All About Holls

Hollie as a flower girl at her Auntie Pan-Pan's wedding.

Mowgli ought to be showing up here any day now, so I wanted to put up a post tonight that is all about Hollie, since she'll be having to share the limelight soon. I've been meaning to post an update about our little sprite for a long time now, so I am somewhat dismayed that it's taken so long to record these details. In any case, we love our little Baboo, and she is growing like a brilliant little weed. She is learning so much everyday, and we are learning so much from her. I know that sounds cliché—maybe it is cliché—but the feeling is very genuine. She's a comedian and a rascal and a sweetheart.

Interesting facts about Hollie (with random pictures interspersed):

• She is nearly 21 months old, and we recently had to prove at every airport that she wasn't two years old yet (our last trip in which we won't have to purchase her own seat).
• Since she was 18 months old she's been able to count to ten (to our immense surprise, considering neither one of us tried to teach her this). However, like the Looney Tunes frog who will only perform when no one is watching, she has refused to count to ten on video (she gets too silly). 
• She knows lots of colors, and her favorite colors seem to be blue (because it's the easiest for her to identify), pink (because she gets really smiley and silly when she says it), and white (because it's still the crayon and sidewalk chalk color she chooses to draw with the most. It makes no sense to me, either). She gets a little confused sometimes between black and brown, purple and pink, and blue and green, but in Japan green is just another shade of blue anyway, so she's probably right after all.

Blowing bubbles on the fourth of July.

• I'm pretty sure Hollie's cousin Miriam could sing the national anthem by herself at this age. Hollie can sing the Yo Gabba Gabba! theme song. You can't win 'em all, folks.

Eating chips and Dave's homemade salsa on her first backyard picnic. She couldn't get enough of that salsa.

• Every time a cardboard box comes to our door (whether it is child-mattress-sized or book-sized), Hollie thinks it's a pizza. Two things we are sort of ashamed of: (1) pizza is definitely Hollie's favorite food, and (2) we have ordered enough pizza in the past few months that Hollie assumes if someone brings a cardboard box to our front door, it must be pizza. On the plus side, she'll eat anything on a pizza, even onions, green peppers, and mushrooms (which is more than I can say for David, the shroom-snubber).

Eating fruit salad with Mom. Yes, I am very pregnant.

Blowing bubbles with Dad. Yes, he is wearing red-white-and-blue pom-poms.

• I've heard that some toddlers start to regress a little bit when a new baby is born. We've been talking to Holls a lot about big sisters and new babies, and we think she is catching on. I don't know if this is related to that or not, but Hollie has started wanting to sleep on us for her naps instead of in her crib—something she did for the first several months of her life. She'll sleep for about 30 minutes in her crib, but then she'll fall back asleep on us and stay that way for another hour, sometimes longer. We can't help but cuddle and sleep with her—it's just too much fun being so close while she's so little.

Napping with Dad.

Putting Dad to sleep just before bedtime.

• Hollie loves to "shing shongs" ["sing songs"], and these are some of her recent favorites: "Popcorn Popping," "The Eensy-Weensy Spider," "The Wheels on the Bus" (she can do the actions to those last three), "My Favorite Things," "Do-re-mi" (from the Sound of Music), "I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home," any song about dogs, and this ridiculous song her toy teapot sings to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." She can sing every third word/letter of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and the ABCs.

This was after she had dragged a frying pan from the kitchen cupboards into the living room for a chair. I found her deep in thought like this with a baby toy hanging out of her mouth. 

• Hollie is learning to say a lot of things, almost over night. She likes to repeat anything Dave or I say. Some recent Hollie-isms and favorite sayings include:
• "So much!" for "I love you!"
• "Gamma" for "Grandma" and "Gmpa" for "Grandpa"
• "Peep-eye!" for "Peek-a-boo!" (courtesy of her Mississippi Great-Grandma)
• "I need help?"—a sentence she says perfectly and all of the time. Always in the form of a question.
• "Upside-down?"—again, always in the form of a question, and always when she is standing on her head and looking at us from between her legs.
• "run in circle?" when she wants us to sing songs while she, well, runs in circles.
• "Bee-tee" for "Blankie" (which sounds a lot like "E.T." which she says for "E.T.")
• "Ee-Em" for "Amen" after prayers.
• "Tight squeeze!" for when she wants a hug.

Holls has always been very independent, but it's getting worse with age. If she can't eat it by herself, she is likely to shun food. Her first popsicle was lime-flavored, so now she calls all popsicles "sour."

• She still hates swimming pools and getting her feet wet, unless it's bath time.

She has recently mastered the fishy-face.

• She has been known to eat something like thirty grapes in one sitting alone, and she'll eat ketchup with her fingers.

Hollie's Drew-Barrymore-from-E.T. moment. She was really upset when we pulled all of these toys off of her.

• Hollie loves to baby her animals. She likes us to swaddle them so she can hold them and softly sing, "Baby, baby, baby" to them. Then, she sets them on the glider ottoman and tells them "night-night" while she rocks them to sleep by pushing on the ottoman. After that, she usually pushes them off the ottoman and body-slams them. So, you know. 

We put together a big girl bed for Holls today. She is ecstatic about it, but only likes to pretend-sleep in it right now. Mowgli will sleep in our room for the first several weeks anyway, so Holls can take her time. I can't believe how grown she up looks, or how breathtakingly small that little toddler bed looks. So big and so little all at once.

• Hollie loves cuddling lately, and kissing and hugging. When she gets mad, she hits things, but very rarely David or me. Whenever she hits something, she looks at me and says, "Be nice," because she knows that is what I am going to say to her.

And that's our lovely lioness of a pixie daughter! Here's a quick video for the grandmas. Hollie was counting to ten in the bathtub, so I ran for the camera only for her to stop immediately (see the Looney Tune frog comment above). So all I got was "1-2-3-Bounce!" We've been trying to capture her singing songs, but, again, we've been pretty horrible at it. I slaughter some of the lyrics, but keep in mind that I had just woken up from a nap myself.