Wow. It's been quite a while since I updated Florence's blog. I laugh when I see the Twinkle video because she has come such a long, long way since then. She is now 2 3/4, and she not only can sing that song all by herself (and does, quite regularly), she also sings ABCD, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Goodnight Florence (Goodnight Ladies from Music Man), the Wonderpets theme song, and much, much more. Her language skills have really come along - she is as articulate as my 5 year old. We really have to be careful what we say about her since she will repeat it - and usually in the same tone. It's kind of scary to hear sarcasm so clearly in a two-year old.

She is now 2 1/2 years post-op, and to me, is smarter and more beautiful everyday. While she does still have a lumpy head in some places, her forehead has really smoothed out. She still has a tiny line along the right side where they moved her metopic ridge during the surgery, but it's barely noticeable. We will go to visit her neurosurgeon next, but since she's only yearly visits now, it won't be until somewhere in January or so. We'll have to chase him down since he has moved from Phoenix Children's Hospital where we had our surgery to Cardon's Children Hospital here in Mesa (Yay! A specialist here in town!). In the meantime, we are very pleased with how she looks and, more importantly, how well she is developing and meeting all her milestones.

She is now, for all practical purposes, potty trained. She makes it through nap, though I still give her a pamper to wear at night, mostly because I don't want to have to get up in the night to change sheets. Her cousin who is close to the same age actually gets up in the night to pee, but I don't see Florence doing that yet. My kids sleep too deep. In fact, we are still waking the 5 year old up before we go to bed to make sure he stays dry. Florence just moved into her big girl bed. When Grandma was visiting, she helped us get some bunkbeds for the girls to sleep in. We opted for the full on the bottom so that we could easily accommodate guests and Florence looks tiny sleeping in that big bed. She absolutely loves being able to get herself up when she's done sleeping - me, not so much. The sun is still coming up pretty early, so she wakes up early. Fortunately, she does seek me out in bed if I'm not up already rather than go to the kitchen and make her own breakfast. It probably just hasn't occurred to her yet. She has also enjoyed coloring, but now she likes it so much, she'll do it for hours if I don't interrupt. The peace and quiet at home and the calm at our various activities (karate, doctor visits, etc) make the money I spend on Elmo coloring books totally worth it. She still scribbles, but you can see that her scribbles follow the lines of the pictures.

She loves to read books. In fact, I'm attaching a video of her "reading" her favorite book "Let's go Hippo". We videotaped it to give to her cousin for her birthday. But Florence got a big kick out of making the video and especially enjoys watching it. She is her own biggest fan.