All By Myself

That is Miss Stella's motto these days. Whenever we try to help her with something, she immediately responds with a "No, I'll do it all by myself!"

She can get undressed and dressed all by herself (she's been doing this for sometime now). She picks out her own clothes when getting dressed in the morning and because she has certain favorites, she tends to pick out the same sets of clothes. That is why you see her wearing the same things in most of the pictures we post...not because she doesn't have any other clothes. In order to get her to wear some of her other nice clothes, Mama has to hide her favorite clothes and tell her that they are in the wash.

When Stella first started picking out her own clothes, she would wear the most random/bizarre color combinations of tops and bottoms. So Mama would often have to tell her that she should try to match her tops and bottoms. This took a while to sink in but now, Stella is all about matching...and not just clothes, but matching everything (i.e., matching her fork or spoon to her outfit, matching her juice to her outfit, or M&M's,or toys etc.). It's quite funny and maddening at the same time.

Stella also puts her shoes and jackets on by herself...the other day, she even zippered her jacket all by herself. She brushes her own teeth (which, also, she has been doing for a long time now) and has even started washing her body with a washcloth and shampooing her hair all by herself during bath time.

The other day, Mama asked Stella to make her bed while Mama was putting Des down for a nap in order to keep her occupied and to Mama's great surprise, Stella had made her bed very nicely and neatly. Mama was so proud of her and told her so and that just made Stella light up like a Christmas tree. This little girl lives for Mama and Dada's praises and we are more than happy to dole it out to her when she deserves it!

Stella is also very particular about how she wants things (i.e., like what kind of utensils, plates, and cups she wants at mealtimes, what color straw she wants, has to have all of the buttons of her jacket or sweater fully buttoned, etc.). This drives us nuts and we try most of the time to not give into her demands.

She has a mind of her own, especially when it comes to clothes and accessories. For example, she thought it would be best to wear all 4 of her hairbands in her hair in order to "make a rainbow". She is all about rainbows these days. So she made her very own colorful fashion statement with the rainbow hairband and went out in public like this!

That's our little girl...who is getting to be not so little anymore!