Growing Pains

Our girls are growing like weeds! It is amazing to me what they are learning and doing, almost naturally. They don't seem to be having growing pains but their mother is watching with a little with a sting in her heart as her babies turn into little girls. Here is a list some of their growth:

We think that Makayla might become an early reader. She has always been interested in letters. She knew all her letters by sight when she was 19 months old. She is writing several of them on her own. But her latest and greatest achievement is that she starting to pick out the beginning sound of words. She is constantly saying things like, "T-t-t-table, that starts with a 'T.'" Of course Daddy is making sure she is on her toes by throwing in words like, "knife" and "phone." She even has started saying things like, "Spot starts with a 's-p'." Crazy.

Natalie is having an explosion of words right now. And even though I think that she is still speaking a rare dialect of Swahili sometimes she really is coming along. Her problem is that she is saying complex sentences without learning how to pronounce many of the words individually. It is really an interesting thing to listen to all day. She is completely an echo of her sister. I can't believe what a copy cat she is. I'm glad that it doesn't bother Makayla that she has a "mini-me" running around after her.

To potty train or not to potty train. Natalie all of the sudden seems to understand the potty. We would put her on the potty before a bath just for fun because Makayla would go too. All the sudden she is going when we put her on it. I wasn't going to potty train her until well after the baby was born, but this is crazy. She doesn't tell me that she needs to go and I don't force her to go, maybe slow potty training will work with her. Who knows?!

We are now entering into full-hair salon status. Makayla has always had hair more than I can control but now we are getting a mop on Natalie's head too. The cursed haircut is finally grown out! Hallelujah, we have pigtails!The pink curlers. Aw, it brings me back to when I was a little girl . . .

The Shrinky Dink train has officially pulled into our home. If you don't know what I am talking about they are thin pieces of #6 plastic that you draw on and then put in your oven then they shrink down to 1/3 of the size of the original. I was given this idea to do with my Activity Day girls and Makayla and Natalie think they are the best things next to ice cream. We made little necklaces like my Activity Day girls for Family Home Evening and now they take them everywhere. I call them their "rosaries" because they won't go anywhere without them. Don't mess with the Shrinky Dinks, they are sacred in this house.
We had a fun sleepover with Makayla's best friend, Autumn this weekend. I don't know where 3 year olds get an idea of a sleepover, but they did and both were so excited they could hardly stand it. I will have to say, they did incredibly well. Other than the hostess (Makayla) didn't like what the guest (Autumn) had to play with and so being the gracious hostess that she was, decided to bite her. Yeah, that put a damper on the party for a while but after some consoling, disinfecting of the victim's wound, punishing of the guilty, they were back to being best friends in no time. Absolutely amazing how they forgive and go on like nothing happened. The things we can learn from children (minus the biting).

Oh, and Baby Brother is growing like a weed. I don't plan on posting any pictures to show his "weed-hood". Let's just say he's is probably causing me the most growing pains. I start my 3rd trimester on Wednesday and don't know where I am going to put him the remaining 12 weeks. It won't be pretty.