Good girl!

Wow- I new I hadn't written in a while, but it's been a few days shy of a month! I'll try to do better. (-:

We say the words "good girl" over and over again to Lily as I know many parents (I hope all) say to encourage their child. But Lily is such a good girl, I just have to note it before the terrible, twos, threes, etc. come along and I forget all about how good she used to be.

She's happy. She just is. She has fits of course- she's a 16-month old. But if she's fed, diapered, rested, she's a happy baby and always has been.

She willingly takes naps when she's ready. You can say "Lily, are you ready to go to bed?" and if she is, she'll get up from wherever she's playing and walk to her room.

She'll put things back when I ask. I have a red comb that I use for fixing her hair and mine in the morning. It lives in my drawer in the bathroom. She is totally enamoured with this red comb. There are times when it is more fascinating than any toy or book. You can pretty much hear my bathroom drawer opening from any room in the house (partially a noisy drawer slide, partially because of the layout of our house). When that happens, Lily will come sauntering into whatever room we're in swinging that comb around. Now, the rule for the comb (and all other bathroom items) is that they STAY in the bathroom so they're there when we need them, and Lily knows this. So when we tell her in our stern parents' voices, "Lily, you know the comb stays in the bathroom- take the comb back and put it in the drawer please," she'll actually do it.

She follows directions. She's learned to climb into chairs and of course it's fun to stand in the chairs. However, that leads to FALLING out of the chairs. But when we tell her to sit on her bottom, she does it. Granted we might have to remind her again (and again), but she does it! Also, I can give her a little bowl of snacks while she's playing and tell her to leave the bowl on the table and just come get a snack when she wants, and she'll actually leave the bowl there! I tried this out a couple of times this week after attempting to let her have a snack-trap type bowl while she played and ending up with sweet potato puffs everywhere. But the open bowl on the table actually worked! I couldn't believe it!

I have lots more examples that I won't bore you with, and of course lots of examples of bad behavior, but "bad" for Lily really isn't all that bad. And that's my point.