Holly's Changing View of the World

One of the toys Holly got for Christmas was a REAL Tonka truck. Not one of those hokey plastic ones that will break, but a tried and true metal one! She loves to do two things with the truck. One of them is to use it as a seat and sit in the "dump" part of it, although it almost always dumps her out when she does that! The other thing she likes to do is push stuff around in it. This is what girls do with a dump truck - fill it up with purses and push it around looking for "monies" to put in the purses. What you can't see is that her cell phone, keys, money, and other crazy things are in her purse ready to go at a moment's notice!
One of the most thoughtful gifts that Holly got was a handmade doll from one of Nana's quilting friends. It is just adorable and Holly loves to play tea party with her and help her drink milk. Holly hasn't gotten attached to one specific doll yet, but when she does, I hope its this one!

Holly was "helping" J. do a friend's hair at the basketball game the other night. When she was done, J. put Holly's hair up in a clip. I'm not sure any almost-two-year-old has a right to have this much hair, do you? That's a lot of hair to be able to twist up and put into a clip like that!

And now for the meaning of the title of this post. This morning when I put Holly in the car to go to daycare she said "ouch" and "hurt." When I asked her what hurt, she said "leg." I looked down at her legs, and sure enough, they were getting a bit scrunched up against the back seat when I had put her in her carseat. So, this afternoon before I went to pick her up, I had to re-read the instruction manual about umpteen times and finally put the carseat in the forward facing position. Yes, I know, that is shocking to most of you! She's 22 months old and was still in a rear-facing car seat! I thought for a minute about moving her to forward facing at about 15 months, but was glad that I didn't when I took her for her 18 month checkup and she was not even 22 pounds. I'll be very interested to see what she weighs when I take her for her 2 year checkup at the beginning of April.

Anyway, she was very excited to be able to swing her legs, kick the back of the seat and annoy Van, and look out the window at what is coming and not what has already gone by. Now, I just have to get one of those little mirrors that I can see her without having to turn around.

Turning her carseat to front facing also made me realize that I need to clean the back seat of the car more often! There were an awful lot of cheez-its and french fries wedged between the seat cushions of the car!

Saturday, we are off to Van's third ice skating lesson and Chinese New Year! I hope I remember to get some good family pictures during the festivities.