning, even if I narrow it down to two shirts ("Hmm... that's cute... but... I don't know..."), that was a far faster decision than I had anticipated. I grabbed the comforter, the sheet set, and the blanket since these sheets were a lot thinner than her current flannel ones. Luckily I had an empty stroller to carry them around in.

Naomi's second favorite thing in the mall (besides Santa) is escalators. And while I was paying for her sheets, I was also trying to distract her from trying to go down them on her own since we'd only done it once before. "Can we go down them... please?!?!" I had planned on the elevator, but I had a giddy toddler and a stroller filled with bedding, what could possibly go wrong? I held her hand. "Ready?" I balanced the back wheel of the stroller onto the first segment. As the segment turned into a stair and began it's decent taking the stroller with it, Naomi let go of my hand. Seriously? I had to hold onto the stroller, I was going downstairs like it or not. Naomi started wailing. Trying to remain calm and ignoring images of leaving her stranded in front of disapproving clerks, or worse, getting eaten by an escalator, I looked into her eyes like some sort of toddler whisperer and told her to get on the next step. Thankfully she did and climbed down the steps until she could hold my hand. When we got to the bottom, she gave me a big hug, told me how fun it was and wanted to do it again. Not today, hon.

On the main level, they now have a little playground, perfect for kids her size. Of course, she wanted to explore it, so we did. Things to climb on, slides, tunnels, matching games and a big touch piano keyboard on the walls, plus seating and electrical outlets for the adults. Very popular spot and I think we'll be returning throughout the winter. Besides playing, she made some friends and found a baby she liked, "He's soooooo cute, Daddy!" much to the amusement of the boy's parents.

She took a break to let me know she was hungry for lunch. As we'd gone through our snacks already I asked her if she wanted to eat at the mall or go home. Normally she wants to go home but she surprised me. Maybe she remembers that I always use the opportunity to eat Arby's when we go to the mall since Tamisha doesn't like them. And that I get curly fries. After lunch, we ended up going back to the playground for a while longer before convincing her it was time to head home.

On the way back she got distracted by pillow pets, cell phone cases, pretty much everything. We also stopped at the spot where Santa was last time we were at the mall. I think she had worn her Hello Kitty Santa / Christmas shirt that day especially for him. I explained that he'd gone back to the north pole until next year. Hopefully this will reduce the recent repeat of her singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

We'd spent over three hours at the mall, and by the time we made it out of the parking lot, she was out cold.

We had a great time, and I have the feeling this will not be the last time I take my daughter to the mall.

Over the past few weeks, Naomi's changed dramatically. It's like advancement is in overdrive.

Personality-wise, she's gotten a lot more assertive. This is not necessarily a good thing. She's a lot more insistent on things to the point of being a broken record. Then somewhere along the line she determined she was in charge. We can just be sitting in the living room and she'll enter, announcing "OK, guys." Uh oh. Then proceed to lecture us with great passion about what we all need to do. In some ways it's fun and silly, and in others, wait, I'm being bossed around by a two year old.

Other times, it's just amusing and we have to stop ourselves from laughing. Tonight we heard, "Excuse me, mommy, I love you, but please get out of my way."

She's also working on pronunciation. Although she has a huge vocabulary and speaks fairly clearly, she's always had trouble with double consonants. Now she's making an effort to fix that... overly so, though, so words that were previously "bue" are now "blblblblblblue" She's getting it, though.

Combine the two advancements and we get into bizarre arguments. One of her favorite songs from Yo Gabba Gabba goes, "Think happy thoughts… happy thoughts… and a smile will come back to you." Well, Naomi says "Happy Butts". Insists that's the lyric. "No, Naomi, Thoughts, 'th'" "No! It's 'butts' The B sound. Ba ba ba ba... Happy Butts" OK, then....

When being assertive doesn't work, she tries crying. This isn't usually successful because Tamisha can tell the difference between real and fake crying. At some point, Naomi must have heard that there aren't tears with fake crying, so guess what she's been working on. She can now cry with tears on demand. In fact, yesterday we caught her using her finger to draw more tears out of her eye and trailing them down her cheek for a more dramatic effect. We just looked at each other in disbelief. Seriously?

She also tries the cute angle. The other day, when I wouldn't give her a cookie, she tiled her head, stuck out one leg with a turned ankle, gave a little pout, and said "Peeeeeeesssssseeee?????" Luckily, that has no effect on me.

But seriously, we're screwed.

So today at Moe's, Naomi noticed a loose string on the waistband of her pants. So she's standing up in the booth, holding up her shirt, and sticking the end of the string in and out of her belly button and playing. Then she shoves as much of the string as she can into her belly button, wrapping it around like she's tying it off. She then grabs the string and pretends to pull as hard as she can, grunting for effect. With a sudden yank, she pulls it out and yells, "I got it!"

WTH?

Things have been so busy lately, I haven't had time to write. Naomi is growing in so many ways, it's crazy. So many stories to catch up on.

