Little Things

It’s the little things that make us smile. After a lot of whining in the afternoon, I felt simply blessed to see how the little things make me smile.

Last night, Petra surprised us with a few things. She has been combing 2-3 words on a regular basis for a few months now. But it seems that over the last week or two, this is changing and she is saying more and more. It makes me so glad to see her learn and grow. Last night when we asked her to throw away her chewed up and completely eaten corn cob – she started to walk to the trash can, then paused and said “No; wait a minute.” This was easily one of the more clearly spoken sentences she has said so far. And we are always telling her to wait a minute – it was nice to see she understood the concept and could repeat it to us.

Then, another cute little thing happened later. Thomas was asking her to share the toys with Jasper, and she didn’t. And he told her that she was being a bad girl and she needed to share. “Bad girl?” she said. And then immediately went and pulled out the book “Bad Dog, Marley” from about 20 other books and sat on my lap for me to read it to her. (I have read this book to her maybe 4 times – I don’t care for it because the book doesn’t address the need to train a dog – but oh well that is another matter)

And later in the night, she demonstrated that she seems completely ready for potty training. I guess we will start trying again more regularly. Over the last month or so she has used the potty about 3 times a week by her own choice ... but I think it’s time to approach this milestone again with more vigor.

Jasper also is talking more and more. And I am so glad to hear him start babbling more. We spent a few minutes before bedtime last night practicing saying "da-da." He happily repeated me numerous times, then surprisingly when I laid him down he happily rolled over and went to sleep. I thought with all the talking his mind would be too active to lay down so quickly.

He is getting absolutely great at waving bye, signing “all done,” and is happy to demonstrate “arms up” with a big smile and arms in the air. He is also walking more. Just in the last two days he decided he would start walking around the house more than crawling. It’s so funny to watch him walk around with his arms raised high in the air.

Petra is a little jealous that he gets all this praise for walking and will ask us “walk, walk” because she wants to walk to us in the same way. And I have to remind her she already knows how to walk, and I ask her to run instead. And she just loves this!