Lali counts, puts her shoes on and Oh oh, opens the door to her room!! YIKES!

I should begin by explaining part of the title to this posting. You may wonder who "lali" is, right?? Well, this is what has stuck with me to call our little girl. When she began saying her name, she would say "kateli" but over time, she's shortened it and while she may still say "Kateli", rather quickly, it sounds to me like she's saying "lali", so you'll read me refer to her as either "Kateli" or "Lali"...

So, a couple of nights ago Lali showed us that she has learned how to open the door to her room--in the middle of the night, mind you! Yes, she's been opening doors for weeks now, but the one to her room was one that she had not been able to pry open--mainly because it sticks shut and you have to push pretty hard to open. We should have known this fateful day was coming, and prepared a strategy for this particular event. Well, we didn't and we paid for it! Kateli decided on Monday morning about 2:00am to take a stroll downstairs!! Yes, she came down the steps, in the dark, all by herself! I remember hearing her awake on the monitor, but usually she falls back asleep--not this night! I must have dozed off for a few mins or so, and then I remember hearing her again--I looked over at the monitor and realized it was not coming over the monitor, I was hearing her downstairs!! I leaped up, startled hubby awake and proceeded to send him out to check on her--or put her back in bed. Let's just say that it was not until about 4:30am that we gave up and hubby brought her into our bed so that we would get the last few hours of sleep before it was time for Joshua to wake up and start the day. Our tactic was to wait for Kateli to open the door and walk toward the stairs, at which time we proceeded to grab her little hand, lead her back into her room, tuck her back into bed, and walk out with out SAYING a single word--I really thought that would work. It did, a couple of times, but it was not our solution for the incident. The next night she did fine, and went to bed without protesting and didn't get up in the middle of the night. So, that's one new thing that our 2 year old is up to these days.

Something else that she is doing now, she puts on her shoes, all by herself and she does it RIGHT!! Her favorite phrase right now, which doesn't surprise us, is "Kateli help"--this translates into "Kateli will do it all by herself" so, everything we do, she says "Kateli help", and she gets her space. For a long time, she was putting on her shoes, but she would put them on the wrong foot; so I'd have to fix them after she was done putting them on. But yesterday, we were going out and I said "Lali, put your shoes on"; her response, "Lali, help" and proceeded to put them on. When I went to fix them I was pleasantly surprised to find that she had put them on correctly!

Finally, today she surprised me by counting 1 through 7 in spanish all by herself. Daddy and I have been working with numbers with her. Daddy does them in english; I do them in spanish. This afternoon, we were reading a book and there were items to count, so I started off and said "uno..." pointed to the next item and she continued "dos, tes, catro, cinco, seis, sete", and then we did "ocho, nueve and diez" together!! I had her do it again, just to make sure she knew what she was doing, this time counting out with my fingers. Sure enough, she did it again!! So, she counts, at least 1 through 7 in spanish--I'm not sure about in english! Smart cookie our little princess!