These are the things I wish to remember about my girls in the years to come…
Hannah:
** You are currently 3 years and 7 months
** You are getting really grown up these days… you are excited about starting school next year and I can tell that you are ready because it is getting hard to entertain you at home. But at the same time I am incredibly nervous to let you go. You are likely to be the youngest in your class by as much as a year. I know you will keep up with the learning because you are a very smart girl, but it is still hard to let you go…
** You are such a social girl and find it easy to make friends. Everywhere we go you befriend whoever is playing at the park or shops etc… and talk comfortably with them. I can tell that you have moved to the next stage of play development because you are always asking to go to your friends’ houses, or if they can come and play at ours.
** You are soooo artistic and crafty. You ask me constantly if we can paint, or draw, or stick (glue), or draw on the ground outside with chalk. I love that you are getting so creative. On the other hand you do not like the fact that I have to work so often in the afternoons and we cannot always do the messy activities whenever you feel like it. I feel bad, but it’s just life I guess…
** You have recently become dry at night. I’m so proud of you! From the moment I voiced the idea to you and gave you the incentive of a lollipop, you completely surprised me by being dry the very next day, despite showing no signs before. In the month since then you have only had 1 accident. So you are doing amazingly well, I’m so proud!
** You love to dance & “do ballet” at the moment. Some of our most fun times are dancing together (often in our pyjamas) and giggling away. I think next year I will definitely have to enrol you in dancing lessons.
** You adore swimming at the beach. It’s such a pleasure watching you love the water and giggle and splash about. Hard to believe that at the beginning of last summer you hated the sand and were scared of the water. Now you cry every time it’s time to leave the beach…
** Another fun activity that we love to do together when Abbie is asleep is jump and play games on your trampoline. You love me to bounce you so high that you fall over in a fit of giggles.
** You are starting to really master your new bike. We went on your first long bike ride yesterday down to the other end of the road. It took you the whole way there to really get the hang of steering and pedaling at the same time, but on the way back you were unstoppable and we had to run to keep up.
** Your language skills continue to amaze me and you come out with some crackers of some sayings. Like just before I said that you didn’t need a bottle at bedtime (your last baby habit to break) because your tummy must be already so full of apple juice. You answered that no, it was fine, you had one room in your tummy for “special drink” and one room for bottle”. Too smart! I’m sure you haven’t heard me say that before.
** You really miss your Dad when he is gone. The other day you gave me a heart melting moment when you heard me turn a key in the lock to open the front door and came running from the other end of the house excitedly shrieking “Daddy!” It broke my heart to tell you that it was only me unlocking the door and you still had 9 sleeps until he came home.
Abigail:
** You are currently 1 year and 4 months
** You my dear are the biggest cheeky monkey I have ever come across. Boy do you test me to the limit at times, but I could not love you any more or my heart would explode.
** Just about every single person that we meet at the moment, either at the shops or the beach or where ever, comments on how beautiful you are and especially how big and gorgeous your huge brown eyes are. You are stunningly beautiful.
** You still hardly sit still for a second. However you have started to have a small threshhold for watching tv (unlike your sister who would watch it all day if I let her), but only for “The Wiggles” and preferably only the popcorn dvd. If fact you will pull every single dvd out of the drawer and bring that one to me if you feel like doing some dancing.
** You are also getting very creative. You love to drawer. I have to make sure that I hide all pens from you if I can’t be right there supervising however, because otherwise you are likely to draw on yourself, the table, your clothes, or anything around. That’s never popular with you. You hate not being allowed to use the same pens that your sister is allowed to. That goes for anything that she has – you have to have it too or you make a very definite protest!
** You can climb the 8 rung ladder at the park to get to tall slide all by yourself. Not the steps, you’ve had them mastered for ever, but now you can climb the vertical ladder. It gives me kittens every time but you are actually unbelievably physically capable for your age.
** You are finally starting to be very vocal and I’m noticing you say more and more clear words. I’m sure you say a lot more than I give you credit for as well. Your clearest words are “shoe, chair, Izzy, Daddy, there, bubble, bottle”. Very strange words to choose for your first words I have to say – they are just about all blended words, and I would have thought that they were all traditionally later on in vocabulary. But you never did like to do things by the book…
** For the most part you are a much better sleeper these days, but we still have quite a few sleepless nights when you are sick or teething. Speaking of teething, that’s another thing that’s happening out of order of the “manual”… your teeth are coming all higglety pigglety and you have cut some of your big molars before the side, front teeth have come. I think you are currently up to 7 or 8 teeth in total, but seem to be cutting a whole bunch all at once.
** You find it the hardest of all of us to adjust when your Daddy goes back away to work. This time you cried on Monday night for an hour and a half at bedtime. Then an hour the following night. There was nothing apparently wrong with you. I think it was all just because you missed your Daddy. You get so excited every time I ask you if you want to ring him or talk to him on my computer. It’s lovely that you have always shared such a strong bond with him despite the fact that he has been away for much of your little life.
** You like to run. And for the most part you especially like to run away from Mummy. It can be very frustrating for me at times, but how can I get mad at you when all I hear is this cheeky little giggle and all I see are these cute chubby legs doing their crooked toddle away from me. Despite me calling it a crooked toddle though, you really can run very fast! I have to have eyes in the back of my head and most of the time now I’m going to take “the lead” (butterfly backpack with long tail on it for me to hold) until you can get a little better at doing as you’re told.
** So far you are showing no signs of ever doing what you are told, so I might be waiting a while. Your favourite mischief things to do when I am looking just purely to be cheeky are: annoy the dog, play with the video, climb on something you are not allowed to climb on, empty your drink all over yourself and the floor, play in the dogs water, throw your food on the floor, run away with whatever toy your sister is currently playing with, go through my office drawers, pull all my cards and money out of my wallet and spread it onto the floor, and more recently play with and pull over the Christmas tree.
All done while looking at me and smiling a positively evil smile.
** You are just like me. I know all your tricks! I did them to my Mum too once upon a time. I believe that my Nana would call you “my comeuppance”…
As always, it’s so much fun watching you two grow up. I love having two girls, and I love watching you start to really be “best friends”, as Hannah would say, with each other.
You both make my life so rich!
Lots of love
Mummy
It’s no wonder you are exhausted half the time! I’m with you though – two girls are the most amazing blessing. Well, any child is an amazing blessing of course but I think you and I have a girl bias!
What a wonderful post. I really enjoyed this. I am sure it is something that will forever be cherished as the girls get older.
Ha, my mum always says she has no idea what she did to deserve me, she was a sedate, neat, clean, girly girl and I was, err, not! I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that if I ever have kids, they will be a collection of mini-mes, rather like Abbie ;o)
Have fun with your girls! (And be grateful that if you do enrole Hannah in dance classes, that they no longer have records, I sat on the one for our recital just before we were due to go on stage… It wasn’t deliberate though, I think I’d just been told to sit still, and I was only 3 ;o) )
One day I hope to be able to write such nice thing about my 3 – for now it would be full of expletives and I haven’t got the energy to fib!
Lovely post 🙂
My more told me once that she figured out when I was quite young that it didn’t matter what she told me to do, I would still do whatever I wanted to do. Mmmmmm….sound familiar? LOL
This is a lovely post & yes, definitely something to put into the time capsule!