Intrepid Murmurings

Its my birthday!  And the kids gift to me has been an awesome afternoon nap (them not me, though I enjoyed it nonetheless), woohoo!  Emma has been Very Excited and keeps telling me 33 is kind of like 3 and a half.  Um, okay, kid!  She is mostly focusing on CAKE but I have had to inform her that we are not having cake, we are having brownie sundaes.  So much better than cake, really...  

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One of Lonnie's presents to me was all my long lost poetry, mostly written in college and grad school, which had gotten sucked away into various dead computers.  He tore apart some computers to get my stuff off the hard drives, and even printed it and put it into a binder for me!  What a sweetie!  I am so glad to have it back and am going to be posting some of them in the near future.  I keep meaning to get back to poetry writing so maybe this will inspire me.

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I am getting excited about Christmas!  By the time my bday comes around you know its getting CLOSE!  I just scored an AWESOME brio train set for cheap on craigslist for Elsie and Delia, woo hoo!  Lonnie and I (mostly Lonnie up until now) has been working on some cool handmade toys for the kids too.  My job (the painting) is what is left and I need to get on it.   I would LOVE to post pics but this is all I am allowed to post about it until after the big day...  

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Oh man, the talking is ramping up here and its just so amazing and funny to see what they will say next, and how they interact and copy or build on each others speech.  Delia pretty much echos everything we say, and is starting to narrate what she does whenever she knows the word.  I REALLY need to start writing this stuff down because its really funny sometimes, but I always forget by the time I sit down to blog at night.  

One thing she gets Very Excited about is ice cream (at this age Emma didn't even know what ice cream WAS!), which she calls "cone!"because Emma always talks about ice cream CONES (even though we don't always eat it that way).  Today I was busy with something in the kitchen and had left the freezer door open and she stood there peering in and hollering CONE! CONE! CONE!  I think she was probably sad to realize what I was getting for her right then was frozen peas...  

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Elsie is also talking more and more, in her sweet little chirpy Elsie voice (I think its a bit higher and she uses more inflection than D), and one thing she is always saying is "read!" "read!" Pretty much any time she sees Lonnie after he has been gone or working, which is pretty cute.  She is really into books and reading and can sit for a long time looking at books.  

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Have I mentioned how freaking much I love Emma's preschool? She loves it too and is doing really great there.  I am sad we will be on holiday break for a few weeks after this Thursday! It is literally 3 minutes from our house (driving), and it turns out they are modeled after the Reggio Emilia approach, something that I learned about in grad school and always thought sounded fabulous.  It is just the right size, and I love that its such a fun, happy place and has such an awesome community that we are now able to be a part of.  I really want to start hanging out with folks there more (doing some playdates and making some new "mom friends", ha ha) but its just hard since I am always running late AND chasing after two toddlers when I want to be schmoozing with the other grownups.  Ah well.  I am taking all three kids to a family potluck there on Friday by myself, we'll see how it goes and if I get to talk to anyone!  I know the girls will have tons of fun, in any case...  

Oh, blog, after such lovin' last month I am feeling bad about my neglect!  Alas.  It is the holiday season and all my spare moments have been filled by (online) shopping and gift brainstorming, tree and decoration wrangling and family event planning, among other things.  Tomorrow we are hosting a crowd of extended family for a casual holiday get-together, and I'm sure it will be lots of fun.  We'll see if the floor gets cleaned or the pile o mail filed(hidden), but there WILL be yummy food, at least! 

Elsie and Delia are talking up a STORM, holy moly.  I love this stage, but also am so sad to see babydom go.  It is insane how fast they can pick up language though.  I think often one will hear the other say something (and see our response) and then give it a go themselves.  Which is the same as most devlelpomental things (sitting, crawling, walking, cup throwing), I've noticed.  They are always right on each others heels with this stuff.

Here are a few pics from last week to tide you over until I get a proper post up:

  Elsie exploring the utensil drawer

   Delia coloring  Emma being goofy Me, Emma and Elsie

Emma is 3.5 years old today!  Happy half birthday, my little big girl!  

In the past few days I've been writing down some of Emma's funny words and phrases again, those cute ones you don't ever want to forget.  She has always been extremely verbal, so while she had a ton of funny ones early on, at this point she has a pretty big vocabulary and good pronunciation.  Which makes her Emma-isms all the more delightful! I usually have a hard time correcting her -- I will miss them when they go!  Here are a few of the current ones (some are newish, some longstanding):

• macamonie cheese 
• "ping around the rosie" (she actually gets this right now about 50% of the time)
• bedume (bedroom)
• jungleaya (jambalaya -- though often confused with "enchilada"!)
• band-aim (bandaid)
• opemeal (oatmeal)
• produme (problem)

Today the girls were all having snack around the living room play table.  Often Elsie and Delia have two separate bowls but eat out of them interchangeably -- they kind of share both (unless I am really lazy and only make them one to share between them, ha ha).  Today Delia headed over to Elsie's bowl and Elsie yelled MINE!  And moved to block Delia from her bowl (a move totally stolen from Emma, hee). I fear a new dawn has come, and it's name is Possessiveness. Oh joy.  

I guess I have seen it coming with toys, though.  Lately we've had many (generally mild) skirmishes over toys, which believe it or not is a somewhat new occurrence.  I was surprised how long we made it without more arguments (I am not talking about Emma here -- we often have major sharing/toy issues with her and the babies, which is pretty normal I think).  Hot items for the littles these days: dress up hats, necklaces, or ropes and cords to dangle around ones neck, books, especially The Current Favorite, Where Is the Green Sheep, high chairs when its anywhere close to meal time, Emma's booster seat when it is on the floor, stools, play grocery carts, and bikes.  

Speaking of high chairs, we just got a new one and we LOVE it.  It was high time, as the booster that we have been using up until now is just NOT comfortable for older kids (Emma hated it too around this age) and mealtime was becoming increasingly difficult because of it.  I've been eyeing the Stokke Tripp Trapp for ages, but the price tag on that one was just too much.  This one is spendy, too, but still 100 smackers less, and worth it, as it will be used for years to come.  Now Emma wishes she had one too!  

Holy moly Delia is talking up a storm these days.  TONS of new words, every day.  Current funny/new ones: hole (in the wall near the changing table, and also the drain of the sink), broom,  pumpkin,  okay!, rain (also does the sign for this), bye bye (had for awhile but using it a TON for all sorts of things now), Elsie (!), and tons of others that she echos me on all day long. Elsie is also saying lots of things (including her own name for the first time yesterday, woohoo!), but its just not as noticable or understandable than Delia's current explosion.  

Another thing happening a lot these days: tackling.  These girls are so physical!  Any time someone is lying on the floor they seem to be fair game for jumping on or tackling.  They both do it to each other, and to Emma if she is on the ground.  Climb On Mama has been a favorite game for a long, long, long time, but now it has evolved to leaping/jumping on Mama, which is a fair bit less pleasant, especially when its two (or three!) of them at once.  Ooooof!  I think we will have to come up with some rules for this soon, but its hard to ban it altogether since they can have such fun with it a lot of the time.  Currently whoever is underneath starts hollering if they are not happy and I pry whoever is on top off and put her somewhere else (while explaining that that hurts, interpreting for them what the other one is "saying" ).  Sometimes this is effective, sometimes not.   Here is a picture of a recent three kid pileup. They were all enjoying it but very soon after this Elsie (at the bottom) decided she had had enough.