Sunday, 26 May, 2002

Amy’s language skills are improving by leaps and bounds, though some of her words get a bit mixed up at times.  She will often call hot dogs “dot hogs”.  She doesn’t like them much and seems to throw up when she does eat them.  We don’t encourage her to eat them anymore.  About a month ago we were driving to church and Amy all of a sudden said, “I’m sooo happy” (The extra o’s on so are indicate a lot of inflection).  About 30 seconds later she said, “I love church!”  She makes us laugh.  We are often amazed by her intellect and memory.  We were driving to church and drove past a Little Caesars Pizza.  She recognized it and said, “pizza”.  Just last week she has started praising my meals and other yummy food by saying “delicious” or “ulicious” as it often comes out sounding.  Speaking of food, she was sitting at the table eating some chips with her lunch and had bit her chip into a shape that looked like a horse.  She was making horse noises with it and prancing it around her plate.

Chris’ grandmother, Grandma Andrews, came to visit last week.  It was the first time she had seen either of the girls.  She was completely taken with Amy, but that’s because Amy latched on to her right away.  I think she loves the idea of having grandmas.  Alicia isn’t too interested in people right now so it didn’t make such an impression on her.  Amy would stand on the toilet in the guest bathroom as grandma got ready in the morning and then come downstairs doused in perfume and beautified with makeup on her face.

Grandma Andrews loved the girls and helped me a couple of times by feeding Alicia and praising the girls at how wonderful they are.  Of course, she’s right.  Grandpa Kline arrived on Saturday afternoon and stayed until Sunday morning.  As usual, his visits are short and sweet.  Who knows if the girls will get to see their great grandmother again, so it was wonderful that they had the chance and vice versa.

Alicia is learning many new things as well.  She has caught onto the idea of drinking out of a sippy cup.  She takes water all the time but doesn’t care for juice at all nor drinking her formula out of the sippy cup.  She’s been rather picky lately about food, but does better with texture.  She likes string cheese, crackers, cheerios and pears.

The other night I was laying on the floor playing with Alicia.  Amy was already in bed and since Alicia had slept late, she was enjoying her one on one time with her parents.  She would stand next to me and stand up on her own, balance for a few seconds and then flop onto my stomach.  She had great fun.  She has started saying “mamama”, but I don’t know if she associates it with me yet.  She graduated from the army crawl into a regular crawl and gets around to many places.

Amy and Alicia will sometimes play together, but usually it is a test of wills and who can yell louder when the other has something they want.  And if Alicia gets anywhere near Amy’s doll, she yells in a very panicky voice, “My baby! My baby!”  That is definitely hers, and I don’t insist that she share it.  That is the one thing that is hers alone.

A couple weeks ago, Chris arrived home from work and I had a picnic supper packed.  Nothing special, I just heated hot dogs in the microwave and then put all the fixings in a box and we were off.  We drove into a park in Longmont and ate supper and then, much to Amy’s delight, went to play on the playground toys.  Chris took her around to watch all of the different sports the people were playing–basketball, tennis, soccer, baseball, hockey–she loved it.  Course, she just loves being out and about.  We went to Dairy Queen after to share a ice cream blizzard and that is where we first heard her infamous “ulicious”.

We were supposed to be heading to Canada this weekend but my green card expired and my new one has not yet arrived.  I keep praying that it will find me here in Colorado.  We had a family fast last month, but nothing yet.  I am guessing that they messed up and sent it to my last address in Provo instead of to Susan’s as I had requested.  I knew that we would be moving a lot.  Anyway, Mitch comes home from his mission on Friday and we won’t be able to be there.  I am sad to miss it though not sad about missing the long, long drive home.