Personality and Developmental Notes 10/30/10

One of the new words the girls know is "moon." We went out to dinner with Grandma and Grandpa on Friday night, and left the restaurant just before 7. The moon was up, and I swear, the whole way home, "moon?" "moon?" *insert the "more" hand sign from Emma* "moon?". They were doing the thing where they whole both of their arms out with their palms up and saying "moon?," as in, "where's the moon?"

Julie has a biting problem. We get bite reports from daycare at least every other day right now. In her defense, her teachers tell me that she never does it unprovoked. And we've only seen her do it once or twice at home. Normally, at daycare, someone has taken something from her, like her shoe or a toy. Julie just has a really short fuse and a hot little temper, but I'm also wondering if the fact that the girls are the ONLY girls in their class is not helping the situation. I was talking to a friend at work about the biting, and she let us borrow her "Teeth Are Not For Biting" book. She recommended reading it every night. :)

Julie has been having trouble sleeping all week. She wakes up around 9 each night, usually crying "dada dada dada.". She is, of course, perfectly content to fall back asleep in our bed. If we try to put her back in her crib, she'll sleep for an hour or so before waking up crying again.

Becca likes to pretend that her monkey is giving me a kiss by shoving him in my face. I swear, the other day I thought she was going to punch me out. She also has a little butterfly infant toy that apparently is a kissing machine.

Emma has been having a miserable time with daycare drop offs again lately. Now we have to drag her in the door, with her screaming "mama mama mama" and clinging to daddy's (yes, daddy) legs.

The girls are total sponges lately with vocabulary. They know a lot more words than they try to say. Because I'm burning out on reading some of the girls' books, I've started opening them and quizzing them instead. "Where's the elephant?". "Where's the turtle?". Stuff like that. And they get a lot of them right - some that come to mind are rabbit, zebra, umbrella, butterfly (Becca does try to say butterfly), lion, goat, bird, knee. Emma also learned "elbow" ("bobo") from Grandma this week (in addition to "gobble gobble gobble.").

Another of Julie's two word phrases from the week? "Mama's bag."

I've probably mentioned that the girls are in love with books. Emma literally will shove books in your hand. Whether you have any desire to read to her or not. I love that they get so much joy out of books. I hope it never stops, but maybe I'll teach them to read to themselves a little early.

Julie also loves the word "trees" and points them out all the time. When we're in the car, sometimes she'll just starts saying and signing "more, more, more" and we can't figure out what she wants more of. I think it *might* be "more trees."

Grandma was reading the blog earlier this week (I think it was the pumpkin patch post) and said that Emma was extremely interested in the pictures, particularly the pictures of her. They had to kind of scroll quickly through the pictures of her sisters.

Becca has informed me that sea horses say "neigh."