Milestones all over the place

Friends

We have some milestones to mark:

Daniel turned 3-and-a-half on the 29th

Rachel turned 21 months on the 30th

As of today, Daniel is exactly twice as old as Rachel.

We're biased, of course, but we think we have the perfect kids. Rachel has always wanted to play with Daniel, of course, but it's just in the last couple of weeks that Daniel has started seeing that he can have fun playing with her too. So now they chase each other around the house, and Daniel has taught her such fine games as "Scream Go-away at the cat" and "Pretend to use a chainsaw on Elmo". She's just happy that her brother likes to play with her.

Daniel is very proud to be three-and-a-half and not just three anymore. He's not tall or large for his age, but he's been on a little bit of a growth spurt lately as evidenced by all of the clothes that don't fit anymore. He's little-Mr-Social at playschool, and even though we've been bragging about his verbal skills for years now, there have been some really amusing exchanges recently.

Daniel does not like nap time or bedtime, and plays all sorts of games to delay the process as much as possible. He'll take multiple trips to the restroom, insist that he can't tuck himself, ask for more books, suddenly discover that he's hungry, or scared of an airplane noise or that it's too dark in his room, or that he has "just one more thing to tell you" or that his water bottle needs to be topped off - etc, etc. This can go on for a while. A few evenings ago, it had been quiet for a while upstairs, but his light was on. On peeking in, Anida found him in bed surrounded by a pile of books - with a big grin he said "I'm a book monster" and kept reading.

For most spoken words, he can tell you what letter it starts with (c and k get confused) and if you ask him "can you name some words that start with letter..." he has lots of examples.

Rachel refers to herself as "Me!", and so when she wants an adult to do something, it's "Me Go!", or "Me Carry", or "Read me!". It's only in the last couple of days that she'll say "Atchel" for her name, and that is far from consistent now.

She'll count to two, correctly identifying if something is in a quantity of one or two. Those gaps in her teeth are finally filling in on the bottom, and she'll walk up and down stairs without holding onto anything.

Ownership concepts have come in, in that she'll say "Mine!" of things she has or wants (Mine Doll!) or doesn't want Daniel to take away. Rachel is the mellowest, most easy-going kid you've ever met - nothing phases or upsets her - until it reaches a threshold, and then it's like a switch was flipped. So her moods are binary - there's no middle ground, but mostly she's very easy.

This evening, while trick-or-treating, she started saying "Thank you much" rather than just "thank you". Everyone thought that was adorable.

And that'll have to do for a 21-month and 42-month update.

Love. ADRE