Caleb and Emma are 20 days away from being 2 years old! Hard to believe? Yes....completely! They are toddlers through and through. Between the talking, the wild craziness-on the go- nonstop activity in our house and the few small fits the "Terrible Twos" are HERE!!
I don't really think my kids are terrible, but they have definitely reached a totally different stage. There are days when I have wondered if I am being punished for something awful I did to my own mother. Maybe so, but I also know that no child is perfect! And if a parent ever says that their kid is, well, they are lying or are in denial! Ha Ha!
Caleb and Emma are talking so well! I am always thrilled when I hear them trying to talk to us or other people. They are starting to put words together to make sentences. I am sure this is pretty normal for this age. But of course they are my kids and I think it is really great!
They take in everything around them. This is such a huge learning time. I can see the wheels turning in their heads when they are looking at books, listening to us talk, seeing something on TV or starting to get into something they should not together! Sometimes I think that they are too smart of their own good.
A perfect example of this is about a week ago I was cooking in the kitchen and the kids were running around playing like normal. I heard them run into the computer room. I could hear them talking to each other then it got quiet. I waited a minute then I heard papers falling all over the floor and then a loud thud. I called to them...."Caleb.....Emma...what are you doing?!?" Then it got quiet and Emma yelled back...."Nasing (nothing)!" I laughed, went in there and saw that they had cleared a book shelf and taken a bunch of daddy's papers off the computer desk. They were all smiles until mommy started to get after them for making a mess and touching things that was not theirs. They had to help pick up and then they were chased out of there!
Caleb and Emma are learning lots between home and day care with Miss Candi. We work on counting and our ABC's. They do all that at Miss Candi's house too. They are picking up a lot more than I thought they would. Caleb tries so hard to do the ABC song and dances along with it. He does pretty good when he is singing with the song...but by himself he has a harder time. Emma just smiles and dances along with it. She likes to repeat the name of letters after us, but doesn't sing the song. Counting is also going really well! We will count and they will count with us. The shocker for me though is sometimes Caleb will say the next number after I say one. So for example I will start by saying, "one" and he says, "two". I say, "three" and he says, "four". And so on. It is really cute.
The other funny thing that Caleb has been doing and now Emma is picking it up is saying "not" instead of "no". I will ask him if he wants something and if he doesn't he says "not". He says it for other things too. Usually when he doesn't like something or if he is frustrated. I am not exactly sure where he got it from, but I have a couple guesses. The first thought was that we had to be careful not to tell the kids "no" because they started telling us "no". So I started telling them "that is not okay". At day care and here at home we will ask them, "Do you want ____ or not?" And I think he started saying "not" when he did not want whatever it was. Whatever the reason it is cute! Now Emma is doing it too! I just have to laugh that she is copying him.
The last week of Christmas break we spent a lot of time at home as a family. It was so nice to be together. We enjoy eating supper together, that is one thing that we have as a must. We all sit down at the table together and have supper as a family. I want my kiddos to have that instilled in them as something important. We one night that last week, I was cooking supper and setting the table for us to eat. Caleb and Emma get all excited about supper time! I got them in their chairs and then sat down at the table myself. Rick was watching football in the living room and so I told him it was time to eat. We waited a minute or 2 and then suddenly Emma yelled to her dad, "HONEY...EAT!!" I started to laugh! I wonder when she got the honey thing!?! Rick started to laugh too then asked if he had heard her right! So now, every so often daddy is called "honey" by little Miss Thing!
Caleb and Emma are super pros at telling us all the parts of their body and pointing them out too! They know their nose, eyes, mouth, ears, hair, chin, neck, arms, hands, legs, feet and belly buttons. They know their butts but we don't dwell on that one! Ha Ha!
Lucky me, daddy has taught them as many words for "fart" as he could think of! Sigh...I am out numbered on the yucky passing gas issue! Ha Ha!
Right now Emma is on this kick of taking everything but the kitchen sink to bed with her. SIGH...I am not sure why, but for now we are not fighting it too much. She is not hurting anything or herself. I have to laugh at the load she carries into bed with her every night. She gets her pacifier at night time, so that goes in her mouth, then she puts her blanket over her shoulder, then she gets her baby, a bunny, and a bear. The last thing that she takes with her is a book! You would think that her mother was a librarian or something! Ha Ha! It was a struggle to get her to just pick one book. She wanted to take 3 or 4 so that was one battle mommy and daddy won! Ha Ha!
Playing upstairs in their playroom is a new favorite! It is a great space for them! They have a blast. The new thing to do it play with the kitchen. It is super cute to watch. They set the table and sit down and eat together. And just recently Rick saw them set the table, sit down, PRAY, and then start to eat! SO CUTE!!! And that made this mommy very proud! We are already instilling that in their hearts. They may not understand why yet...but they understand more than we think. It is so sweet. They hold hands (just like we do), close their eyes (just like we do), pray (in their own mumbled words and then close by saying, "Amen"! It is so sweet! I will have to see if I can get it on the video camera!
This is how I found Emma playing this morning while I was cooking breakfast before church. She was still in her pj's, carrying her blanket around with her and wearing her crown that she made at Miss Candi's. I thought she looked like the little boy, Max, from the book, Where the Wild Things Are. What do you think?!
Then tonight Caleb and Emma were watching The Wizard of Oz...their new favorite movie! Ha Ha! Caleb is so funny to watch watching that movie. He sings and dances with the characters. They both watch so intently. I am amazed how much they love that movie. We stumbled across that on TV one night a few weeks before Halloween, hence the Halloween costumes. But anyway, they LOVED it then and got it for Christmas from Uncle Jordan. We have watched it so much that mommy has it memorized now! Ha Ha! Tonight I got some pictures of Caleb dancing along with the show. The other movie they love is Finding Nemo, also from Uncle Jordan.
