I've been meaning to post for awhile, but I was having a hard time trying to figure out where to start. If I wait too long between posts, it gets overwhelming to try and catch up! Here's my attempt, anyway...
Arden and Huston have both been loving school. Arden has the best time playing with all the things in our room and I just love having her with me all day. Huston runs into my room at the end of every day just bursting with all the things he's learning. He shows me in the air how to write the new letter and number they're learning, sings the "color" songs in his room at night (to learn how to spell the color words), tells me how many days they've been in school, tells me things he's learned, like that Norman Bridwell wrote all the Clifford books, and chants the letter sound chart that they are learning. He just loves all the more "academic" things they've been doing in his class.
I try to treasure every day at school together, because I know this is Huston's last year in preschool. One morning we were walking to the school and Huston said, "I like the way Arden's made. I like that dress you put her in." It was so sweet. (And please note, Arden was wearing pants and a shirt that day, not a dress.)
Huston spends a great part of his days lately building with the magna-tiles we gave him for his birthday. In this picture he told me he was in his "vacation house." Notice he has no pants on. For the past week or so, every time we come home from somewhere he rips his pants off and runs around in his underwear.
He's been obsessed with playing the old video game "Streets of Rage" with Clarke and pretends to defeat a "Claw" that's on one of the levels. There's also a conveyor belt in one part of the game that he alternately calls the "convigor belt" and the "convurtle belt." I love how he says "zilver" for "silver" and how he pronounces "something" as "somesing." He'll say, "I just think we should have pizza or somesing."
Arden loves to pretend that everything is her baby. If we see a giraffe on tv, she'll all of a sudden have a baby giraffe. If there's a bad guy on the video game that Huston and Clarke are playing, then she's suddenly nurturing a "baby bad guy." Surprisingly, she doesn't really play with baby dolls, but instead just imagines that she's holding different babies. Baby Junior is still around, but sometimes her other imaginary babies live on her feet, too, like Baby Hank and Baby Bonnie (her Aunt Emily and Uncle Topher's two dogs - Arden pronounces Baby Bonnie as Baby Bunny). When it's time to leave the house, sometimes she'll gesture at her toes and say, "These little guys want to come, too!" referring to whichever imaginary babies or pets are currently residing there.
Every morning when I get Arden up, she says, "I want to have bre-fest." I love how she pronounces it. She also has the cutest way of exaggerating her r's, so that squirrel sounds like squir-rel. When she pluralizes words, sometimes she adds an "is" sound, so instead of baby giraffes, it's baby giraff-is. Or "Baby Junior-is favorite toys are puppy dogs," for example.
Arden pronounces all of the "th" sounds at the beginning of words with a /d/ sound. So her "this" is "dis," her "that" is "dat," and her "then," is "den." She also says "den" for "when."
When she talks, it sounds like, "Mommy, do you see dis little baby I'm holding? She is going to school and den she is going to eat dat little cookie."
Both Huston and Arden pronounces the "th" at the end of words with a /f/ sound. With is "wif," and Teeth is "teef."
I love how they talk!
Here's one final anecdote for this September wrap-up:
Huston told me one day, "Momma, I love you all the way to Pluto."
So Arden told me, "I love you all the way to Mercury."
Huston said in his best condescending big brother voice, "Well, Mercury's just not that far, Arden."
