Miss independent

Naomi is growing up and wants to do everything herself. Possibly one of the most used phrases these days is “I’ll do it” or some variation of that (I’ll read it, I’ll sing it, I’ll eat it). She loves “reading” to herself, and her nigthly bedtime stories have turned into her time to read to mommy and daddy. I say “read” because she’s basically memorized a bunch of her books and recites them to us. It’s pretty amazing. We have a Winnie the Pooh book of Nursery rhymes. It has about 50+ nursery rhymes in it, and Naomi will just flip through page by page and start reciting them. Of course she can’t really recite the entire nursery rhyme, some of the words are too hard, or she can’t remember them, but you always know which nursery rhyme she’s reading and she’s always on the right page!. For example, The Farmer and the Dell sounds something like this: “The Farmer and Dell, The Farmer and Dell, Hi Ho Merry O, Farmer and Dell. Farmer ooh emph Wife. Farmer ooh emph Wife. Hi Ho Merry O, Farmer ooh emph wife.”
She also has to walk up and down the stairs by herself, usually refusing to let us hold her hand. It’s a slow and scary process as I hover next to her ready to grab her in case she slips.
She wants to undress and put her clothes in the laundry basket, put away the trash, open up her own snacks, serve herself food from the main serving dishes into her own bowl, brush her own teeth…
I’m constantly finding myself battling between being ecstatic over how much she’s learning and how independent she is, versus being annoyed at her stubbornness. I love that she’s excited to try and brush her own teeth, but it’s a task that ends up taking a full 5 minutes and leaves us with a not so clean mouthful of teeth. And her desire to walk everywhere is great when I have my hands full, but incredibly scary when we’re trying to get back to our car and that includes a walk across a busy parking lot.