Our dancing girl and newly climbing boy!

Adam has been making some welcome advancements in his mobility over the last week or so! He has started trying to climb on things at the park, and actually made his way up the stairs to the slide the other day and slid down backwards on his tummy on the slide, unexpectedly on his part:). He now gets in and out of his car by himself and gets on and off his alphabet train as well. It seems he finally realized that he could climb more than just stairs! He's not as cuddly these days, which makes me kind of sad, but I knew it couldn't last forever. Music has such an effect on him to calm him down - he was totally freaking out yesterday for quite a while, and I turned some music on and it wasn't long before he was calm and playing again. Again, I think we might have a musical child on our hands! I'll try not to get my hopes up too high haha:). We have also started letting him feed himself with a spoon sometimes - he's doing pretty well! He's not that messy, although he doesn't often get much food into his mouth. I remember this when Lynsey was learning how to feed herself, too - he turns the spoon upside down before it gets into his mouth! He is getting better, though - practice makes perfect! One thing we've noticed is that when he's feeding himself, he chews a bit faster - he has been the SLOWEST eater lately! He'll cheek food for hours after meals sometimes - Brian has started emptying his mouth before letting him leave the table.

I don't think I've adequately talked about Lynsey's imagination so I need to talk about that today! Jesse and Bullseye (from the Toy Story movies) have been her imaginary friends for some time now. She just loves to run around with them, and was doing so at the park the other day, causing some older girls to make fun of her a little bit. They were telling her that Bullseye and Jesse weren't there, and this caused our poor girl to get quite upset - she adamant that they WERE. I tried to tell the girls that she was just pretending, subtly suggesting that they should just leave her alone - it's not Lynsey's fault these girls had no imagination! She also has started concocting some elaborate stories when trying to get out of something. The other day she came downstairs with a shirt that I knew for a fact had to be from the bottom of our laundry hamper (she has two favorite shirts and they always get worn right after I do laundry). I asked her where she had gotten her shirt and she insisted that it was from her drawer. I went up to our room and sure enough, all the clothes from our hamper were scattered on the floor. I asked her to come up and explain that, and she exclaimed that Adam had done it. When confronted with the cold, hard facts, that Adam was in fact not tall enough to have committed this offense, without flinching, she launched into a story about how Adam had SUDDENLY grown really tall, emptied the hamper, and then shrunk back down again. Eventually, after asking a lot of questions, I got the truth out of her. I'm not convinced that she is being at all devious in her deception at this point, but I do think it's important that she learn that it's important to tell the truth when we ask her questions.

Speaking of clothes, I have to talk about how frustrating the clothing battle has become. She has so few things that she actually wants to wear, and the battles to get her to wear something she DOESN'T want to wear have only intensified. I've actually thrown up my hands a bit, and bought her more pink dresses yesterday. What's the point in arguing with her for an hour before going somewhere! It only puts both of us in a bad mood. She has chosen pink as her favorite colour, and dresses and skirts as her favorite thing to wear, all with no pressure from me. She is a girl through and through, and I'm just going to let her be (for now anyway:)).

Our little girl loves to dance. Several times in Sunday School, she has forgone the opportunity to colour her picture in favour of "dancing" (so she says, and Brian has been in the class and testifies that this is true! She just dances around while the other kids are colouring!). I'm going to look into the different options there are for dance for her age and get her enrolled in something in the fall. I don't want to start with a lot of different things, but I decided we would pick one for the fall, and dance seems to be what she's the most interested in!

We are just over three weeks away from taking possession of our new house. I guess that means I get to start packing soon. Anyone want to trade places with me over the next few weeks??