Summer is here, woohooo! Time to eat lunch outside in the play house. Below is Ashley, Anakai, and Kacia having some delicious mama-made mac-n-cheese, a favorite around here!! Mmmmm, lunchtime!
Tita Lia brought the twinkies fairy wings and antennae - what a hit! Below are our sweet fairies Kacia, Anakai, Brittany with the red balloon, and Ashley. Thanks Tita Lia!!
What a busy grandmommy with her fairy-grandchildren and grand-dog! Wawa Beth pulls 3/4 of her fairy-grandchildren in a the wagon.
Kacia loves orange popsicles. Anakai gardening with her shovel - she's got a handful of pebbles she's about to unload. Anakai playing eeka-boo in the toy house.
Popsicles AND Papa ...what could be better? (o: :o) Christopher swinging the giggling twinkies - Kacia in yellow, Anakai in green.
Anakai LOVES the magnolia tree! (Mom, Kacia looks like cousin Eileen in this pic!) The twinkies (age 2 nearly 3) are growing so fast, almost too quickly to even report! They have been exercising their communication skills, and have become much more focused in conveying their desires, certainly in action as well as verbally. They remain very grateful, saying thank you "thah-tyu" or thanks "tanksss" mostly. I wonder if that has anything to do with their first words being thank you "dah-doo" spoken at 16 months on Thanksgiving '06. Anyway, they continue to thank the things they like...mama, food, toys, books, and trees. Even when offering something to you, they'll thank you. Occasionally someone says you're welcome "ya weckom".
They toast each others beverages before drinking, "Cheers!" and clinck sip cups. However Anakai still remains to be the taker and Kacia the giver. For instance, upon handing Kacia two sip cups, I'll say "Give one to your sister." She'd walk straight toward Anakai and hand her one saying thank you "tha-tyu". But when I hand Anakai two sip cups and say the same thing, she will drink from one, walk toward Kacia and hand her the one she drank from. "Cheers!"
Kacia has taken positively to having many choices - from Anakai's discarded pile, since Anakai can only play with one thing at a time. She's figured out how to barter, handing Anakai something that no longer holds her interest, in exchange for what Anakai has in her hands. (Hey, it works! I now take from her example and often use redirecting as a tactic for Anakai. :)
Kacia in brown, Anakai in green.
Most of Anakai's utterings are either words or phrases, simple ones. "Come on!" "Let's go!" "Hurry." After eating something she really likes she'll say, "Yummy! It's delishush!" We're working on 'please' now, because they do demand "More!" or "Again!" She'll take a chair and carry it into the next room need be, to climb up and reach something higher and then exclaim, "I dot it!"
Kacia will sit on Christophers lap, take papa's fork, and say, "Done" meaning YOU are done.
Anakai likes the phone, "Huh-woe! How you?" She'll say that to most strangers, nice girl that she is. Then wave, "Bye! See you yater!"
Kacia prefers kneeling in front of a patch of flowers chatting away in a language i can't understand, smiling so sweetly. Also, while hiking in the woods, she would happen upon a large tree that she would look all the way to the top, smile... then embrace the big tree and Mmmmmmwwaaah! give it a big old heartfelt kiss! Don't know where she got that from... I don't do that.
She actually has shed tears once when a few hikers passed by us and saw her knelt in front of a patch of dandelions. A hiker plucked a dandelion and handed it to Anakai. Anakai said, "Tha tyu" But oh how it made Kacia cry! So the hiker plucked a second, which resulted in her crying even harder, so the hiker apologized to her, "Its ok, there's plenty here for you." That's when I thanked the hiker, "No no! One for each is plenty!" as I scooped up Kacia to console her. As they rounded the bend in the path out of sight, I whispered in her ear that those hikers can't hear the flowers the way she can, they forgot how to listen... until she felt better.
Anakai giving mama big juicy kisses down by the riverside.
Here's my favorite one lately... they stormed into my bedroom early one the morning; one gave me my jacket, the other gave me my coffee cup. "C'mon!" "Let's go". They would also get my shoes, pick up my feet and try and put my feet in my shoes saying, "Socks. Shoe!"
If I catch them in the bathroom fiddling with my makeup drawer, with just a mama's glance they both retreat, tiptoe-ing as they leave the bathroom saying, "Out! Out! Out!"
Leaving the playground is always a terrible moment for them. As we pull away from the playground, they kick and squirm, yelling, "Hep me! Hep me! HEP!!"
Playing on the Parrott Gun with papa. Kacia in yellow, Anakai in green.
Thats it for now, Im sure they will come up with many more things to say by next week!
Rock wall Fairies? Kacia demonstrates how to properly descend a rock-wall.
