Lily is starting to talk!

She expands her vocabulary daily, which is such a treat for our ears! For now she says Mommy and Daddy very clearly, Narnia ("Nah-nee"), nurse ("nuhsssss"), go, no, cheese ("chsssssss"), bubble ("buh-boooo"), poo-poo, cookie ("koo-geeee"), and shoes ("shoessssss"). She likes to repeat words after we say them. She used to always do this in a whisper, but she's starting to do it in a normal voice much more. AND! She's adding signs to her repertoire at least as quickly as words. She still does "more" but she started doing "drink" this last week. She was pretty excited today to do "milk".

We've been reading The Chronicles of Narnia together. Jack enjoys the cuddling up on the couch together at least as much as reading; he simply CANNOT listen to Narnia without a blanket! Lily often nurses while we read, which may be one reason why she loves it when we read together, but it's not the only reason. I don't fully understand why she enjoys it so; perhaps she likes listening to us talk for such a long time, or she likes having our family all stay together for such a long time. But she does certainly love it; she'll bring us (me or Tim) a book in the series and say "Nahnee! Nahnee!" and sit on our laps for a good 2-10 minutes listening to us read it to her.

Jack's new habit is to demand to act out each chapter we read after we read it. He hardly remembers anything from the chapter, which proves that it's a little bit over his head, but he loves for me to tell him what each character does and remind him what his character says. He often chooses to be King Edmund or Queen Lucy, or if any of the talking animal characters figures prominently he'll choose to be that one. But he shies away from parts with lots of talking; I wonder if that's b/c he likes knowing what to do, and he doesn't usually remember what everyone said? Yesterday we acted out the chapter from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the travelers come to Deathwater Island. One part involved using a spear as a sounding rod to see how deep the water was, and we used a few marble-track pieces all put together to be our "spear." After we were done, Jack discovered more pieces we could have used to make our spear longer, and he said we had to do the scene over again so we could use the longer spear. He took a different role that time, since we had just done it and he knew what to do. And we went through it a little faster, b/c I didn't have to tell Jack "Now we do this," or "Now you say that." He already knew and did his parts without being cued. Hmmm, I wonder if we should act each one out twice now? I'm floored at how much better I'm remembering the story now that we're acting it out, so I'm sure he's getting more of it this way, too. He enjoys the acting out even more than the reading; he's been asking if we can go back and act out the chapters of the stories we read before we got into this habit. I told him I'd be happy to start the series over and re-read and act them all out, when we're done with it the first time through. His eyes got so wide! "We can do it AGAIN?"

I've been a little concerned with Jack's love of play-acting situations we read and watch, but his lack of interest in making up new situations. Creativity has always been a challenge of mine (which is one reason I love to knit and cook, I feel like I am successful in being creative in those areas...), and I see it is a challenge for Jack, too. But I think if I keep up with the play-acting as we're doing it, he will extend himself into making up new things.

Lily is transitioning from loving to tear up books to loving to "read" books. Hallelujah! She flips through pages and whispers or talks about all the pictures. Here's the breakthrough, though: if there's a page that's started to tear, she doesn't finish tearing it! I can now trust her with books!

We brought my Mom here for Christmas. We had a blast :D We mostly just hung out around the house, but we played games together and cooked together and did dishes together and sat and talked. I felt like we all got to know each other better. Lily was the most obvious one; when Nanna (my Mom) first came, Lily was a little wary of her, but by the time Nanna left, Lily was spontaneously hugging and kissing her often :D We soaked our feet in some bath salts Tim's sister gave me, and Lily asked Nanna to pick her up and put her feet in, too, even though I was sitting right next to her and she could have asked me to. And Jack said "I love you right up to the moon and back 4 times!" as Nanna was getting ready to leave. (He got the idea from the book "Guess How Much I Love You" by Anita Jeram and Sam McBratney, but we haven't read that book in quite some time, so yay for Jack remembering!)

We hung around here for New Year's Eve and Day, too. New Year's Eve we splurged and got the movie "Prince Caspian" since we had just finished reading that book and we have free tickets to go see "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" in theaters. (And we'll do that as soon as we're done reading the book!) We made cookies and ate them while watching the movie. Then we put the kids to bed and stayed up til midnight just to feel like grown ups (Tim worked on a software project and I cross-stitched).

Lily has a cold that is really annoying. It seems to get better and worse with no cause. And I've got it and so does Jack, so the first Sabbath of the new year and we have to stay home. Lily first got it over a week ago, but it really does seem to be just a cold, just a really annoying one, so unless she's still got it another week from now I don't think we'll go to the doc. (What would they do, give us medicine that I wouldn't want to take? Antibiotics don't help with viral illnesses, and any medicine to treat the symptoms of a cold are usually unsafe and ineffective. But if we're still sick in a week then it might be something worse than a cold.) We've got sore throats and stuffy noses, and sleeping is more difficult b/c breathing through stuffy noses is difficult. Lily's been up 3 nights of this cold, insisting on being upright. Last night was the first time, though, that she was grumpy enough to insist that her holder should stand up, so Tim and I played tag team most of the night :P I worry about a possible ear infection, but that wouldn't make her cough stick around or her nose stay stuffy.

I think the most annoying thing is not knowing what's going on, and knowing that there's probably not much I can do. Such is life, huh?

This just in: Tim just got home from church and says that Jack's teacher said Jack is one of the brightest and rowdiest kids in the class. Score!

Photos!

Our family Christmas photo. I'm so glad we realized our camera has a timer!

Lily loves to wear other people's shoes. She's been learning how to walk in mine and can now do so pretty well!

Gingerbread house from a very stale kit. Jack had a great time putting candy on it! He even spontaneously told me I did a beautiful job putting icing on the roof. AND, when we got the box out, he looked at the illustrated directions on the back and said "Step 1: squeeze icing. Step 2: put house together. Step 3: put icing on house. Step 4: put candy on house." He was "reading" the pictures of the directions. And he's doing that every time he finds illustrated directions in other things, like the seed packet we planted seeds from yesterday. (I forgot to mention! We live in Coastal Northern California, we can garden year-round here, so we planted carrots, spinach, and lettuce yesterday!) No worries about that kid's reading readiness skills!

We played Stomple, a gift from Tim's parents (we think), and when Tim took pics of the board, Lily thought he was taking pics of her and smiled so sweetly for the camera!

Right before taking Nanna to the airport. I was hoping that the foot soak might help my Mom's arthritic body handle the plane ride better, and it did! Lily saw us and came and wanted to join in. She stayed there for a few minutes, just gently swirling her feet in the warm water. And I got to cross-stitch. Yay!