Author: Susanne

Our darling little girl is growing up so quickly before our eyes, and she brings an exceeding amount of joy into our home every day. Selah lives life as if it were a musical–and we adore it!! She literally sings her way through life…she sings throughout the day, sings herself to sleep, and wakes up with a new song on her tongue every morning.

Here’s a video of one of her latest songs:

It is so easy to see her mother’s heart burst out of her every move…she is constantly so eager to take care of everyone around her and serve every chance she gets.

And that heart does not exclude her babies and stuffed animals! It is not rare for us all to be playing together and for Selah to jump up in the middle of our playtime and exclaim, “I hear my baby crying upstairs! I’ll go get her and bring her down!” She is the epitome of sweet and kind and loving. And although she has definitely learned how to push her brother’s buttons this year :), most of what comes out of her heart is genuine love.

A few months ago, I overheard this conversation:

Selah, as she takes Elliott’s pencil and sits down: “Elliott, I need to use your pencil.”

Elliott: “But Selah, that’s MY pencil.”

Selah, in the sweetest, most genuinely convincing voice: “Yes, I’m SHARING it with you!”

Elliott: “Oh! Thank you, Selah! Thank you for sharing it with me!”

Selah: “You’re welcome, Elliott!”

It’s hard to articulate the depths of her heart, but this conversation was so typical of her…she was truly not manipulating him, but she just genuinely believes that she was giving Elliott a gift by letting HIM share with HER!

As she approached her third birthday, any time it would come up in conversation and someone would ask her old she was turning, she would respond, “Three…THEN FOUR!!” I think she is determined to catch up to her big brother! 🙂

She continues to be our amazing gymnast.

She is truly talented and it is such a joy to watch her doing something she loves. We did the “Mommy and me” gymnastics class last year, and a couple of weeks before she turned 3, she started the 3-4 year olds class, which is a class without her Mama!! (Granted, I do sit right outside where she can see me and watch her through the window…baby steps for both of us!) I talked to her about it ahead of time, wondering how she would do without me (and let’s be real–how I would do without her!!!) and she said she was excited to do it. The morning of her first class, however, as we were getting her into her leotard, she said to me with a voice that quivered more with each word: “Mom? I was just thinking that I actually want you to come into my class with me…” and then she erupted in tears. My heart broke and I held her as she sobbed…Elliott and I comforted her and prayed with her and he gave her advice on what it is like to go into a class without me. It was precious. Sure enough, when I walked her into her class a couple hours later, she let go of my hand and waved goodbye to me with no problem. It has been so incredibly fun to watch her thrive!!

She got her first haircut this year and mastered potty training.

She is wild and messy and silly and free and creative and and hilarious and we adore every part of how God created our little girl!!! Enjoy a snapshot of her year below!

Selah takes artistic license when it comes to doing anything…eating dinner, crafting, writing her name…

Selah continues to have a love-hate relationship with animals of all kinds. She screams in absolute horror if our friends’ cat even takes a step into a room that she is in, but then she can be in a pen filled with Alpacas and literally chase after them yelling, “Here, alpaca! Here, alpaca!”

I often tell Brian that I wish I could bottle Selah up to remember her like this forever…Two is seriously my favorite age and she is so articulate and hilarious that she keeps me laughing all day long. Oh, the STORIES that she comes up with…they are incredible. This girl’s imagination is VIVID and she always has a story to tell about everything.

She also, however, has some stage fright. 🙂 So anytime I pull out my phone to take her picture or record her, she stops acting like her normal self but then wants to see what I’ve recorded! I have been trying so hard to get her on video without her knowing because I want to capture the essence of HER…and, folks, I did it :). She had been talking to me already for several minutes and I somehow casually placed my phone on my leg and pushed record without her knowing…until the end, of course. This video is CLASSIC Selah…first of all, she’s wearing her shirt backwards because when she dresses herself in the mornings she usually takes some artistic license with how her clothes should be worn. Today, her shirt was backwards and it was very intentional. (You all just wait for that to become a trend!) And her backwards shirt is covered in watermelon juice because…because she’s the second child :). Her hair’s a disaster because it’s after her nap and well, seriously…this is classic Selah. Feel free to watch below to catch a glimpse of our imaginative little girl…and bonus points if you can catch everything she’s saying!

I know this is the weirdest thing on the planet to blog about but Selah makes everything SO hilarious that I want to document this little milestone. AND, I’m certain she will thank me in 20 years…right?!! 🙂

Thanks to Selah, potty training her was an experience that had me in stitches throughout the entire process. I’m a big fan of WAITING to potty train, mostly because…here’s a little secret about me: I love diapers. And I mean, LOVE them. I think they are incredibly convenient and they just truly don’t bother me. Selah had been showing signs of being ready to potty training since long before she was 2 (in fact, a few days before her 2nd birthday she asked if she could sit on the potty and she got out both her pee and her poop!) So I thought I would have a self-trainer on my hands. Well, she didn’t self train but just picked and chose the days and times that she wanted to use the potty. I tried VERY half-heartedly a couple of times to actual train her, but one puddle on the floor was enough to send me back to buying stock in diapers. Sure enough, around 2 1/2, she started using the potty very regularly (on her terms). One evening during dinner Elliott went to the bathroom and then she jumped out of her seat and said, “Can I go potty?!” I said, “Be my guest…” and so she went upstairs to the available potty by herself, took off her diaper by herself, and went to the bathroom. It was that day that I realized I needed to just bite the bullet and train the girl.

I set up a little incentive…7 purple papers that led to a baby doll stroller which she really wanted.

