11/29/2010 Maggie -Maggie blows kisses by pulling her index finger from her mouth with a kissing noise. -She gives loves by laying her head on someone (or on a doll) and saying, "Mmmmmm." She also holds her doll and pats it on the back. -She makes a growling noise for dinosaurs and lions and a barking noise for dogs. She can also do a snake sound, but doesn't seem to associate it with snakes. -Maggie puts her finger in her mouth (rather than in front of it) and says,"Shhh." -Recently, she really is communicating. When I can see something is in her mouth, I'll say, "Uh-oh, what have you got in your mouth?" She'll pull it out and show me and say, "This!" She doesn't even protest when I take it. When I say, "Is it time for bed?" she'll make an "Uh-uh" sound. -Jonah sometimes falls asleep on the couch (since he refuses to take naps), and it cracks Maggie up. She'll laugh and poke at him as he sleeps. Jonah -Jonah sometimes tells me about his "discoveries" but now I can only remember one about "punch fighting." They were off-the-wall kinds of things. -Jonah is very good at making Lego creations. -He still says "she" instead of "her" sometimes, like, "I don't want she to touch it!" -He is always saying funny things out of the blue. The other day in the car he said, "I just keep trying to kill the sun." It wan't shining in his eyes or doing anything out of the ordinary. He just often has little storylines going on in his mind. -Jonah frequently sings little songs - made-up or real. Eli isn't crazy about that.- Every prayer, he says, "Thank you that Daddy can get a new job." Tori -Tori is very smart. She sits around writing all kinds of things with her cute phonetic spelling. She is very good at math. She does a fun "doubles" song with 0+0 up to 10+10. -She is still very sensitive. The other day she said that someone told on her at school for something, but she really didn't do it. She told me she it made her cry a little bit, which wasn't surprising since she was tearing up as she told me. When she gets in trouble, she holds very still Eli -Eli makes up his own jokes often - usually a play on words of some sort - and they're pretty clever. 3/30/2011 -Maggie can say so many things now - even phrases and sentences. She says, "Thank you," "Read it - book," "I did that" (especially when she thinks she's done something funny). She can say a lot of the relative's names, she can recognize pictures of Jesus and say his name. (Tori did that early too.) She's to the point where she can hear us say a word and just start using it. We'll say, "Did she just say _________?" but it shouldn't be such a surprise now. I have to admit that it has been a huge source of pride to me to hear all of my kids talking so well so early. My little geniuses! :) (Now I can't publish this. I'll have to leave it as a draft.) -One day I was singing "The Ugly Bug Ball" song to Jonah in the car. He and Maggie like it when I sing to them on the way to pick up the kids from school. It's a long drive. So I sang the line "I've got nobody to hug. I'm such an ugly bug." Jonah said he wanted to hug me, so I stuck my arm back by him. He said, "Do you know why I did that? Because when you said, 'I've got nobody to hug,' it made me want to hug you.'" He is such a sweet sensitive boy. He tells us he loves us "and everyone in our family" many times a day. -A little boy named Ayden in Tori's class has a big crush on her. He apparently thinks she's very cute. The other day, as we were lying in bed at bedtime, we were talking about when I married John. Tori said, "I'm just about to get married." I told her I was going to come visit Ayden with the "Big Five" (my fist), if he didn't back off. But, truthfully, she is so painfully shy, and has had such trouble making friends at school, I really appreciate the little guy. -The boys in 2nd grade at Eli's school started taking little toys and trading them at recess. Sometimes Eli made good trades and sometimes he really got ripped off. His teacher outlawed it, but they still sometimes manage to make it work. The downside is that when he and his friend Max get together, they aren't content to just play with each other's toys. They always want to take some home. Max in particular gets a bit pushy. But he's a cute kid.