We opened Grammy's Christmas presents for the kids - a ton of books! The kids were tremendously excited to find "pwesents!!" in the living room after their nap, and they opened the whole stack in about 5 minutes! There are a few that they bring us repeatedly so we can "wread pease" to them, lol.
Grandpa and Grandma J got them toddler trikes and a couple wooden food sets where the pieces are held together by velcro so the kids can "cut" it apart with their very dull wooden knives. The kids looooove the food toys - they cut it apart over and over again, shouting "I DID IT!" every time! They are very excited about the trikes, and are learning how to use them - so far a lot of scooting and pushing has occurred, not so much pedaling...
Tory and Laura got them coloring books (already very decorated) and natural wax crayons that are holding up VERY well to the kids' art time. Their favorite thing to color in the books are the dogs ("puppies!") so it's a good thing one is a dog coloring book! They are currently very obsessed with the tee-wa-wa (chihuahua) lol.
We also got the kids a wooden letters puzzle (they LOVE LOVE LOVE the ones Auntie Dawn gave them!) and they are doing sooooo well at learning their letters! We can dump them out and ask them to find a specific letter, and they are right 95% of the time! I'm INCREDIBLY impressed by this, of course!
Our house is full of so many fun things for the kids to create, read, and play with! This makes mommy and daddy very happy (and busy!)!
Potty training is going slowly but surely. Usually 2-3 times a day, and only pee so far. Stickers and temp tattoos are proving to be great incentive for using the potty. Woe be unto us when we run out of car stickers, though - they seem to be the favorite...
Giovanna will pretty much always pee within 5 seconds of sitting on the potty. Then again a few minutes later. Then again a few minutes after that... She asks to go potty a couple times a day, and she likes to wipe herself, and will let me know if she has "more pee" or if she's "done" (usually accompanied by the slamming of the potty lid, lol). She pooped on the potty once last week, and was soooooo proud!
Roman wants to be part of the potty activity, and will let me take off his pants/diaper about 90% of the time. And he'll actually pee on the potty about 80% of the time. He doesn't usually ask to go, but gets excited if someone else (i.e. me or Giovanna) brings it up. He won't pee sitting down anymore - only standing/squatting backwards, which is a bit messy, but whatever. Nothing a little 409 or Lysol can't fix.
I think they key so far has been asking them if they want to go potty at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon (if Giovanna hasn't already asked), and keeping them occupied once we get in there. We usually have a few board books (ones I don't care if they get peed on) and we play with squares of toilet paper, or bath letters, or whatever keeps them busy so they don't want to get up and run their nekkid butts around the house, lol. Also, after I give them their stickers, I ask if the want to go show them off to daddy, which they get VERY excited and proud about!
They pretty much say anything, now. If they are upset, they have a hard time telling us why, but we can usually get a few key words out of them ("table ow!" or "Roman/Boogie push"). They give us smooches ('moochees) and hugs (uuuughs) and say I love you (I luv oh) spontaneously a lot now! It's the best thing ever. They also give us (and each other) mooches when we get hurt. And they say sorry (sozzee) and give each other hugs if they hurt each other or snatch stuff from each other! They are starting to use conjunctions and other filler words to create complete sentences (i.e. "car is loud" instead of "car loud"). They are also saying longer words like butterfly (buh-luh-lye) and dinosaur (die-no-soh), too!
Their color recognition continues to improve, especially Roman's! And both of them count to two (or count to two over and over if there are more than two of something). A big step from "one...one...one...one..." lol!
Pictures and videos:
http://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q8/Brieshon/2009/2009-01-02/?start=all
http://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q8/Brieshon/2009/2009-01-05/?start=all
Note: sorry about the blank photos in previous Art of Monkey posts. I had to reorganize my folders a bit on Photobucket and it broke all the links. I will try to get them fixed, if I can find the time!
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