Thursday, March 26, 2009

Adi: smiling in the "boat"


Adi's just learned how to smile on request. It takes a little effort...

Mae: "napping" with Dad

Dave can sleep through anything...

Friday, March 20, 2009

Motor mouths

Purple

Mae has a favorite color: 'poo-puh'. We have one pair of purple socks; every time we put socks on her, she requests the purple ones. Unfortunately we have to wash them occasionally, which she is accepting as a reasonable excuse, but I learned that putting them on Adi is *not* considered acceptable.

Bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl

Adi's love of sounds continues: now she makes a little 'O' of her lips and slides her pointed tongue back and forth over the hole to make noise. One night we could hear her doing it for 10 minutes after she went to bed.

Spinning wheels

Mae is very enthusiastic about vocabulary: while looking out the window she'll list the things she sees. Tree, truck, car, Bob (a neighbor), dog... One night when we were putting her to bed she was pointing all around the room-- crib, Dada, Momma, Adi, crib, Annie (her stuffed animal), pa-ja (pajamas), coke (couch)-- and just seemed unable to relax. It reminded me of times when my head is spinning with thoughts and I just can't seem to stop it. Luckily she seemed to relax when we put her down and she lost her audience.


Echo

Adi is going through a phase of repeating the last word of every sentence. The latest of these is when I ask her if she wants to do something herself (like washing her face after eating) of if I should do it, to which she replies: "do-ee."

Stories

Out in the back yard on a sunny day, I uncovered a brick bug. I was excited for the girls to see their first real, live bug so we all looked at it a while before it jumped off of my hand and disappeared into the grass. Later that afternoon, Mae started saying "bzzz," which is their word for bug (even butterflies) and then Adi said "bye bye." It was the first time I've been aware of that they remembered something (probably they've just gained the capacity to communicate it to me!)

Then, after spending a day with my parents, I asked them what they'd done. Mae said "Ga-ga" and I asked what else they'd done; Adi said "slide." Who did they slide with? "Pa-pa!" (grandpa).

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

A new level

About two weeks ago, Mae started grunting and pulling and eventually managed to climb onto a dining room chair. Adi had a few hours of frustration before she figured it out too. So now I'm promptly clearing the table- one day I was changing Mae's diaper and could hear something clinking by the table. Nothing Adi should have been playing with would have made that sound; when I finished with Mae I found Adi eating butter straight out of the dish!

They've each taken a tumble from the chairs and now we have two rules: no standing and you can't get it in the same chair as your sister. So this picture should be unique...

Monday, March 16, 2009

Reading


Currently called "ree-ree" or maybe "ree me."

Friday, March 6, 2009

Ga-ga and Pah-po

Can you deal with phonetic titles for the next year or so? I just find it so cute to transcribe the words. Although they are getting more and more understandable- other people can even understand them now!

Anyway, the point of this post is that Dave parents came to visit for a week- Bill was at a conference in Denver while Pat helped out with the girls. And the girls had a great time. You might recall that Adi has historically been afraid of strangers and its been the worst when we were around a big group, which is basically how most of our visits with Dave's family have been. But something switched in her and she went straight to them, giving hugs and kisses the first night and never looking back. Mae also had a great time, although for the past few weeks she's been clingy, constantly begging to get 'up' and trying to stand on my feet. One morning I was doing email while the girls played in the nursery with Grandma; Mae came out to see what I was doing and normally she would come over and beg to get up and look at pictures of babies on blogs ('picky, baby') but she pretty much looked at me and then went racing back to Grandma.

Neither Adi nor Mae seemed confused to have other people called Grandma and Grandpa (we use the same words for my parents), although that's not surprising considering they call all men 'Dada' and women 'Mama.'

Here's Pat dusting off her read-two-books-at-the-same-time skills:


And Bill found out that the grapefruit doesn't go as far when you share:

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Wohds

Lots and lots of 'wohds' (words). It's just amazing. Not only are they saying them spontaneously (Meredith points to the scum in the bathtub and says 'dirt') but their ability to pronounce a word that we ask them to repeat is getting much better. Yesterday's favorites: 'touch'. This morning we heard the trash truck outside ('tuck' for Mae, 'tash' for Adi) and Mae pointed to the window and said 'oak' (which I think meant 'look').

It is hard for me to understand sometimes; Mae will say something and I'll repeat it back questioningly and then Adi will repeat it, as if she knows what Mae is trying to say.

They're getting concept words, too- Mae is really fond of putting things 'back' (she has turned into our re-ordering force, making sure things are in their proper place. This week, my dad took her swimming and she had to close all the locker doors before they could leave. And this morning she lifted a stray lock of hair off of my face- it clearly didn't belong!). She knows (and requests) up and down (the former with an over-emphasized 'p' so it sounds more like 'uh-puh'. Adi has been saying 'uck' until just yesterday. Both say 'go' when they want to go outside. 'Out' and 'off' sound like 'ock', which is the same sounds as 'rock' and 'walk'. 'Hat' and 'hot' sound the same so, as Dave's mom pointed out, you really have to be looking to get the context in order to understand.

And Adi has said a few phrases: she'll repeat a phrase when prompted but on her own has said 'Ree me' (read me) and 'dah gook' (that book). It's interesting to see how they develop different aspects of language for a while, then seem to trade to catch up on what the other is doing.

The 'noooo's have become much more prevalent. For a long time we could get either girl to do what we wanted by asking if they could do something. ("Is that a crumb? Can you put it in the trash? Good job! Can you close the door?"). But now Adi's default answer to any "can you" question is "no" so we've had a lot more conflict. Now that they're closing in fast on 18 months, I guess we can expect that!