Monday, April 12, 2010

Spring!

Spring has arrived! And, amazingly, we have a nice backyard, filled with toys, to enjoy it:





Spencer has been registered to attend a full-day kindergarten in the fall - there's no question he's ready. He asks most mornings if it's a school day, and is overjoyed if he gets to go. From his teachers, I hear he's ready socially and academically; he's not reading, exactly, but often guessing words from context combined with the first letter(s). He seems more mature every day - he got a child's atlas for Christmas, and tells us about countries and cities and oceans. This last weekend, during the Masters, he explained the golf to me any number of times (Tiger hit it into the woods and had to settle for a par! Phil gets to try for a birdie!)

He jumped into bed with us one morning a month or so ago, and announced that he was going to marry A, one of the girls at school. I was barely awake enough to say "Oh? Uh, which one is she?" We eventually confirmed that the marriage is a fair ways off, so we're not reserving a chapel or checking out caterers yet.



His favorite color has been green for at least a couple years, but a few days ago he announced that he still liked green, but his new favorite color was red. We'll see how long it lasts. He got to wear red Spider-man underwear to school today, I'll be interested to hear if he showed everyone there.



He has lost 3 teeth, and another one is loose - the dentist thinks that early teeth loss is normal, just a bit early. But it did make me feel pretty awful when I made him eat corn on the cob until I realized that he really couldn't get it off the cob!

Spencer is a wonderful big brother, and both twins love getting any sort of attention from him - I protest that he's being too rough at least 10 times a day, but usually, if I stop to notice, whatever baby is on the receiving end of the roughness is grinning like a maniac, loving being tackled, shoved, twirled, jumped-over, or whatever Spencer is doing.






Lizzie is entering her terrible-twos, with firm ideas of what she wants to do and fairly strong reactions to those who try to prevent her. Taking a toy or something else away usually leads to a screaming-on-the-floor tantrum, and the yells are pretty close to eardrum-shattering. But she's fairly cheery most of the time - all enthusiasm and energy, sharing her joys and tribulations both at full volume.











Lizzie climbs and runs and jumps (kind of - her feet don't quite leave the ground yet,) she throws and kicks balls, and scoots herself on tricycles. We were at a play date and I was explaining to a 3-year-old that the babies wouldn't probably be able to use the climbing wall up to the slide, and I turned around and there was my girl, getting ready to slide down face-first. She tries to imitate her big brother and hit the ball off the tee - it doesn't go more than a few inches away. (It doesn't help that she's often trying to bat at a football with a golf club.) If we leave a baby gate or a door open, she's off, up and down stairs with glee, and off to some other corner of the house. She talks constantly, but aside from a strident "Teddy! Wherarya?" we're not picking out lots of words. She likes singing, and she tries to imitate me after certain songs, like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I sing "Edelweiss" to the twins before they go to sleep most nights, and sometimes when she hears the first few notes she tries to climb into the crib herself, and cuddles up with her blanket happily.











Teddy is my little problem solver - he's not as skilled a climber as Lizzie is, but he figures out how to get where he needs to go. I was taking a shower the other morning and thought "huh" when I saw him leaving the bathroom with the stool that is normally in front of the sink. When I got to the bedroom, the stool was next to our bed, and all three kids were happily jumping on it - no doubt a visit to the ER is no doubt in my future. Teddy stacks, and reorganizes, and pages through books incessently (he pulls Spencers books off shelves every morning - I guess the 30 or so books in the twins' room aren't enough for him. At least he stopped tearing pages out.) He's definitely fascinated with shoes - tries to get them on and off, and messes with the velcro.







Teddy is picking up words, an odd selection of them - he calls his sister "Zizzie", but other than that, his vocab includes shoe, sock, cheese, banana, ball, baby, meow, and there were several other words I've noticed him trying in the last week. And it still seems like he's often a bit fussy and flushed with teething pains - Lizzie has always sprouted teeth easily, while it's a struggle for Teddy, and he chomps on anything that might give him some relief.









The twins are quite reasonable eaters - they both munch on whatever we give them, and I haven't noticed any food-tossing driven by disliking the options. When they toss their food, it usually just means they're full. Lizzie is maybe a bit pickier - she doesn't care for the texture of rice, for some reason, which is a bit of a problem since "stuff in rice" is one of my go-to meals. (At least she eats my other specialty, "stuff in pasta.")



Watching the two of them learning to play together is wonderful - of course there is shoving and grabbing stuff away from each other, but we're seeing more and more peek-a-boo and cooperation, and they're always so delighted to see each other.








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