Every time she went pee she got to put a little sticker in the pee square and every time she went poop she got to put a sticker in the poop square. Like I said, she was really good at going when she wanted to, but we had to get her going all the time. So if she went a full day without an accident she got to glue her paper up on a purple square.

When all the squares were filled up she got to go pick out a stroller!

Here was thing about her going potty. Somehow, she would manage to not only get pee in the potty, but also all over the floor of the entire bathroom, the seat, and the back of the toilet. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it would make me laugh so hard (Brian didn’t quite feel the same way, HA!!). I mean, seriously though…that requires talent! How is that even possible?!!

It took me a few days of that to realize that as soon as she would start to go pee, she would want to watch it come out so she would stand up mid-stream…hence, the pee flood.

Speaking of which, every time she would go to sit on the potty she would beg me to let her pee standing up (like her big brother). And when I would tell her, “no…” and that “ladies sit to go to the bathroom”, she would break down into a puddle of tears.

So, after teaching her to remain seated for the entire performance (have you ever seen that sign in a public restroom?) I went in one day to find ALL of the pee…INSIDE the toilet! THAT was a big day! I began to praise her and she enthusiastically interjected: “I got pee on the floor and the seat but I just wiped it all up!” She has left the potty SPOTLESS ever since that day.

She has preferred (and been much more successful) going to the bathroom alone, which is why I haven’t been in there to monitor the pee antics.

Here are a few quotes that kept me laughing throughout the entire process:

*After pooping one day, she stuck her head in the potty, examining her poops, and said: “OH!! One is a turtle and one is a monkey climbing up a tree!”

*Another poop experience: One of her poops was very tiny and round. She looked in and said, “OH!! A blueberry!! I want a blueberry!! Can I eat a blueberry??”

*Calling to me from the bathroom: “Mommy! The poops got ON the potty!!” I went into the bathroom to find her standing there studying the toilet and the poop that was smeared on the seat. There was also, incidentally, NO poop actually in the potty. I said, “Hmmm, how did you get poops ON the potty, but not IN the potty? Where are the poops??” Selah, wrinkled her eyebrows, peered into the toilet and said with utmost compassion, “Them prolly (probably) asleep in the hay…” (I then proceeded to wipe her and found said poops hanging out of her bottom…mystery solved!)

*One day after pooping she (again, studying her poop) says, “Oooooh!! A carrot!!” “Well, actually that’s a red pepper,” I replied. She responds, “Oooooh!! A red pepper!! Why a red pepper??? {pause, as she proceeds to answer her own question} That’s because the poops are hungy (hungry) so they eat the red pepper.”

*”Look!! That’s a silly poop!” In a sing-song voice she continues, “It goes, ‘I can DANCE! I can DANCE!!! I can DAAANCE!!!’ That’s silly…silly poop that can dance!!”

We also had several incidents in public, like the time I was so focused on making sure her hands were washed that I forgot to remind her to pull up her panties. So she waddled out of the public bathroom in her dress with her underwear around her cowgirl boots! It’s like the Selah version of tucking your skirt into your underwear :). She just somehow never ceased to make potty training funny!!

So…several pee floods, many, many poop stories, and tons of laughs later, we had a potty trained little girl!

We all ventured to the store so she could pick out her stroller…

We are so proud of our little girl!!

I will be honest, I wasn’t sure this day would actually ever come…

Our sweet little girl has taken after her mother, who didn’t have hair for a very, very long time. I had put away her baby book, expecting to pull it out in a few years again to record her “first hair cut” moment…you know, when she actually would have some hair.

But then…a couple of months ago, Brian said to me, “Hey…do we need to do anything with Selah’s hair? It’s looking pretty…scraggly….”

“Of course we don’t,” I immediately answered. “It is growing out and we will not cut a single hair.”

Now, none of my (in-town) friends have little girls Selah’s age, and so–I’ll be honest–I don’t have much help when it comes to the areas that I’m not so “natural” at…and hair is one of those areas. Selah’s been going to a gymnastics class since September and is finally gaining some little girlfriends. One week, one of the moms was talking about how she had to cut her little girl’s hair many times in order to “get it to grow in fuller and faster.” I asked her what she meant by that, and another mom chimed in saying, “Oh, yes. My girls, too…you have to trim it to get it to grow.” I asked a couple other friends who have girls and everyone agreed–“you’ve got to trim it to get it to grow.”

Let me just say, I still don’t really think I believe it 🙂 but after I thought about it for a while, Selah’s hair totally started to drive me crazy, and I realized they were right–it needed to be cut. At least a bob would be more feminine than the “wild mullet look.” So…with bated breath I broke the news to Brian and we got her in as quickly as I could make an appointment.

Here are some BEFORE pictures:

When I asked her if she would like to get her hair cut, she got SO excited and said, “Yeah!! I sit in the car like Elliott!!” We go to a kid’s place for Elliott that has toys and little cars for the boys (or girls!) to sit in. He’s long outgrown the cars, and in fact, I think she only saw him in one once, but that’s still what sticks out in her mind. So I was wondering if she would choose a car, but she was excited to sit in the big chair with the princess mirror….

I couldn’t get a good “after” picture at the place because as SOON as the lady put her hair up and said she was all done, Selah JUMPED out of the chair so she could go play with the toys.

Some AFTER pictures:

Oooohhhh, the difficulties of getting this girl to smile on demand! “Selah, please look just look at me REAL QUICKLY and smile!!”

Her hair is still too thin and short for a true bob, but hopefully now that it’s cut it will “grow in fuller and faster” like everyone keeps saying it will. I’ll believe it when I see it :). In the meantime, she’s perfectly adorable and we love her!!!!!