Naomi is now in daycare MWF which is giving her more experience with kids, and giving me time to catch up on work. It also means I can focus more on her on Tuesdays and Thursdays rather than try to sneak in work all the time. Most days she happily goes to daycare again which is nice. Now that she has a bigger vocabulary, she can tell us about her day too. She tells us about what she did and about the other kids. A lot of things we can't quite understand because she rambles a lot and goes so fast, but clearly, she's having "much fun".

She's much more social now. She gives hugs and even lets people she knows carry her. At music class, she greats the teacher with a big hug, and participates in most of the activities. A far cry from the first few classes where she just clung to me and asked to "Go home now?" repeatedly. When we did the No Evil Project booth at stART on the Street and the Hanover, she was friendly and said hi to people. She's been amazing.

Some things haven't changed. She still hates going to sleep. Unless she's extremely tired, the only way I can get her to take a nap is strategically go on errands after lunch so she falls asleep on the way home and then I hang out in the driveway until she wakes up. It's impossible to get her out of the car and keep her asleep.

Her vocabulary is one of the biggest changes. She seems to understand pretty much everything we say now. Many times she'll respond to questions with words we didn't think she would know and use them correctly. She's starting to use slang and colloquialisms which is entertaining. She still has problems with pronunciation when there are multiple consonants together "st"s and "th"s or multiple syllable words what start with similar sounds "mumbers" etc. She's always interested in learning the correct way, though, and practices. The other nice thing is when we can't understand her, she can now explain in other ways so we can figure it out. When we do, all of us celebrate.

Naomi loves singing. She sings a variety of songs and she'll even make up verses or make up entire songs now. Yesterday she started singing a song about how much she loved me and what color shirt I was wearing. For a while she would make statements to the tune of Farmer in the Dell - she even used the right number of syllables. Some days she wakes up singing, and when we put her to bed at night, she will sing in the dark for what seems like hours.

She also wants to watch and learn about everything. Whenever we cook, she wants to climb up on the stool to watch and she helps with some things too and loves it. We go to the grocery store and she wants me to identify every item in the produce section. Yesterday she finally got the urge to figure out her trike. We spent an hour or so peddling back and forth in the driveway as she got the hang of it. Before, she'd just spend a few minutes.

She's a climber. She always has been, but now she's stronger and she's learned strategy. This week, she brought her step stool from her room downstairs and used it to pull herself onto one of the tall kitchen chairs. Today she used the taller stool in the kitchen to get her Princess Tiana toy off the kitchen counter. So yeah, now we have to go around the house and move everything higher... I should have known something was up when she had one of her baby figurines pull one of the dollhouse chairs over to the kitchenette, then stand on the chair, then the counter, then on top of it. I fear Naomi has big plans for climbing.

In addition to climbing, she loves jumping. No, wait, she's obsessed with jumping. We finally took her jumperoo apart because we were afraid she'd break it. Then she found if she held onto the side of her toddler bed she could jump really well too and without losing her balance. I swear the girl could bounce for hours like that, screaming with glee. Need to get this girl into gymnastics or something.

Her creativity amazes me too. Yesterday she found a paint can stirrer (I don't know where) and waved it around in the air like a conductor, painting. She was telling me about how she was painting birds in the sky. All different colors and what they were doing. Then she pointed it at me and pretended to draw different color hair on me, hats, etc. You could just tell she could actually see her paintings too. It was fascinating.

She's a very happy kid. Almost everything we do now, she tells me how much fun she had - from going to the playground to going to the grocery store. It's a crazy life, but we're having a great time.

Naomi's new thing is telling us when she loves something. So far on the list:

Mommy
Daddy
Strawberries
Chinese Food
Baby Spinach
Stephen Colbert

I can't believe I have a two year old daughter already. She'd been talking about her birthday for several months, and each time wanting chocolate cake with strawberries. She's never had that before, doubt she's ever seen it, just something she came up with. So Tamisha made cupcakes with strawberries on top for Naomi's daycare class, and a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and strawberry topping for us.

Naomi was giddy when she saw it and wanted cake for breakfast. Yeah, no. She had fun at daycare and when we picked her up she had a chocolate frosting mustache. When we got home we gave her her Elmo birthday balloon (she wasn't afraid of the ballon this year) and we played outside while Tamisha grilled birthday hot dogs and fries for dinner. After dinner we went inside for cake. She wasn't quite able to blow out the candles herself but she had the right idea.

Clearly she had been prepped since after cake she started asking about birthday presents. She'd gotten a lot of cards and some presents in the mail so we opened those. Naomi loves cards so she had a great time. Since there's not a lot of variety when it comes to two year old cards, two of the cards were the same. Without missing a beat, Naomi excitedly held the two up and said, "I found a match!" She asked for help opening a few presents, but once she got the hang of it, she was all set. She played with everything she opened and had a great time.

Afterwards, we brought out the presents we'd gotten her, first was a water table and she was instantly enthralled. And that was before we put water in it. While she was playing with that, Tamisha snuck out the tiny red radio flyer trike we'd gotten. When Naomi saw it, she squealed, "My motorcycle!" and ran over to it. She hadn't asked for a trike or probably even seen one so it was pretty funny to see her reaction. All in all a good day.

