(18 months) Julia loves baby dolls. One day I gave the girls baby food spoons and jars and they spent 30 minutes feeding the babies. Julia remembered the game and when she could get her hand on another spoon she started to feed the baby dolls again. I got her a jar and she would spoon a spoonful of imaginary food into her mouth and then the next one into the baby’s mouth. She was SO excited over the game – the big open mouth is not her encouraging the baby to open it’s mouth. I couldn’t help myself and took some photos.

Julia saw a toy that she wanted and somehow got into a pickle in her attempt to retrieve it. This is pretty much how I found her. I moved the furniture a little so she could back out on her own, but she wouldn’t come without the toy and it was stuck. Never fear, I saved the toy and the little girl.

How do you entertain two girls while you vaccum out the car at the carwash – you let them play in the trunk! This was amazing and I’m a little unsure of why this idea hasn’t occured to me before now. They had toys and pillows back there and with the window to boot they were in heaven. I did watch for any interest in climbing out, but they were very happy just to play away. At one point they played ‘night-night’ and shared the one blanket they had. These are the good moments to remember!

Julia is enjoing the delights of emptying all the DVDs from their cases. This is one of the things you have to thank your big sister for. Julia believes that she has the right to get into the drawer that Emily gets into. She just hasn’t learned the maturity to go with that freedom.

Here is to a great day with my girls!

(3 years) A day doesn’t go by that I notice Emily doing something new. She has started to communicate at a different level and loves to pretend in play and conversation. I thought the changes at age 2 were significant, but age 3 has brought even more. She loves to notice things and points them out. She has been pointing out all signs that have symbols like Robby’s car does. She will say, that is like Daddy’s car. She just started doing the same for my car and last night pointed out the symbol from her Grandpa’s car and said “that’s like Pa-Pa’s car”. I thought this was astounding because we haven’t see Pa-Pa’s car since fall. We also discussed the shapes of clouds and she told me that the cloud she was looking at looked like a sidewalk.

(18 months) Julia is starting to assert herself. She tells Emily with screams and squeals when she doesn’t want to be touched (which is just about all the time). When Emily is not with us, she is quick to request to ride in Emily’s carseat with a please and impassioned pointing. She expresses a lot of displeasure yesterday at having to wait for her bath while Emily had a turn to take hers first. She put a puzzle together matching all the pieces to the spots; even though, we don’t spend much time working on that. The pieces didn’t fit up, but I was pleased she took the interest to put it together. I loved watching Julia try to sit in Emily’s lap the other day. She kept backing up and plopping down in Emily’s lap and then while Julia would get situated Emily would move and Julia would do it again.

I can only imagine what they will do tomorrow that will astound me.