Progress

Anna and William are both making a lot of progress lately. I thought I’d write some of the latest things they’ve learned.

Anna has learned how to smile! When I go to get her out of her crib after a nap (as long as I don’t wait until she’s screaming at my neglect) she’ll smile at me with a big open mouth and coo and gurgle until I pick her up. Of course, if I spend too much time enjoying the smile and pleasant noises, they turn to cries of anger and frustration, but sometimes it’s worth it just to get as much out of the smiley girl as I can. She is also starting to try to suck on her hands. She hasn’t figured out yet how to separate the thumb, but she sometimes calms herself by sucking her hand for a little while when I can’t get to her and she wants to eat. Unfortunately, it never lasts very long.

William is making more and more progress on his speech. One of his latest favorite things is to talk about something being “too hard.” He’ll say “it’s too hard to” do this or that, whatever it is that he’s doing. But then he goes ahead and does it anyway. “It’s too hard to climb up,” he says as I take him up the hill at the park. But he doesn’t stop walking. “It’s too hard to eat this apple.” But he still eats it – core and all. (I gave him an apple yesterday morning. I offered to cut it for him, but he decided to just bite into it. When he realized that that was an effective way to eat it, he refused to give it back. I left him eating it while I made waffles and didn’t think anything of it. Later, he came to me with a face covered with apple juice and apple bits and asked to be wiped off. I asked him where he left the rest of the apple and went looking in the family room expecting to find the core sitting abandoned somewhere. Silly me. How would a 2 year-old know not to eat the core of his very first whole apple? There was no sign of the apple. William had eaten it, stem and all.)

William’s also learning the names of more and more animals. He loves to watch the Baby Einstein videos, especially all the animal ones, and I think that’s where he learned the majority of their names. And he’s getting better and better at making sentences. He was playing with his Sesame Street shape sorter the other day and pointed to one of the pictures on it and told me “Cookie Monster’s holding a pig.” I was impressed. I can’t wait for Anna to start being able to interact with him instead of just opening her eyes wide in terror when she hears his cry of “Baby ANNA!” that usually precedes him slapping at her face or stomach.