I finally added pictures to and published the entry I wrote a month ago about our visit from the Specktaculars. Procrastinator, much? I blogged so infrequently last month that my friend from California emailed me to see if we were okay.
Peabody is learning new words every day. She is starting to say more phrases. She answers questions like this:
Us: "How are you?" or "How was your sleep?"
P, nodding: "Gooooo' [good]."
Us: "Do you want ______?" or "Are you okay?"
P: "Mo [no]."
Us: "Where is ______?"
P, holding hands up: "Mahna mo! [I don't know]"
She says her own little version of "here it is!" and sing-songs "where are you?" If we ask her "Where is Lela?" she says "Mahna mo! Leeee-la, whey ah yew?" and then finds a picture of Lela. If we ask her where Pops is she runs into my bedroom and points at the pictures of him as a little boy that I have stuck on my mirror.
All footwear is now "plap plop." She brings me her slippers. "Plap plop?" she asks sweetly, pushing them into my hands and flopping onto the floor. I had to pack away all of her summer sandals because she would bring them to us and then get mad when we wouldn't put them on her.
She has started saying "I want." Last week she told me "I wanna 'nack" after hearing the Boogie ask for a snack, and at Chick-fil-a said "I wanna play."
A few days ago she came up to me, asked "Ha yew?" and reached up for my hand with a limp fist. She didn't grasp my hand, but when I took hers in mine she shook it up and down. Then she said, "bye!" and walked away. Now she does it all the time. "Ha yew?" How're you? Ha!
She has started shaking one finger at us and saying "No no no!"
She calls her blankies "lally" which is so cute. All of her blankies have silky edges; while we were in Washington my mom put silky edges on a couple of Peabody burpies so that we could stop taking big blankies everywhere with us. The Boogie still sleeps with burpies but Peabody knows the difference between hers and her sister's. When she finds a Boogie burpie she exclaims "beepee!" excitedly, but calls her own burpies lallies.
She loves orange Tic-Tacs (I never, ever, ever would have given the Boogie Tic-Tacs at this age.)
We signed up for Netflix which has a wide selection of Barney episodes. "Mama mama mama," Peabody says, banging on the tv, "blah blah blah Bee!" She quivers with excitement when we start an episode. She sings the songs. She does all of the hand motions. She babbles the dialogue with the right inflection.
She likes to buckle things -- as soon as I get her down from her chair she has to buckle the straps.
She loves baby dolls and carries them around patting them on their backs and kissing them. She puts them in the doll stroller and pushes it all over the house.
I often tell her, "You are so cute! I just want to eat your face." Then I nibble all over her cheeks and neck. She pretends to nibble on me. "Nom nom nom," she says. Eric taught her that and it makes me laugh every time she does it.
I have to hide my Nook from her because when she sees it she immediately starts begging "a tew-ey, a tew-ey, a tew-ey!" She has figured out how to turn it on and frustrates her sister during story-reading because she jabs her finger repeatedly at the screen, disrupting the narration.
Peabody hits her sister a lot. She is reprimanded and instructed to say "sorry" and hug or kiss the Boogie. Sometimes she apologizes immediately on her own: whack then "wahwry" and a smooch. One day Peabody hit me. "No hitting," I told her sternly, "say 'sorry, Mama'." "Wahwry," she said, then walked over to her sister and kissed her. Ha!
She says "thank you" with no reminder. The other day in a store I asked an employee a question, thanked her, and turned to walk away. "Day doo!" Peabody called over my shoulder. "Please" is a work in progress although she will always repeat it when prompted.
There is no consideration of possessions. If she wants something there is much shrieking of "MINE! Mine mine miiiiiiiine!" If she doesn't get her way she pitches a fit while rapidly stamping both fat little feet. Sometimes she throws herself on the floor and kicks her legs. Every now and then if really enraged she will attempt to bite. So charming. Life is so hard when you don't get your way all the time.
On the flip side, she can be very snuggly. She strokes our cheeks and snuggles her head on our shoulders and will come up at random times and kiss us.
I found a pack of party-favor glasses on clearance. The Pheebs likes to wear them and can put them on by herself. One day we went for a walk and she wore them for the whole time. If she saw something interesting she would take them off to look at it more closely, then put them back on when we started walking again.
The Boogie has been playing with her cousin DR a lot. The rest of the NJ cousins go to school every day. Last year DR and the Boogie were practically sworn enemies; now they are best buds! Usually they will play nicely for hours, although when they've been together a lot over the course of several days I can tell that they are entering into sibling squabble territory. Overall they get along great, though.
The Boogie likes to talk about God. She is very interested in the concept of Him being everywhere all the time. While putting together a puzzle, "Honey, God is with me. Me and God are gonna play with this puzzle." She found a list that I had misplaced: "Praise the Lord!" she exclaimed, "Praise the Lord, God found this list."
She talks a lot about being five and going to "pembergarden." I just realized the other day that when she turns five in April she is going to think that she'll start kindergarten right away, so I've started telling her "first it will be your birthday, then it will be Peabody's birthday, then it will be my birthday, and THEN we'll start kindergarten." She goes back and forth between informing people that we are going to have a home school, and telling me that she doesn't want to go to school at home, she just wants to "go to that school where you have to ride the bus."
A couple of weeks ago the Boogie's little friend T stayed overnight so his parents could have a mini-getaway. The kids had the best time together! I wasn't sure how T would do at bedtime -- he'd never stayed at our house before and I feared that there might be a few tears shed -- but he did great. He slept in the same room as the girls and much talking and laughing ensued after the lights went out. The Boogie was the first to succumb to sleep, and then after a while T did too. I could hear Peabody chattering away long after the other two went silent.
T is very cute and very polite. I tossed some of his clothes in with a load of laundry I was washing -- he saw me take his socks and asked what I was going to do with them. "I'm going to wash them," I said. "Oh, thanks!" he said.
A while later he asked, "Are my dirty socks clean yet?"
"Yes, they're clean," I told him, "but they're not dry yet. Next they'll go into the dryer."
"Oh, thanks!" he said.
Later he saw me carry the basket of clean clothes to my room to fold everything. "Are my clothes in there? Are they clean?" he asked. I said they were, and that I would fold them and put them in his bag. "Oh, thanks!" he exclaimed. Such good manners. We all enjoyed his visit and the Boogie especially was very sad to see him go at the end of the second day.
Both girls like to draw on the magna-doodle thingy (what are those things called?) The Pheebs brings it to me and pushes it into my hands. "Mama mama mama!" she exclaims. I draw some shapes and name them. She takes it from me, scribbles all over my drawing, erases it, then pushes into my hands again. And repeat. The Boogie had it tonight. She drew an irregular circle, filled it with dots, and said, "Look, Honey, it's a germ! It's a germ that will make you sick." Where does she come UP with this stuff?
She sits with us in the service on Sunday nights. I looked over at her last night and saw this:
They are so much fun, these girls!
2 comments:
At last! Thanks for the pics and update
Sisters are the best!!
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