Celebrations and Renewal

The craziness of the holidays is safely behind us now, and I feel ready to write!  It really does feel like the season of renewal.  I'm relishing clearing out the old and bringing in the new.

Over the course of the last month or so, P & S seem to have matured a ton. They play very well together these days, sometimes entertaining each other for long stretches of time without intervention.  It's heavenly.

They were well behaved and capable little travelers, guests, and visitors as we spent Christmas with Papa Mike and Gramma Mary and drove all over the bay area to see various relatives and friends. Their big Christmas gift, two wheeler bikes, were an instant hit. They have training wheels at the moment, but I can see they won't need them for long. Other highlights of the season for them included touring "Candy Cane Lane" in Los Altos (a cul-de-sac where every house has beautiful light displays, including a video Santa), anything having to do with Santa, and eating Christmas dinner with their cousins at the Kids Table.

I find myself daydreaming about moving them upstairs to their own rooms, where they will have a bigger bathroom and space for their toys and clothes in their respective bedrooms.  It will open up all kinds of possibilities for remodeling our downstairs.  The first order of business is to combine their current room with ours to create a master suite, with a walk in closet, small office space, and possible laundry area. The second is to remodel the kitchen.  We could move the kitchen door to the garage, create a pantry (if the laundry is moved out), and open up the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Maybe a ten year plan, there.

But, thinking about these changes makes me nostalgic for the girls' babyhood, already almost a distant memory.  I've been telling them lately that I want them to stay 4 forever (only half kidding), to which they reply with delight, "no, I'm gonna turn 5 and 6 and 7 and a hundred!" "No," I plead. "Stay 4 and a half.  You can turn 5 in May."  Sigh.  Five.  Kindergarten starts so soon!

Recent impressive feats for Skylar: increasingly complex sentences, new words, and stellar pronunciation - she even has some words down that Paige mixes up, like bracelet. (Paige says "blaceret.")  She likes to use the word "gorgeous" and uses adverbs like "differently" in conversation.  Her speech teacher reduced her services to once a week (from twice) because she has met all of the goals we set for her in September.

For Paige: simple math, reading, writing and spelling.  She wants to know how to spell everything.  She copied a whole sentence she found in a coloring book and proudly showed me her work.  She likes to practice reading picture books aloud, sounding out each word.  I hope she's not too bored in kindergarten.

We are signed up for "creative dance sampler" class with the beloved Rachael, language class at the UO Speech clinic, and are expecting to start a sign language reading program with a deaf adult this winter.  We are all excited to learn some signs beyond the basics.  Learning this together will be fun.