Katherine: 2 yrs, 9 months old.
Lately she likes to see words on the road - "SCHOOL", "STOP", turn arrows in turn lanes, RXR crossing signs. At first she didn't like the fact that there were words on the road (why she just started noticing them now, I'm not sure), but now she wants to see them, and anything else written on the road.
She still doesn't like to say "hi" to strangers, but will at least whisper it if told to do so. Even friends her age whom she sees on a weekly basis, she tends to shy away from initially. Doesn't much like uninvited hugs from others, or for strangers to help her do anything. (Strangers = everyone who is not mom, dad, or grandparents).
She is good at puzzles, and getting better at them. Still loves colors; her current favorite is turquoise (or anything resembling it - aqua, light blue, etc.). Her current favorite book is Richard Scarry's Best Story Book Ever - specifically, the story of "Schtoompah, the Funny Austrian" at the end, and the picture of him riding his bicycle backwards with his tuba over his head, and a funny face drawn on the tuba. She pretends to be Schtoompah, putting blankets over her head, or scooting backwards on the floor. This has been going on for some weeks now! She's a funny kid. And a sweet one.
The last thing that she was enamored with before that was cement trucks, after seeing one pour some cement at a new house near ours. She would pretend to be a cement truck, running around the living and saying it was for a new sidewalk or driveway. She would want us to draw cement trucks (ad nauseum) on her Magna-Doodle. I found her a toy cement truck for Christmas, though by then her fascination with them was waning a little. But she still loves to see them if we happen to see any while we are out and about.
We had a Fisher Price dollhouse that someone was throwing out in their garbage (complete with furniture!), but it had no dollies to go with it. So I finally bought some on eBay, and she loves to go play with her dollies. There's a bathroom in this dollhouse, with a toilet that has a lid that flips up. She invariably puts the baby on the potty. (You have to understand that babies have the ability to go potty when held over a potty, even from birth, if they don't lose that sensation through learning to just go in diapers. So we put Emily on a potty umpteen times a day; she often fusses either if she needs to go, or if she's wet, and since we use cloth diapers, she always feels the wetness). Anyway, so Katherine's dolly baby in the dollhouse gets to sit on the potty more often than not. Sometimes the mommy doll sits next to her to see when she's done.
Oh, and the game that Daddy made up for Katherine... she has this set of plastic bugs (realistic looking), and he will hide them in the parts of the dollhouse for her to find. Then he says, "what are we having for dinner?" and there will be a bug in the oven, a bug in the fridge, etc. He loves bugs (real ones) and she does too. She brought an earthworm in the house the other day.
I could keep writing, but I should go put away the things we got at Walmart today...
Emily: 6 1/2 months old.
She's been crawling now (on her tummy) for some time. She's starting to get into things, and just today was able to pull over her square toy bucket onto its side. Anything of Katherine's is more interesting than her own "baby" toys.
She does this cute thing of nodding her head at you, and then if you nod your head in response, she'll nod again. Not sure where she picked that up, but it's fun.
She's a very happy baby (generally), and laid back. She was waking 2-3 times a night since 2 months old (she had slept well from 1 to 2 months of age), and I finally decided to let her try crying it out, because 6 interrupted hours of sleep was getting to be too little for so long (for me). (I would get up and feed her every time she woke up). So we put the pack-n-play in the office, so that her crying wouldn't bother Katherine (they share a room), and after one long episode of not wanting to go back to sleep without being fed, she has adjusted pretty well to it - thank the Lord! Sleep is so wonderful! She probably just needed to have a dry diaper all those other times, but I was afraid she'd cry and cry and wake everyone up if I didn't feed her before changing her. Anyway, now she will (generally) go down around 7 or 8pm and not wake me up till after 5am. Yay! (6am would be better, but I can't complain to have about 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep, plus maybe another 30-60 min. after that!)
Oh, and she's tall for her age. 27" and 15lb at 6 months old.
My Mom got to come visit for a few days recently. It was so nice to see her again!