Two. Wow.

Naomi loves the rain. This morning she saw it was raining out and wanted to go outside. Tamisha played with her outside a bit, and then Naomi probably spent 15-20 minutes just standing on the porch and sticking her arms out one at a time through the railing touching the rain. Then she tried to get both hands through the same slot at once, contorting to do so, which was rather amusing. I was standing inside watching her and commented to Tamisha that Naomi hasn't figured out how to put each arm through a different slot yet.

A few minutes later, we heard a giggle of joy and found her with each arm through a different slot, and rain bouncing off her palms. It's amazing watching her learn.

After a group meeting at daycare about potty training, they suggested going cold turkey and only using underwear rather than pull-ups since there wasn't enough incentive for the child. So Fourth of July weekend we began the next phase of training Naomi. When I say "we", I mean "Tamisha" took the lead and I was there for moral support. Not that I want Naomi to wear diapers her whole life, but the thought of family members peeing on my floor and furniture is somehow worse than when a pet does it.

All things considered, Naomi's doing great. After the first few days of doing fairly well, she went four days without an accident. We even went hiking with her without incident. And then we went on vacation for a week. They tell you not to have any major routine changes during toilet training but well, we'd already planned the trip.

Having a child going through potty training is kind of like a game of hot potato. Errands are scheduled for "As soon as she goes." and then you know you have a half an hour to get things done until you have to find another toilet. Hrm, the mall is 20 minutes away...

So when planning a 6hr+ drive to Acadia, you have to come up with a new strategy. Tamisha's mom gave us a travel potty. It looks like a round lunch box and is air tight. We'd taken it hiking and got her used to it and it worked great. So on the road trip, when Naomi told us she had to go (or every hour), all we needed to do was find a parking lot with a little bit of privacy and we had an instant rest stop. No accidents.

When we got to Bar Harbor our luck ended. It seemed we'd gone right back to day one. She had accidents at the place we were staying, in the stroller, while hiking, and at a couple of restaurants (even after taking her to the bathroom and her refusing minutes before). Here's a tip for parents in this phase: when eating out, sit in the patio section, those chairs are weather proof and floors aren't carpeted.

You'll notice from the photos that Naomi goes through some costume changes most days. We packed spare everythings, just in case of accidents. Multiple spares. And while it's very practical, I'm glad we never had to go through a security check point while we were there, "Sir, why are you carrying around several pairs of little girls underwear in your camera bag?"

Mainly, I think she just gets too wrapped up with what she's doing to notice she has to go - most accidents occur while she's playing. Reminding her helps, but now she's gotten annoyed with us asking. "Naomi, do you have to go p-" "No!" and she sometimes follows it up with a teenager sounding harumph sound. The people at daycare are amused by this since she obviously does it with them too.

When we got back home she started having fewer accidents again, and luckily not when I was taking care of her. One evening last week she had an accident in the living room. I ran her to the potty in the kitchen and Tamisha asked her about it, reviewing where we're supposed to go potty. "Daddy told me pee pee on the floor," she said several time to both Tamisha and I. "No, sweetheart, I think you misunderstood, I wouldn't say that." In the most emphatic voice, "No... you say pee pee on the floor." We looked at each other wondering how to make her understand, when she goes, "My kidding, Dad. My kidding." "Did she just say she was kidding?" We looked at each other with shock and horror in our eyes and not wanting Naomi to see it. Have to play it cool. But seriously? Have I mentioned lately how screwed we are?

She's now in the phase where the answer to most questions is "no" so we don't ask her if she has to go anymore, we just start walking her to the bathroom, and luckily that works well. She's learned what the areas in front of public bathrooms look like and will preemptively tell us no if she doesn't have to go. She's also learned the difference between boy bathrooms and girl bathrooms. She's also learned the difference between good and sketchy bathrooms. Tamisha attempted to take her to an port-a-potty this weekend and got, "Mommy, no pee-pee in that!" Can't say I blame her there.

This weekend trip to NJ has been completely accident free. She's even made it through some naps and the night dry. She can hold it for quite a while now, which makes life simpler and less frantic. Unfortunately, she also uses having to go as an excuse to delay going to sleep or to play with the toilet paper too.

She seems to think she's perfected the art now, though. This morning at IHOP, Tamisha took her with to the bathroom. Naomi didn't go, though. Returning to the table, Naomi tells me, "pee-pee more" so I take her - maybe a chance of scenery will help. When we get into the stall, she points to the toilet and says, "Daddy pee-pee." "No, I don't have to go, do you have to go?" "No, boy's potty." Then she stands to the side of the toilet, plants her feet and thrusts her arms in the air like a cheerleader, repeatedly telling me to use the bathroom. It turns into a little song. She's been teaching her stuffed animals to use the potty, and apparently now she's taking us to the bathroom rather than the other way around. I dragged her out. Luckily we were the only ones in there...

That's my girl.