Changes

photo by Scott Stater

The kids seem to be changing dramatically these days as they approach their second birthday.

Their vocabulary has probably doubled in the last couple of weeks and Lily started speaking sentences or phrases, like 'this is baby's' when she hands me his bottle and 'see you later'. She told the boys to 'settle down' when they were jumping on the sofa last night.

Some of the words they say are 'blueberry', 'vitamin' and 'vegetable'. They can say all their names now and they call Will 'memo' and Evan 'Eba'.

Lily knows her numbers in Spanish...at least to cinco but Carmen says that she knows all ten. They all know one-two-three in English. Lily knows ABCD - E, although half the time it comes out ABCB-E. Will says A-B. I'll ask Evan later. I haven't been pushing this, but they learn a lot from Sesame Street in the morning. Lily has learned the most because she shows interest in it so I work with her more. The boys are a bit more 'kinetic' as Jenny would say and are more likely to be running around than talking and practicing with us.

Speaking of shows, we have been watching Sesame Street in the morning which I think is a great program. In the afternoon or evenings they watch Thomas the Train and he is a bit hit. We like to dance to a couple of the Thomas songs like 'Strength'. I find myself humming it during the day. When Sesame came on one day this week. Lily said, 'No, Thomas' so we watched that instead. We also just discovered Teletubbies which is mesmerising and they get a big kick out of the weird sun with a baby's face.

The way they mimic everything we do is a humorous reminder to the things we do. Last night they were walking around with wet wipes 'washing' the windows and walls. Lily told the boys yesterday to 'settle down' when they were jumping on the sofa.

And their pretend play is kicking into high gear. Lily is getting more into her dolls, wanting to put diapers on them, bath them, dress them to shoes, feed them bottles and put them to bed.

I've already mentioned numerous times that Lily and Evan can climb out of the crib, they now can also climb over the fence.