Unconnected Bits

Inwe is a superlative at school. She informed me Thursday that she could say her alphabet, count to 35(add an exclamation mark to envision Inwe saying it), and identify shapes. "Only Olivia and Mitchell could do the same, Mommy. Just us three." To me this is wonderful as Inwe is the youngest kid in the class. This preschool accepted Inwe based on her behavior and language skills. On Monday I have a end of the year meeting with her teacher. Needless to say I will be very interested to hear the teacher's assessment.

Someone help me with Larien! Who wants to adjust her attitude? She has decided to be quite demanding (from which parent could she have gotten that trait?), incredibly loud (I know this is a toddler trait as neither of us is loud), and at times is incapable of walking. Yes, yes, this is all expected as a toddler stage. Knowing that does not make the process easier.

Vocabularies are different, but about the same size. When Inwe was about 18 months one of her grandmothers asked me how many words she could say. So, I started a list on the computer so I could easily track her progress. At 20 months, my imperfect list was at a count of 291 words. I just recently finished a list of Larien's words which reached 263 at 20 months of age. Most of the words are the same, the 28 word difference is due to Inwe's fascination with our Peterson's Field Guide to Eastern Birds at an early age. We, as parents, haven't been pulling out the bird book with Larien due to lack of time to stare out the window. Larien has more action words; Inwe had more qualitative words such as wet, dry, warm, cool, cold, hot. Inwe had also spent more time with extended family and knew the names of her second cousins and great aunt and uncle. Both of them can/could count to twelve reliably.

Let me leave you with a sweet image. Tonight we took the girls to dinner at Red Robin, which is attached to our local mall. The last time we ate there was a few days before Mother's Day. Phill took Inwe shopping for my present (two lovely lamps for the new hallway table). At the end of tonight's dinner Inwe asked, "Are we going to shop for Mommy tonight?" We explained that last time was special, but that we could walk in the mall without buying anything and that she could also ride the mini carousel. "Oh, okay. That sounds great," was her enthusiastic reply. Both girls rode the 3 horse carousel; Larien asked off about halfway through the ride. At the opposite end of the mall is a kid's play area where we spent 30 minutes or more. On the way back to our car, Inwe was getting too far ahead of us and Larien was lagging behind. (And before any of you nag me about making Larien walk, I wasn't. She insisted that she walk.) In a flash of brilliance, I said, "Inwe, hold Larien's hand. Larien, go hold Inwe's hand." I say brilliance because the second half of the mall was the perfect pace. Inwe didn't go to quickly; Larien didn't go too slowly. The icing on the cake was the "Awww, look at that" comments that accompanied us throughout the mall.