of many blessings in my life, and my husband is at the top of this
list.
Joanna is now two and a half. She is so delightful to be with. She is
two, and with that comes the boundary testing and temper tantrums, but
those begin to subside as she learns our boundaries and her own. It
helps if we are consistent as well, I have realized.
Thomas is really showing his personality now. He can sit up for a
little while on his own and he grabs at toys and holds them in both
hands. He's sticking things in his mouth and is happy to bounce and
swing and jump and be tossed around in the air. He is truly a happy
baby. He will be six months old soon.
Joanna talks in whole sentences, paragraphs, chapters, even! She can
tell a story, relaying details and opinions, if you can catch it all.
Sometimes, it takes a trained ear to catch those context clue words to
figure out what she's saying, but she is genuinely clear in most of
her words. We have caught her counting into her teens! Today, I
noticed she bounced her monkey on the couch and sang the alphabet song
like Daddy does with her. She also put the monkey in her shirt so that
his head stuck out the neck of the shirt and she walked around with
him like that for a while. She is so sweet.
I found her in her cave (Uncle Andrew built this for her) laying down
and sucking on a toy today. I sure hope that was a one-time thing.
Thomas is really watching Joanna and you can tell he really likes her
and is interested in all she does. This morning I gave him a bath and
she walked around in conversation back and forth so that she was going
in and out of his line-of-sight, though she didn't take notice of him
paying attention to her. He watched her this whole time and I could
see his expression change on his face from delight--an open mouth
smile with his eyes twinkling. to disappointment or not-so-excited
face. That was neat to see. He also peed on me as I was bathing him.
What is it about that warm water!
Joanna got a bath too. She is really getting better about letting me
wash her hair. I run a bath about 3 inches or so and she lays belly
down for some soapy suds. I got her a pink pouf a while back with some
special kids bath soap. It was for Valentine's day. Anyway, she lets
me put this soap all over her and even on her head. Then, we get out
some bath toys. I put in some "slippy bath" or baby oil so that her
legs don't turn into "alligators." I've started pointing out the hands
on the clock too and telling her that bathtime will be over soon. That
doesn't help much, though. The princess towel seems to help!
