What's goin' on

Between Hope and Grant, there is a lot of learning going on around here. Words, concepts, behaviors (good and bad), and physical abilities are constantly being refined.

Grant is thinking about rolling over. He's figured out that if he is on his back and picks his legs up, he can get onto his side. He hasn't shown much rolling over initiative or desire beyond that. But the new-found leg lifting ability is making swaddling more challenging, as well as getting him dressed. It's ok though because usually those leg lifts are accompanied by delighted squeals, and that makes everything pretty wonderful.

Grant has decided that bottles are NOT ok. That's our fault for offering them so rarely. Fortunately he's starting to explore stage 1 solid foods, so I know he won't starve if I go out. We haven't been very adventurous with the solids yet because he's still so little, but pretty soon we can branch out more.

Meanwhile, in Hope-world, we're trying to drill in a few concepts. I can't stand wasting, and she's prone to waste toilet paper and shampoo. So far she doesn't seem to understand what's wrong with wasting, only that I don't like it. We're also working on ignoring and interrupting. For now, she has quite the double standard. If I ask her a question but she's busy doing something, she will ignore me until I get down on her level and bust out her middle name. Sooo annoying. But if I'm talking to someone else and she wants my attention she'll say "excuse me!" over and over, louder and louder, until I respond. And usually she says, "I want you to stop talking to her/him!" Very polite, no?

Hope is also entering the world of made-up words. This seems so strange to me, but I know it's a normal phase. Sometimes her made-up words are jibberish, but a lot of the time they revolve around the sounds "dee-dee," "do-do," and "doo-doo." And another standby is "chickaroo." Ewwwkay.

Language-wise, Hope has always been way ahead of the game. She surprises me all the time with words I didn't know she understood, and lately I'm noticing that she uses adverbs correctly most of the time (watch me carefully, do it slowly, etc). But she has her cute little quirks too. For instance, everytime she means "always" she says "only" (Mommy, you only kiss me goodnight). And she uses the word "lovely" an awful lot (Scratch my lovely back, Mom). And lately everything is "if you like" (We can play blocks if you like!) She also has this strange little sound she uses as a punctuation. It's like a "hm-m" and it seems to mean, "ok?" (I'll play Pooh and you play Tigger, hm-m?)