Kids Are Mirrors

Kids Are Mirrors

The other day we were driving home from the grocery store and Charlotte was unhappy and crying. Audrey turned to her and said, very calmly, "Charlotte could you please quiet down. I can't hear the road." Charlotte continued to cry. Eventually, Audrey said to her (again, very calmly),"Charlotte, it looks like you're having a hard time. We're almost home." The latter is exactly the kind of thing Carol or I would say to one of them. Audrey went on to try to entertain Charlotte by being silly and sure enough in a few minutes she had Charlotte laughing.

The girls play together well quite a bit these days. They'll go on camp outs in Audrey's room in a fabric teepee we got from Uncle Bob, Aunt Torii and cousin Alex. They drag pillows and sleeping bags in and make the room dark and play with shadows they make with flashlights they got for Christmas. Or they'll just play with dolls in the living room for 30 minutes. It's wonderful.

Audrey has been learning the alphabet for probably a year. In the last month or two she has mastered the whole thing and can even recognize most letter in lowercase. Carol came up with the idea of using connect-the-dots exercises to get Audrey to start writing letters. She took to it right away and then started writing letters on her own. Next thing you know she was writing her name. You can see one of her first attempts in the photo album.

Charlotte's talking gets better every day. It's so nice to be able to understand what she wants most of the time. And it's extra frustrating to all of us now when we can't understand what she wants. Charlotte is also toilet training herself. She wants to be like her big sister.

We're having our annual nice February days. Every year we seem to get a couple of gorgeous sunny days this time of year. Usually they even get warm - up into the 60s. This year not quite so warm, but enough that Carol and the girls have been able to go to the beach and the playground and play in the sandbox and the dirt pile in the back yard.

Speaking of the dirt pile: we plan to landscape the back yard this spring. That includes removing the 14 yards of dirt that have been in a pile there since we built the garage. When we told Audrey the dirt pile was going to go away, she got very upset. She loves to play in it.

Audrey took one six-week series of swim lessons at the YMCA last summer but she didn't seem quite old enough for organized lessons. She just wanted to play. So we took some time off and we've just been having unstructured play in the pool every week. Now we've signed her up again and tonight was her first lesson in this series. There were supposed to be six kids in her class, but two didn't show up and two others were there but wouldn't get in the pool. So Audrey and one other girl got all the teacher's attention. Audrey did great, cooperating with all the teacher's instructions and trying everything the teacher asked except jumping from standing position at the edge of the pool. I'll work on that with her during family swimming. She also wants some goggles, which I think will help.