Tidbits from June 2009

We’ve been a little behind in publishing our notes, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been taken them! Here’s a peek at what our girls were up to in June.

p{color:gray}. Photo: These are two sisters that love to be together.

* Rosie is rapidly developing her communication abilities. She’s added a few new words, like “ball” (or “ba”) and glasses (“da-da”). Plus, she’s getting great at following requests, like giving a high-five or giving a kiss. She also loves to clink glasses (just like her “sister did”:/news/2008/listen-to-this-lydia/). In fact, sometimes she likes to hold two sippy cups at the same time and “clink” them together herself.
* Rosie has been enjoying a little rhyme we do.
_Round and round the garden goes the teddy bear_
(walk your fingers around the child’s open palm)
_One step_ (walk fingers up to the forearm)
_Two steps_ (walk fingers up to the elbow)
_Tickle under there!_ (tickle the child’s armpit)
It’s very cute to see Rosie doing it to us, although she usually jumps the gun to the tickling part. :)
* The girls both got haircuts on June 10. This was Rosie’s first. I decided that the “growing-the-bangs-out”:/news/2009/mighty-fine/ experiment just wasn’t working. Rosie was too good at getting “hairclips”:/news/2009/let-me-in-please/ and rubber bands out and trying to eat them, so her hair was hanging in her face a bit too much. So, Rosie now has “cute bangs”:/news/2009/and-your-point-is/! I intended for Lucy to just get a trim, but she started saying that she wanted “short hair like Rosie.” That seemed a _little_ extreme for one haircut, but we did decide to cut several inches off (see “before”:/news/2009/beads/ and “after”:/news/2009/chocolate-ice-cream-cone/). Lucy has been very pleased with her shorter ‘do.
* This month, Lucy discovered how funny it sounds when you talk into a spinning fan. That first day, she sang the whole alphabet song into the fan. :)
* Rosie gave up her morning nap in mid-June. She had been working up to this for awhile, occasionally skipping the morning nap, but I’d always given her a chance to sleep in the morning, even though she sometimes would reject it. But I decided that the morning nap was truly over when had a full week of consecutive nap rejections.
* Rosie’s newfound morning wakefulness has shaken up our routine a bit, mostly in a good way. We went to the “zoo”:http://www.lpzoo.org/ twice in one week (after not going for a whole year), and we’ve enjoyed playing at the park, grocery shopping, and visiting with friends. We’re still getting the hang of building in some down-time in the mornings, and looking for new ways to give Lucy some one-on-one attention, but overall we are having a lot of fun!
* The one major downside to Rosie’s one-nap-schedule is that she started taking to waking up at 5:30 am. I think this is just due to her body figuring out a new sleep rhythm. We find that she does slightly better if we give her an extra-early bedtime (6:30 or before). We also darkened her windows with aluminum foil in a desperate attempt to convince her that the morning still hold some sleepy hours, even if the sun is up. We’re trusting (and hoping and praying) that this is just a phase, and that she’ll return to a more civilized 6:30/7:00 wake-up time soon.
* Lucy has been stating some things conspicuously in the negative. For example, sometimes while playing at the park, Lucy will turn to me and say, out of the blue, “Mama, I don’t need to poop.” Hmmm, that sounds like a cue for a bathroom break to me. Other revealing statements include: “It doesn’t hurt, Mama” after a tumble, and “I didn’t wet my pants.” Guess what? :)
* Rosie and Lucy have started to consistently have bath time together this month. For the past year, we have done it more “assembly line” style: Rosie first, Lucy second, Mama bathes the girls, Papa dries them off. (Jon noted once that this is just what we always did when washing dishes before our dishwasher days: I washed, and he dried.) Now both girls get in the tub for a wash, Mama tries to relax about getting a little wet from errant minor waterfalls, and Jon races to dry Rosie off before Lucy gets out of the tub after her special end-of-bath splashing-time.
* Lucy spent quite a bit of time pretending she is a puppy in June. For awhile, we would wake up to hear, “Woof woof! Woof woof!” coming from Lucy’s room. She has declared herself to be the main Baby Puppy, and we have the Mama Dog, the Papa Dog, and another Baby Puppy in the house. There are lots of special things that this Baby Puppy knows how to do, like eat macaroni and cheese with a fork, brush her own teeth, and walk on her hind feet. Sometimes she can even use a stethoscope, at which time we can call her “Dr. Baby Puppy.”
* Lucy has been very interested in rhyming words this month. We’ll often spend time thinking about all the words that rhyme with, say, “think” (sink, drink, pink…). We’re still working on the concept, though, and you might hear Lucy say something like, “Mama! Crocodile rhymes with Croc!” Well, not quite, but that is an interesting thought!
* Lucy has been so influenced by her viewing of “_Bee Movie_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0011ZNAIC/octothorppres-20 that she will often ask now, when she sees a picture of a bee, “Is that a pollen jock?”
* Lucy also enjoys playing a new guessing game we started, which she calls, “Think of a Bug.” “Mama, you should think of a bug,” says she. “Okay, Lucy. I’m thinking of a bug, and it’s red with black dots, and sometimes it flies, and once there was one that landed on Papa’s shirt.” She’s quite good at guessing! We started off having expanded the game to include all animals, but she really does like to focus on bugs.

That was June in a snapshot!