Houses, Words, and Monkeys

Things are going well with the pursuit of homeownership; we have our appraisal on Monday morning at the new place. We can move in on the 23rd of October.

A has become quite verbal lately. On Sunday, I was trying to help him get his shirt on before church and he kept sticking his arm through the neck hole. After a couple of minutes of this, I told him that if he would quit fighting me and let me help him, it would go a lot faster. He looked at me with a wounded expression and said, "I wasn't!" He has also told his sister and the church secretary, ah, administrative assistant to "wait a minute" this week, and he actually thought out loud after school one day, too. If he's a good boy on the school bus, the driver hands out dumdums lollipops, one for him, and one for K who's bouncing off the ground when she sees her brother's bus. She happened to be napping, so we came inside and A dropped his backpack in the hallway (typical kid), held up the two suckers, and said, "Hmmmm.....red or green?.....Green!", handed me the red one, took the wrapper off the green one, and ate it. He also let me read a book to him yesterday morning, for the first time in I can't remember when. The whole thing! Exciting stuff. He's also getting better fine motor skills ~ Ruth from church noticed that he is coloring in the lines (by and large) instead of just fisting the marker and scribbling with abandon all over the page. He's trying to draw bonafide shapes, like circles and squares too. It's funny; I wouldn't usually be an advocate of strict, 'coloring in the lines, all "i"s dotted, etc" mentality (hey, it's art), but for A this is actually a good thing. It shows more fine motor control, and awareness of how things are shaded (he chooses what part of the picture is green, and what should be orange, etc to provide contrast). Go, A, go!

K is also quite the chatterbox now. Despite only turning 18 months on Saturday, she identifies LOTS of things, and uses simple phrases like, "there's a car", "want milk/juice (please)", "pretty flower", "love you", etc. I really think that as she increases her word usage, it's pushing A to do the same.

In monkey news, K happens to be quite a good one. It's official; she met me at her bedroom door yesterday morning, and as I stood there in shock, she turned around and climbed back into her crib. The crib was down an hour later, and A's toddler bed was moved into K's room. It's Thomas the Train, so it's not overtly girly and doesn't exactly match the antique white French provincial dressers and night-table...but you know, it works. She was soooo excited to have her big girl bed, she didn't want to nap yesterday. Last night went a lot easier, she dropped right off to sleep.