2.5

Ingrid aged about four years in the 36 hours that we were at the hospital getting Heidi.  Maybe she just seems big by comparison, now that we have a teeny baby again.  But she's definitely rounding the corner out of Toddler and into Preschooler.  She hasn't started asking, "Why?" yet, which I consider the hallmark of that age, but she's quite the precocious little girl now.  Carol and Dave remarked how much she had changed since Thanksgiving.

Looking big, big, big

All of a sudden she has Opinions about Things.  She's very cheerful about her noncompliance.  But our days of Ingrid complacently going along with every request are sadly over.  She also says, "Okay, WHATever" with a perfect 14-year-old accent.  It's a little frightening.

I intend to ignore whatever you said just there.

She is insanely good at puzzles.  She's nailing the 24-piece wooden ones with zero assistance.  Based on the way she works, I think she looks for colors and patterns, rather than the outline of the piece she needs.  I'm constantly amazed that she can look over the available pieces and easily pick out the right one even if it is facing the wrong way or partially covered.  She can clearly rotate the piece in her head to make a good guess whether it will work or not.

Her favorite word is "because," which she still used all wrong.  She likes playing with her doctor kit, which she received for her birthday but ignored until the last few months when she started coming to the OB with me almost every week.  That experience also prompted her new favorite story: the time Nurse Jackie squeezed mommy's butt and gave me a shot (yea, Rhogam intramuscular injection).  Loves everything princess and wild animals.

She finally started eating real food again, after a year of subsisting on bread, cheese, and sausages. Vegetables are cool again, especially raw peppers and carrots.  Still hates all the fruits.

She's still a bookworm.  I'm going to have to open a children's bookstore just for Ingrid's sake.  She stays up after bedtime looking at her books and we often find her awake in the morning, still in bed, looking at her books.  She memorizes the words quickly and likes to read to the baby.  If she doesn't know the words, she usually recites Caps for Sale.

Enjoying Henry and Mudge on a snowy morning

Hand Hand Fingers Thumb

She still loves school, even though it is nearly impossible to get her out the door in the morning.  Miss Jackie says she has been "testing some limits" lately, i.e. seeing what will happen if she deliberately spills the water or pushes another child, but comes around quickly when reminded of the rules.  Jackie thinks this is completely normal both for Ingrid's age and for the arrival of a new sibling.  She says Ingrid is otherwise lovely in the classroom.  We're starting to hear more about the other kids in her class -- further evidence that she's moving out of the hyper-egocentric toddler phase and into bigger kid stuff.