I help me myself!

I guess most people think about the independent toddler and remember the phrase "I do it!" Juliana will say this on occasion, but most of the time she prefers the phrase "I help me myself!" and if she wants to get her point across quickly (i.e. you're coming in fast to take the bottle of liquid out of her hands which she is trying to unscrew...) "Help me myself!"....

I recently read an online article of a parent saying the best advice they'd ever received from someone. Number one was not allowing any toddler or kid music in the vehicle, otherwise, they could expect to always hear "Wheels on the bus" for every road trip thereafter... Pretty good rule, I think. And we've actually done pretty well, even before knowing that "rule." Her music requests in the car range from "Moon!" (aka. Coconut Moon, a fantastic kids CD and yet the parents enjoy it as well), "Elmo Song?" (which sometimes I can manipulate into a different music altogether, or we do Elmo and the orchestra. I'm thrilled that she recognizes and enjoys this music. Especially Flight of the Bumblebee, when she will cry out that the bee has stung her...), and "Charlie Brown" or "Snoopy Song" (aka You're a Good Man Charlie Brown from the broadway play). Sometimes I can find other songs that she likes, and this is based on her asking "Again?" when the end of the song is reached. And I humor her, because I now know that she's learning the song as she listens to it repeatedly. Just as a sample of these "Again?" songs: Carolan's Concerto by The Chieftans, Cotton Eyed Joe (we listened to The Chieftans version), Loathing from Wicked (she likes the "Boo, Ah!" exclamations at the end of the song), "The alligator song" or Alligator Stroll from the CD Frog Trouble by Sandra Boynton, "Linus! Blanket!" or the blanket song from You're A Good Man Charlie Brown, and the "Frog song" which I still haven't determined which song that means from the Princess and The Frog soundtrack...

She also bursts out into song at random times. And knows enough of the words and the tune for us to decipher what she's singing. The following are her current repertoire:
- Rock a bye baby (sung to her baby dolls, or to herself at nap/bed time)
- Amazing Grace (sung with her Daddy as her bedtime song)
- Earth is Our Mother (sung with me as her bedtime song)
- I Love You, A Bushel And A Peck (sung with her parents as a bedtime song on occasion)
- Skiddamarink a dink a dink
- You're a Good Man Charlie Brown (just that part of the lyrics)
- She moves her lips during Book Report from You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, so almost like she knows what the lyrics are
- Row Row Row Your Boat
- Ring Around The Rosie
- ABCs
- Happy Birthday (Ha-tee Bird-day (normal pace) ... To You (extra quick))
- Clean up song from Barney
And many more I'm sure...

She also likes counting. So a month ago, 2 was her favorite number. Now it's 5. "How many ponytails do you have?" Correct Answer: 2. Juliana's answer: 5. She picks random numbers to start counting from and then gets caught in a loop: 8,9,10, eleventeen... 8,9,10...  Or 17,18,19,8,9,10,11,17...

She's started dreaming, and being able to express it sometimes... Saturday night she woke up, I went into her room to help her settle back down and she said "Doggie scared me, Momma". I believe this is coming from a week ago when we went on a walk around the neighborhood with Juliana in the backpack (we're planning on taking it with us to Hawaii instead of her stroller), and there was a big dog in a yard that was barking and running toward us as we walked past. It scared me, because I wasn't sure if it was confined by an invisible fence or not, but I tried to keep my anxiety under control so as not to scare Juliana. I know it scared her though, even though she remained calm and kept telling the dog "No, doggie!" Some nights are better than others, with her only waking up 1-2 times before normal wake up time, other nights it's every 3 hours. What we're starting to discover, is that if she goes to bed earlier (because we can tell she's tired and our logic says, well go to bed early...), she wakes up more, and wakes up earlier in the morning. So we finally settled into a routine the week of the time change (of course), where she would be asleep between 8-8:15p (in bed, unwinding and trying to fall asleep around 7:30p), waking up every morning at 4:30a, but then sleeping with me in the "big bed" aka the twin bed in her room, until 6:30a. We set our clocks forward on Friday night, so she went to bed earlier than usual, and was up at 4:50a on Saturday morning. But we forced ourselves to think of it as 5:50a instead... It was rough, and we both napped while she watched Elmo on one of the iPhones Saturday morning... She has been napping in her bed, she falls asleep quickly once she settles at nap time (usually 10-20 mins versus bedtime which is 30-40 mins). This weekend slept about an hour, woke up crying, we patted and helped resettle her, and she slept for another hour on both Saturday and Sunday. When she wakes up at the 2 hour mark, she says "All done" but then when I pick her up (she's soaking wet sweaty), she puts her head down and will fall asleep again until I move enough to wake her up or something. She'll sleep on me while I sit on the couch downstairs, in the full sunlight (we have blackout curtains in her room)... But for the last week, she appeared to have  been hitting the 2 hour mark every day for naps at school.