January 27th marked two and three-quarters years since Alethea arrived in the world.  Happy birthday, my Sweet Girl!

It’s been a while since I wrote an Alethea update.  The last one was actually in June (oops), so needless to say, some things have changed in the past seven months!  Let’s see, where to begin…

One of the things that people notice right away when they meet Alethea is how many words she uses and how clearly she says them.  She’s a super verbal girl.  Having conversations with non-family adults doesn’t intimidate her at all and she also loves to talk on the phone, although it must be admitted that I still have to get on the line after she’s done and ‘translate’ much of the conversation.

Of course she says super funny things on an almost daily basis, but beyond keeping us amused, her verbal skills also come in handy for keeping tabs on Lydia.  You can be quite sure that if Lydia is breaking a rule and Alethea sees her getting into something, that information will be promptly handed on to the adult in charge.  She’s my little informant!

Physically she continues to grow and develop, adding new things to her repertoire on a regular basis.  She walks, runs, jumps, somersaults (with a little help), spins, and climbs with the best of them!  Her favorite thing to do though is still dancing, aka swaying back and forth to music, often with her eyes closed.  She really gets into it!

She continues to love helping around the house and is thrilled any time she discovers something that she can do herself.  Little by little she is mastering the art of getting dressed and can generally get on anything that doesn’t involve snaps, buttons or zippers.  Besides socks that is, she has trouble with socks, but we’re working on it!  In addition to getting dressed her daily tasks include helping pick up her room, fetching things for Lydia and Mommy and brushing her teeth.  We also try to have her participate in other tasks periodically and have found that she enjoys setting the table and shoveling the drive way.

Her very most favorite activity of all time is playing pretend with her stuffed animals, specifically Dee, Lullaby and Clifford.  She spends hours feeding them, changing them, reading to them, taking them for walks in the stroller and even disciplining them on occasion.  Besides organizing her ‘friends’, she also spends time nearly every day reading books, playing the piano and dancing to music.  I also try to get out some sort of craft/activity several times a week.  Playdough and anything with stickers tops her list on that front.  Oh, and she also loves the dollhouse we gave her for Christmas.  I wondered how long it would take for the novelty to wear off, but she plays with it nearly every day, so I’d say it was a good Craigslist purchase.

Other developmental milestones include counting to 20, knowing her basic colors and shapes, recognizing letters and naming their sounds.  Something else that I’ve been working on is her music listening comprehension, things like identifying instruments playing on the radio and learning the distinction between high and low sounds.  I was so proud the other day when a song came on and she voluntarily said, “Mommy, those are high notes!”  I said, “Very good, Alethea!  What instrument is making those high sounds?”  Without missing a beat, Alethea exclaimed, “A piano!”

The thing I have been most happy to see in Alethea recently is the beginnings of interest in playing interactively with other children.  It’s especially nice when she plays with Lydia, because her little sister adores her for it and my goodness is it ever great to have some time to get things done without constantly breaking up squabbles.  Not that their relationship is even close to conflict-free, but I feel that I am starting to get some glimpses into what kind of friendship the future might hold for my girls, and I like it, a lot!

We continue to seek ways assist Alethea’s spiritual development, including helping her learn to pray.  Mostly she likes for us to pray at meals and bedtime, but I love it when she is willing to do the talking.  The first thing she always does is to ask Jesus to help [insert anyone she knows is sick] to feel better.  Then she generally thanks God for Mommy and Daddy and Gramma/Grandma, and if she’s in a particularly good mood, even for Lydia.  It’s incredibly sweet to hear her very earnest voice lifting others up, and can even be a little convicting as she recalls people that I haven’t prayed for in a while.

And now to close, just a few random tidbits: Alethea is no longer scared of garbage trucks, her favorite color is yellow, she wears underwear whenever she is awake, she loves to eat chicken nuggets, mac & cheese, most fruits, and virtually all sweets, she will never eat mashed or cubed potatoes, her favorite TV show is Clifford the Big Red Dog (and can sing the whole theme song), she pronounces the word fabulous ‘fab-we-us’, which cracks me up every time, she has most of her story books memorized, she adores having company over.  She is a sweet, funny, smart little girl and we love her so very, very much!

Alethea, we’re so glad you’re our little girl and we can’t imagine a better first born daughter!

Hugs and kisses,

Mommy and Daddy

What We Did This Past Weekend: Sunday

I am happy to report that our house is now a nuk-free zone.  Lydia was done using her pacifiers months ago, and now big sister Alethea has made the transition too.  It probably would have been good to take Alethea’s nuks away sooner, but she has had a remarkably high number of transitions in the last year and a half (new room, new beds, new baby sister, potty training) and there just never seemed to be a good time to go through withdrawal.  But we knew it was best if her binky days came to an end, so about a month ago we started telling her about the special stuffed animal she would get after Lydia’s birthday party.

