2-year-old, here we come

We've been experiencing the budding 2-year-old in Rachel lately. There's still a month and a half until she turns two, but she's been insisting on picking out her own clothes lately, and yesterday and today has been so adamant about dressing herself, even though she can only get her shorts on correctly by herself about 25% of the time. But if she doesn't get her way, she just throws a fit. So fun. Also, she delights in taking everything out of its place and throwing it across the floor. And tearing up perfectly good books. And if I even try to clean it up, she works double time to make her house just how she likes it: "I'm making a mess, Mom!"

 Rachel in her too-small pajamas that she insisted on wearing over her clothes

One good thing, has happened lately, though, with this new-found "maturity." She has started using the potty 100% of the time (when she's awake). Okay, maybe 90%, but I'll take that. It's only a few accidents a week, and she's even going number 2 in the potty these days. This morning I heard her in the other room, "Mommy! I went poo poo! Yea!" So I went in to check, and sure enough, she'd gone in the potty and pulled her panties and shorts back on all by herself (though I'm pretty sure she didn't wipe, so I fixed that). Yea for (partial) potty independence! :)

We were sitting around the other day playing with something when all of a sudden Rachel says, "Mom, I need to go to Walgreens." Weirdo. Walgreens is her favorite store ever. All because of their colorful cup display she tries to destroy every time we go there. So instead of actually going to Walgreens to scatter cups all over the store, she got her little grocery cart and went on a shopping spree at our house. I had got to be her cashier to ring up her stuff about 5 times in row. She may just grow up to be a shopaholic.

This weekend we enjoyed LDS General Conference, watching it with my parents on the BYU channel they get with Direct TV. It was great, as always, to hear from our prophet and apostles. I got a lot out of it (thanks to having other people around to help with Rachel, and her afternoon naps that coincided perfectly with the afternoon sessions). I'm so grateful to have a prophet to teach us today. It's nice to know that God loves us enough to give us someone to address our problems as they come these days, and we don't have to rely solely on something written hundreds of years ago (though I also love the Bible and Book of Mormon).

Rachel and Grandma between sessions enjoying the beautiful fall weather (which we hope lasts more than 3 days).