The "trying" twos!

We refuse to say "terrible" as nothing about our sweet little Alli is terrible but she is definitely "trying" these days!!!  Her favorite word is "no", usually said even before she knows what she's saying "no" to ~ talk about fun.  She, like most kids her age (I hope!), thinks the world revolves around her and likes to demand rather than ask.  She also loves to whine ~ our LEAST favorite thing of all.  At this point, we're ignoring when she whines and she usually changes her tone and remembers to say please but it is like nails on the chalkboard to hear that whiny voice.

This afternoon, we hit another "trying" milestone . . . she got out of bed during nap time.  This is not like her at all.  She knows that she is not allowed out of bed without asking first and this has not been a problem at all since she's been in her big girl bed (we made the switch in May!).  G and I were down in the living room when he heard her running around upstairs.  I really thought he must be hearing things because Alli certainly wouldn't do that.  We go upstairs and saw her bedroom door open and then she came running down the hallway, stopping dead in her tracks when she saw us.  Her look was priceless and seemed to say "Uh oh!  how did I get caught?!?!?!"  It was all we could do to stifle our laughter, put on our serious faces and let her know that was not okay.  We had to get out of the room pretty quickly because we were both ready to explode with laughter.  Really, not okay but way too funny!!! :)  Gave us both a great chuckle this afternoon, always good on a crisp Autumn day.

Any advice on how to survive this age?????