Growing, changing and laughing.

It is amazing to me how quickly Parker is learning new things and changing. He looks so big to me, yet it keeps surprising me when he learns something new. He's got the rolling back to front, and front to back thing down. He's now starting to skootch himself around when he's on tummy time, jump when he's standing on your lap and sit leaning forward.

Did it go this fast with Maia? I just don't remember!

Maia, on the other hand, is learning about counting. Not reciting her numbers (which she can do up to 20 with an occasional missed or repeated 'teen number), but identifying how many of something there are. At this point, with some assistance, she'll effectively count up to 5 things, and without assistance, she can tell you there is two or three of something without having to count them. We played this game with chicken nuggets today. She had 2 on her plate, and 3 were on the baking tray from the toaster oven. How many nuggets do you have, Maia? TwooOoo! she says in her sing-songy voice. How many on the tray? Three!

I take one from the tray and put it on her plate. How many? Three! How many on the tray? Twooo! Wow. How cool is that?

She also continues with her pre-reading skills, announcing "That Circle Means Target!" (bane of my checking account). She's learning some of her letter sounds, but this is still hit-and-miss. She knows M means Maia and Mommy, D means Daddy and P means Parker. She knows things like S says Ssssss and T says Tuh.

I can also say with a fair amount of certainty that she inherited the type of mind that thinks about music All. The. Time. In addition to quickly memorizing, and repeating, parts of songs after hearing them only once or twice; she can sing a surprising number of different songs. Also interesting is that she has started making up her own words to those songs, sometimes. And sometimes she'll sing the song in nonsense syllables (which she thinks is incredibly funny). I think I really need to start working on pitch-matching with her, but she hasn't been very excited about that in the past.

She must also be learning about the days of the week at daycare. She can name them all but not in order. Yesterday and Tomorrow are also a little confusing for her. However, on Thursday night at dinner, she announced "I gonna shake a dath (take a bath) on Sunday at seven ah clock!"

And now, some stories from daycare:

One afternoon, while washing her hands, Maia splashed water, and got it all over her shirt. "Oh no!" she yelled, "I'm Leaking!!"

Her teachers also got a good giggle out of her getting off her cot during nap time, walking calmly over to the full length mirror in the room (near the dress-up station) and doing the Hokey Pokey while watching herself.

There has been some turn-over of students lately at the daycare, and some friends have left and others have come. Others have moved up to the Early Preschool (EP) room. Maia has a new best-bud named Ellie. Her teachers told me that Ellie had a "Spicy personality" like Maia, and they spend their play time with purses on their shoulders talking on their cell phones.

Speaking of which, apparently for several afternoons, Maia put a purse on her shoulder and said "Goodbye!" to her classroom, announcing "I'm going to see my husband!" The teachers tried to find out who her husband was, but never got an intelligible answer.

Parker, on the other hand... well. His stories are quieter. They go more like: We took a walk to see all the grandmas and grandpas today, and he was all smiles! The grandmas loved to comment on his red hair.

Parker is in a room that is mostly boys (actually, Maia is too), and most of those boys have what I would consider "older" names: Murphy, Artie, Ezra, Parker, Nicholas and Zackary. The two girls are Avianna and Alexandra.

Well, one of those boys is moving on, and a new family came in to tour the facility. I'm told that Parker was full of giggles and smiles, and just appeared to be the most happy and content baby. This apparently made some sort of impression on the new family, and I'm told that staff thought Parker "sealed the deal," to convince this family that this was the daycare for them. Enter Harrison.

Heh. Should I ask for a referral credit?