Conversations

We have been having the most interesting conversations with Addy lately and she has been saying the most amazing things while playing. In the last year she has grown from saying just a few words and signing to really thinking and listening and learning intensely. Here are a few of our most recent conversations.

*Addy has really become aware of the holidays this year and especially of Santa. And her absolute favorite color these days is purple. We were talking about Santa one day and I asked, "What do you think Santa will bring you?"

"A purple present."

*We baked cookies for a neighborhood holiday gathering we ended up not being able to attend. Anyway, Addy loves butter and she says she loves sugar. We try to keep the sugar to a minimum, but for these sugar cookies it was hard to avoid! Anyway, later that night she was telling a story, which she has been doing a lot of lately, mostly by combining characters and phrases and events from stories and rhymes we read. This story began,

"Once upon a time butter was outside and sugar was inside."

That was as far as she got! But we have some video clips we'll share of her telling much more elaborate stories with her own made up language to boot!

*This morning at breakfast Addy was pretending to make ice cream. Our conversation reminded me just how much she absorbs. She happens to love Trader Joes because it's the place with the little kid carts and it's also the place we buy our chocolate chips.

"You want some of my ice cream?"

"Yes." Tasting it, "Ooh, it's good. How did you make it?"

"Chocolate, coconut, is good. Flour, baking soda, chocolate."

"Where did you get the chocolate?"

"Trader Joes."

* Addy had a particularly hard day today. Mostly our days have been amazing and awesome. She has grown up so much in the last two months, really articulating her feelings, using her words far more than her hands, exhibiting tremendous patience, care and love toward her brother and with us, and being overall just more easy going, but today was a harder day. She spent the afternoon crying a lot missing Jason and just unhappy about how her day was going. It turned around though as we were making dinner. At dinner Jason asked,

"How was your day Addy?"

"It was a little bit good."

"What was hard about it?"

"Missing you."

Addy has been saying so many things that just leave us in awe, so sweet and tender and loving. So insightful and thoughtful and observant. I never could have imagined how amazing and fun this age could be. Though I have to say I think we have entered the intense 3 year old phase (even though she's not three yet) of asking incessant questions. Wow, we literally can talk about one thing forever and it could just be why it's a good idea to wear mittens or why the postal person delivers mail. So curious and sometimes so frustrating when you just want to get out the door or move on!

She has said so many more quotable things but alas we're running on minimal sleep here and so I have forgotten many and also have not written them down.

She has also been doing some serious pretending with her dolls, stuffed animals, at her kitchen. Mostly with her dolls. She loves to talk to them and care for them. And it's so amazing and sweet to hear how she repeats the things we say to her to her dollies. In the picture below she's carting around one of her dollies in her carrier on her back while strolling with the big "Kid Sister" from my childhood. Addy is also in her favorite dress up gear, both items scored at a clothing exchange! If you stop by our house and we're home you'll likely see Addy in this purple and turquoise floral dress and a pair of pink dress up shoes.