We have had a fantastically gorgeous summer. Even our fall is still quite nice. We had one week of showers, but the past two weeks have been mostly sunny and in the 70s. Now October is here, which means the rains will come soon.
The girls are both doing great. Charlotte is expressing a lot more personality. She's eating as much "solid" food as we'll give her. She especially loves a highchair tray full of Cheerios that she can either devour or throw around and onto the floor. She's slowly learning to sleep through the night. These days she typically gets fed about 4am, but otherwise mostly sleeps from 10pm until 6:30am. The later sunrise is helping both girls sleep later. Charlotte has been "cruising" furniture (or our legs) almost full time. We can see her thinking very seriously about taking a step, but she hasn't done it yet. Her balance is getting a lot better, though. She'll stand on her own without holding onto anything for 10 or 20 seconds now. She's also gotten a lot more verbal and will mimic sounds we make. And she has discovered how to play peekaboo on her own, pulling a blanket up over her face and then quickly exposing her face and giggling. It's slightly cute.
Audrey is quickly approaching 3 years old (four months away). One interesting thing is that she has developed a respect for gravity. She used to be a fearless climber. She still likes to climb, but she now has an understanding of the consequences and gets scared when she realizes she could fall. She has never had a serious fall, so I'm not quite sure how that knowledge comes about. Perhaps she just extrapolates from minor falls.
Audrey has also started playing much more imaginatively. She'll have two toy characters in her hands (usually Dora and Diego) and she'll make up lengthy interactions between them, and between them and herself. She also can finally follow the spoken instruction on her Leap Frog Little Touch toy, and she plays with it for hours during "quiet time" (ostensibly "nap" time).
Audrey gets her hair washed once a week whether she needs it or not. It had gotten to be where if you walked by our house while we were washing Audrey's hair you would think we were murdering her. But we did a little research on the net and Carol tried some other strategies and the last three or four weeks it's been a much more peaceful experience. Most of it seems to be related to the fact that toddlers really dislike having water run over their faces. So if we figure out ways to rinse her hair that don't involve water running over her face or eyes, Audrey is much more amenable. It also helps to make it a game.
Carol is adjusting to a new routine for the kids. Audrey's co-op preschool is two days a week this year: Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning. Carol works with Audrey's class on Tuesday and has Thursday "off" (although she still has Charlotte). Charlotte has been spending Tuesday mornings with Grandma and Grandpa Methot. But in three weeks they'll be flying south for the winter - we really miss all the grandparents when they're gone!
I gave Carol a Visa gift card for her birthday that came with at least two weekend afternoon shopping trips all on her own (i.e. I'd babysit). But she deserves much more than that. Maybe now that the garage is nearing completion I'll be able to give her more time off. She works so hard during the week I feel badly that she doesn't get more breaks. As I've said before, I have a ton of respect for Carol's job and I don't think I would have the patience to do it full time like she does.
Thursday was my last day at the federal government contract job I've been in for almost a year. October 9th I start at Rosetta Inpharmatics. I'm very excited about it. It's going to be really fun being immersed in complicated science every day.
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