Lainey Reese 2.5 Years

Look who is 2 1/2! This pretty girl!

Lainey is playful, silly, affectionate, curious, and determined. She keeps us busy chasing her around all day and picking up the trail of toys that she leaves throughout the house. 

Lainey girl is so affectionate. She loves to sit in laps, give hugs and kisses, be tickled, tackled, and gotten. She especially loves babies and will give lots of hugs to any baby she sees.

Lainey shares a room with Cambry and they go to bed around 7:30 or 8:00pm. Sometimes it takes Lainey a while to fall asleep. She wakes up around 7:30am. She takes a nap at 1pm each day, and it usually last 1 1/2-2 hours. 

Cambry and Lainey play with each other more and more. Mostly it is running around the house chasing each other and giggling. They like to lay in Cambry's bed and act silly while we read and do our night time routine. 

Lainey likes baby dolls and enjoys pushing them in the stroller and pretending to feed them. She likes pretending to be on the phone, and likes unloading and loading things. But mainly the unloading.

She likes books but doesn't always like for us to read the words on the page. Especially if there are a lot of words she gets super impatient and tries to turn the pages quickly. She seems to enjoy the pictures better when we point out everything to her.

Lainey also loves water. Standing on the stool at the bathroom sink washing her hands is a favorite activity. She loves baths too. One day I gave her a bucket of water and some cups outside and she was entertained for a long time. I am eager to see if she likes splash pads this summer.

Although Lainey is a good eater, she has gotten pickier over time. This happened with Cambry too. She now inspects her food more closely and has plenty of things she dislikes. But overall, she does really well. Her favorite is banana. She would probably eat several a day if we let her. The other night as we were getting dinner ready Lainey reached up and grabbed a banana off the counter, peeled it, and shoved 3/4 of it in her mouth before we spotted her running to the other room. It was pretty funny. She also loves candy and sweets and will bring us the bag of chocolate almonds or a bag of chocolate chips.

We still think that dairy upsets her tummy so we do not give her any (except in tiny amounts occasionally). We substitute almond milk, coconut milk yogurt, and dairy free chocolate when needed.

Lainey does speech therapy twice a week. She has made some good progress in both expressive and receptive language. She is trying to communicate more and attempts to say a lot of things. At her 2 year update I don't think there were any words she was saying regularly. Now there are many words she tries to imitate (although other people probably would not be able to understand them all). The words she says more clearly are: baby, dada, mama, more, bus, nana (for her grandma and banana), please (sounds like peas), bye, hi, done, night night (ni ni), up, and out. She also likes to make a variety of animal sounds. I can tell her receptive language has come a long way as well since she identifies objects in books and is following more commands without gestures. 

Lainey still has the cutest curls, big brown eyes, and long lashes. She is our "wild style" and we love her to pieces. We are thankful she is ours!