Two and a Half!

Rosalie turned 2.5 yesterday! I celebrated by teaching her bad table manners. On her mouth here is a piece of nori, a green-black seaweed used in sushi. Rosalie discovered that it's delightfully sticky when applied to the lips, and instead of encouraging her to put it directly into her mouth I tried putting it on my lips, too. Once we had piece on our lips, we would eat them. A gratifying sensory experience, I admit.

At one point, when I had one on my mouth, I said, "What. What." (As in, "What are you looking at? Something on my face? What.) On the next round, Rosalie did it too, perfectly. To see a 2.5 year old with a big black thing on her mouth, looking around, saying, "What. What." made me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants.

Still talking about the nori, here. She actually requested it (not to play with, but to eat)! Michael didn't understand what she wanted at first when she was saying "My want seaweed." Of course he didn't! What toddler wants to eat seaweed? But I think she developed a taste for it from our sushi outings. Anyway, we have nori on hand for salads, so that's how it came to pass that I almost peed my pants. Because obviously we wouldn't endorse this comedy at a restaurant!

You can probably also see that Rosalie had her second haircut the other day. She did great.

Last Saturday was exciting on our block; we got a permit to close down our street and had a potluck fiesta, complete with a small mariachi band!



In true RoRo form, our little cutie was concerned when she saw all the other kids using a stick to hit the colorful horsie that was hanging off the tree on a string.



But she finally came around. In the end, the results were amazing, of course!




She had her first lollypop after the horse came down. Over the course of what seemed like an hour, she sat and licked a divot in one side of the sphere of that candy.

Singin'

Rosalie's started doing something that is so near and dear to my heart I didn't even know it would mean so much. She's singing. A lot. And my favorite part about it is that she does the "situational singing" thing that Michael and I do all the dang time. In this family it could be a word (such as, say, "brick") that triggers an outburst of song (when I hear that word I inevitably start singing "Brick House," at least in my head and usually out loud). Or it might be the impulse to incorporate the current task at hand--or someone's name--with music (such as when we start singing "Row Row Rosalie" in the bath).

Well, it's caught on to the shortest person in the family.

Exhibit A, yesterday: Rosalie was creating a long line of blocks. "What are you building?" I asked.

"A track!" she replied. Then busted out with "I've been workin' on the railroad..." Oh man, I almost died! That is exactly what she'd been doing! Workin' on the railroad!

Exhibit B, this morning: Rosalie was wearing my big slippers and trying to keep them on her feet. She started singing (to the tune of Frere Jacques) "Where's my slipper? Where's my slipper? Here it is! Here it is!" Again, almost died. It's so, so, so cool! She speaks our family's language!

Even when I was trying to get a picture of her this morning, the thing that got her to smile was not saying a word, like "Cheese" or "Spaghetti" (Dang, that used to work). It was singing! In this pic below Michael coaxed huge smiles and wiggles out of her with a father-daughter duet of "The Wheels on the Bus."



What can I say but YAY! Hooray for Rosalie... (to the tune of Hooray for Hollywood, of course)