Quick Updates

William:

• William has started to show us objects.  He will play with something like a ball, and then wave it at us to show it to us.  Sometimes he will slap it in our hand if we hold it out for him to give it to us.  
• William turns pages in a book on cue.  
• William mimics sounds.  While none of these are words, I think they are all showing that he is working on language and communicating.  The one we see a lot is sniffing.  Mike thinks the face William makes when he sniffs is cute, so he started sniffing to get him to sniff.  Now, William will do it to us to initiate a "conversation" or game.  William also screams back and forth with Natalie.  Very hard to listen to, but amusing at the same time.  A few days ago, Natalie and I were reading Tubby, and she made the motor boat noise, I made the noise, and then William immediately tried to do it. 
• William's complaints are more complex.  For example, complaining when a ball he is playing with rolls to the back of the couch cushions where he can't reach it, or that I'm not doing exactly what he wants during dinner.  Its clearer that he has an idea in mind, even if I can't figure out what that is.  
• William is interested in doors.  He mostly sticks to playing with the door of the toy kitchen set.  One day that alone kept him occupied for about twenty minutes.  
• William seems on the cusp of figuring out that he can put an object into a container.  He almost put a small book back in a bucket yesterday.  
• William is also interested in puzzle pieces (the type of the knobs).  He likes to take them out. 
• William is starting to show his first signs of liking TV characters.  He seems to recognize Sesame St and YGG.  Sesame St books are his current favorites right now.  
• William knows he can reach over his head to get things down off of counters.  This is something Natalie didn't do until the last six months I'd say.  She wasn't curious enough to reach up.  
• William is interested in touching everything.  At the store today, he wanted to touch and hold all the fruit and was mad when he couldn't reach in his stroller, even though I did let him touch some things).  At the check out, we let him out of the stoller and he was exploring everything: the bag holder, the screws on the handicap flip out counter, the wet floor signs, a bench, the people.  
• William thinks its funny to sit in my spot on the bed before our night time nursing.  
• William can crawl a whole flight of stairs.  
• William is totally in love with Natalie.  He smiles and laughs when she pays attention to him.  He particularly loves it when she gives him a goodnight kiss.  

Natalie:

• Natalie has been doing excellent with many of the steps associated with the potty: getting toilet paper off the roll, wiping, pulling her clothes up and down.  
• Natalie learned to put a back pack on.  
• Natalie ran through a sprinkler on her own on a super hot day.  This is a worth mentioning because she still hates getting water on her face.  At bath, she has learned how to not get the water on her face when Mike rinses her hair.
• Natalie has helped wash dishes.  
• Natalie is continuing to be about independence and asserting her desires.  She can be difficult to deal with when she wants a game or even to exactly how she invisions it.  For example, she wants a story read exactly the right way or will cry and ask for Mike to throw her in the air again if he makes a funny noise while doing it.  This also shows up with Natalie being bossy, and thus forgetting to say please, and also resisting sitting on the potty when I tell her that she needs to, even when she needs to go!
• Current favorite pretend games are: acting out the doctor episode of YGG, acting out Rintoo getting hurt in the Halloween episode of Kai-lan, pretending to be frog and toad, pretending to be Elmo trying a new food with Super Grover, saying she is Chicken Litter, and being various Lilo and Stitch characters.  
• Natalie has been very into nurturing baby dolls.  She's shown her first real interest in dressing and brushing their hair.  She likes to have a doll with her in bed, she took one for a walk in her toy stroller down our street, she sometimes has one sit in a doll high chair in the kitchen at meals, and she pushes them on swings.  
• Natalie can now climb up and down from our waterbed without a stool.  
• Natalie very clearly mimics us in her play.  Most recently, she will take a doll and have it get hurt the same way William has (banging its head on a chair leg for example) and then comfort it like I do William.  She's also done this with my nursing him.  A month ago or so, Natalie mimicked Mike taking a stick out of my car's wheel well.  
• Natalie comes and climbs into bed with Mike in the morning on weekends when I am sleeping in William's room after feeding him early in the morning (4 or 5 am).