My mind is a sieve. I had about 8 anecdotes of blogworthy material rattling around my head tonight, and I think it's whittled itself down to just a few. During moments such as these, I can't imagine not having this blog, trying to relate to the girls a decade from now memories of their toddlery days.
My favorite of the night was Lily's 30 minute session of "put the stuffed bear to bed". Her treating objects as people and babies is a new thing, and it's maddeningly cute to watch. It took me a bit to figure out what she was doing at first: she kept laying the bear on the bench, then putting the blanket over it. After a few iterations of that, I asked her if she was putting the bear to bed. Look at the picture above to see the reaction I got. "Shhhhh!" Awesome.
Anytime our kids are proponents of some measure of silence is something to be celebrated. Quietly.
I kept shooshing her back, encouraging her that we should be quiet for the bear to sleep. I was curious if she really understood the concept of a "shoosh", so I decided to hang back for a while. After a couple minutes without interaction from her, I started clapping loudly to the music on the radio. She immediately turned around and gave me the shooshing of a lifetime. Yeah, I think she gets it.
Not long after this, Abby made her way over to that area and took notice of the blanket Lily was holding. I should preface this story with the following: Abby has become a connoisseur of all things soft. If she comes across something high on the soft and fluffy factor, she will now grab it and unceremoniously tackle it. Then she spends a couple minutes rubbing her face on it, smiling and being a goofball. So tonight she made a target of the blanket in Lily's possession. While she grabbed one end and took it to the floor and laid upon it quite happily, Lily became pointedly unhappy.
"Noooo! Miiine!" came the protest.
Lily tried to pull it away and only ended up dragging Abby a couple inches across the floor. That's really all there is to the story, but it was a pretty funny visual, Abby happy as a clam spread all over the blanket, Lily yanking furiously on it. I did my best to diffuse the situation, but I was laughing heartily. Stiffling laughs at the appropriate times seems to be a hard part of parenting, mostly because the situations that bring the most humor are invariably the same ones that are making the kids infinitely annoyed. For example: I love to pinch Lily when she is super annoyed at me and keeps whining, "Noooo!" every time I get my hand near her. It's irrisistable. Is this what it's like to have a little sibling? The pure addiction of watching them be mad at you?
Just remembered another story from the night. After dinner, the girls saw the fruit bowl and became interested. I gave Lily an apple for her to explore. She kinda halfheartedly tried to bite it, and I watched, and it was all pretty benign. I stopped watching, and a couple minutes later she pulled something out of her mouth and tried to give it to me. Usually this ends up being a hair or piece of lint or spent nuclear fuel rod; nothing major. This time she gave me the apple stem, all 1.5 jagged, chokable inches of it. I hadn't even thought that the thing could be dangerous, but that stem is wicked hard and super pointy. If she'd accidentally swallowed it, it'd be ugly. Yay for my parenting!
Day two hundred and eighty.
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