Let me explain.  I read a few articles about how to ease the transition to nuklessness and talked with a couple friends about it as well.  The idea that was the most appealing to me (and I thought would be the easiest for Alethea to accept), was to take the nuks to the Build-A-Bear store and put them inside a stuffed animal.  That way Alethea could ‘keep’ her nuks forever, but they would no longer end up in her mouth.  After convincing Peter that this was the way to go, we started talking it up to Alethea.  Although I’m not sure exactly how well she understood what was going to happen, we know she sort of got it, since at Lydia’s party she told my sister in law, “I’m a big girl.  I don’t need a nuk.”  And as the last guests were headed out the door, she asked me, “Go get my stuffed animal now?”

So, we figured she was as prepared as she’d ever be and Sunday we took the plunge.  At the store, the first step was for Alethea to pick out her Build-A-Bear carcass.  She selected a brown puppy.  And no, they don’t call them carcasses at the store, they tell you to pick a friend, but really, it looks like a carcass…

While we were waiting our turn for the stuffing machine, we noticed that you could add a noise maker to your ‘friend’.  They happened to have a Brahms’ Lullaby one (Alethea’s favorite bedtime song), so we let her get it to put inside her puppy.  (The noise maker is in the little white cloth bag Alethea is holding in the next picture.)

The nice guy at the stuffing machine put in the noise maker and then filled Alethea’s puppy with fluffy white stuff…

And then Alethea put her last two nuks inside.  “Say, ‘Bye, Nuks!'” I told her.  “Bye bye, Nuks,” echoed Alethea.  And then the Build-A-Bear guy closed him up!

After the puppy was complete, Alethea got to give him an air bath to get any extra fuzz off.

Then we paid for him and took him home!

As you can tell from the pictures, Alethea was compliant, although not necessarily overjoyed by the event.  On the car ride home (to endless repetitions of Brahms’ Lullaby) I asked her whether she liked her new puppy.  “I’m excited,” she said, “But I want my nuks out of him.”

In the days since we bid farewell to the nuks, Alethea has managed to nap two days out of the four and has gone to bed easily every night.  She has not once woken up crying for the nuks during the night, as I was expecting.  We’ve only had one major meltdown (Sunday afternoon at nap time) that I’m sure was entirely related to the nuks.  It was both sad and slightly funny when she sobbed, “I just want one!  Okay?  Just the green one!”

As far as her attachment to the puppy goes, she seems to like him fine, but he definitely is playing third fiddle to Dee (Alethea’s number one since she was about nine months old) and Clifford (her number two since he showed up in June).  He did get a name though.  When we walked out of the store, we asked her, “What’s your puppy’s name?”

“Nuky,” said Alethea.

Peter and I looked at each other.  “How ’bout ‘Nuks’?” suggested Peter.

“No, Nuky,” replied Alethea.

“I think his name might be ‘Pacifier’,” I said.

“No, he’s Nuky,” said Alethea.

In the end though, Peter didn’t feel that ‘Nuky’ was an appropriate name for one of his daughter’s stuffed animals, and we have since convinced her to call him ‘Lullaby’.

I think it’s for all for the best!

Just for old time’s sake, here’s a pictures from Alethea’s first Twins game when she was almost a year old:

So long nuks!  Thanks for the memories!

Alethea just cracks me up all the time.  Like the other morning when I came out of our bathroom only to discover that she’d made my bed for me (and even got the throw pillows put back in place):

Or this morning when I got out of the shower and she pointed at me and said, “Mommy, you have a tummy!”
“Yes, Alethea,” I replied, “I have an abdomen, just like you.”
“But Mommy,” she said, “You have a BIG abdomen!”
Sigh… “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

Gramma and Poppa got Alethea a new shirt for Christmas that is so totally her.  It says, “I love music.”

And she does.  She loves music, and playing the piano and singing, singing, singing!

Tonight, she went into Lydia’s room after Lydia had gone to sleep and was standing next to her crib singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.  Lydia woke up and started crying.

“Alethea,” I told her, “That wasn’t nice to wake your sister up!”

Alethea’s bewildered reply was, “But I was singing to her!”  At which point we had to have the conversation that singing to people is a very nice thing, but not while they are sleeping, because that wakes them up and people don’t like being woken up, even if it is for singing.

Confusing, I know!  But we did manage to clarify that mommy also would not like to be woken up by singing.

So, anyway, I’m off to bed for a hopefully tuneless night’s sleep!

Nighty, night!