It's spring, how did that happen?

Oh, where to start? Six full weeks of updates to do in one big, honking post, so if you’re interested enough to read this – strap in. The short version is that we’re doing great.

Last we checked in with Rachel, she’d just turned two, and started going to gymnastics. It’s still one of her favorite activities, and she’ll ask if she can “Go ‘natstics?”. The big news in the last couple of weeks is that she has graduated out of her crib and into her “big girl bed”. She’s as proud as can be over this upgrade.

In the last six weeks, Rachel’s verbal skills have taken a huge jump forward. Her pronunciation of words has become clearer to other people (previously we were the only ones fluent in her dialect) and she strings together more of them at a time.

A couple of weeks ago, Daniel did something funny, and she said “Daniel, dat’s siwy. Dat’s REWY SIWY” (silly and really silly, respectively). If you say something that’s incorrect, she’ll say “Dat’s not wight” or “Dat’s wight” when you get it right. Right now we’re working on correcting her “Me want X” and “Me do Y” with “I want X”.


As long as she gets things her way, Rachel is a total sweetheart, but her feelings can get hurt fairly easily, and we’ve had a few incidents of her just throwing herself flat on the floor/ground in utter hysterics because she didn’t get the answer she wanted. Then it passes, and she announces that “Me happy now” and gives you one of her fabulous hugs.

Rachel’s pretty close to Daniel’s height right now, having gone on a bit of a growth spurt. People on the street frequently assume that they are twins. This doesn’t seem to bother either of them.












Since last time, Daniel has been a firefighter. That’s not much of an exaggeration. He got a firefighter outfit from farmor, and has since wanted to wear it to the store, to school, in the car and around the house.

The day before fire safety day at preschool, we overheard him preparing what he was going to say. “…and the most important thing is to not play with matches…. Now, who has a REAL firefighter jacket?”

Preschool had a spring program last Friday, and Daniel’s class had a couple of songs to sing, which was nice. He clearly loves the social aspects of going to class, so that’s been good for him.

Daniel has been helping out more in the kitchen as well. He loves pretending that he’s a waiter and setting the table for dinner, and on a couple of occasions he’s made cookies with Eric. He can mix the dough, roll out the cookies and most importantly knows that knives and a hot stove are not toys.

It’s a new session at swimming lessons, and Daniel has a new teacher. Last time he lost his teacher, it was traumatic and set him back 3 months, but this time he hasn’t missed a beat. His form is great, but he’s still not so clear on the whole “needing to breathe” thing.

Daniel loves his sister, and is generally very protective of her. When she visits at preschool, he shows her off to the other kids, and they have started to play more together (albeit with Daniel largely setting the rules of engagement, and Rachel just happy to be invited along.) It’s not always perfect, and they do occasionally blame the other for meltdowns, but it’s usually good.

Grandpa and Farmor are visiting, and Daniel has re-taken-up basketball (now he dribbles) and has added golf as part of his bonding exercise. It’s great fun.

I’ll try to add some more pictures and video as time allows.

Until next time.
Love, A.D.R.E.