Thursday, 25 April, 2002

Alicia has been crabby since the beginning of April.  I can see that her two front teeth are ready to break through soon, but it is not soon enough.  She has taken to whining, just to be whining.  Then Amy joins in...because she can.  Alicia has been up on all fours this past month and learned how to sit up from the crawling position on April 9th.  Since then she has learned how to crawl, though still prefers the army crawl method of getting around.  She likes to sit on her legs and play, she can pull herself up onto furniture and is now trying to conquer the stairs.  She has only made it to the first stair, but the rest are sure to come.  Yesterday she let go of the couch for a second and acted as though she wanted to walk toward me.  It will only be a matter of time before she is cruising around.

Alicia has weaned herself off of pacifiers.  She just decided one day that she didn’t like them, and I decided to take advantage of the situation and not push them onto her anymore.  Since we have been back from Utah, she has only taken a pacifier once.  She sucked on it for 10 seconds and then pushed it out of her mouth.  Before coming back from Utah, I was nursing her about five to sick times a day.  I have cut way back on that and now only nurse her in the morning and at night.  She doesn’t seem to mind, and I can picture her weaning herself when she feels like it too.  I am ready, though, I have been either pregnant or nursing for the past three years!

Alicia has mastered saying “da da” and has now begun on “ba ba” as well as these letters: t, p, s, o, and k.  When you ask her to clap her hands, she will.  I have been signing the rhyme, “No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” with Amy and Alicia has picked up the finger wagging when the doctor says, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”  I am amazed at the things she is learning so quickly.

When we were staying at Kevin’s house, Amy found the crayons and was coloring.  She picked up the white crayon and tried using it on white paper.  When she couldn’t see that it was working, she said to me, “It’s broken.”  And yesterday, was a breakthrough day.  She used the potty for the first time.  I think I was more excited than she, but she got a chocolate Easter egg out of it, so she was pretty pleased too.  She has been sitting on her little potty recently, with no results.  I was just happy that she would agree to use it.

On Monday, we went to story time at the library.  Amy had never been before (for that matter, neither had I) and was somewhat tentative around all of the kids but enjoyed herself immensely.  She got to hear stories about bugs and a “baby” bug (her word for lady bug) and draw on the sidewalk with chalk.  I picked out some books for her and she has loved having daddy read them to her at night since.

We went swimming at the Rec Center in Frederick on Tuesday evening.  Amy’s swimming skills have improved dramatically too.  She got into the pool at the deep end with Chris and with the help of a floatation device paddled her way to the other end of the pool.  Alicia had a great time splashing in the water and both girls went to sleep without too much encouragement.  (Granted they usually are pretty good about going to sleep at night though Alicia has cried herself to sleep a few times while getting used to doing it without a pacifier).