And then they walked faster....and then I was chasing them everywhere trying to keep them from hurting themselves, because incidentally babies learn to walk with a very tentative grasp of the word "no," and an even more tenuous understanding of "danger." Nowadays Josie will not hesitate to tell you that "Fiwe is bewy bewy hot. Burns Jojo." (her nickname for herself...she came up with it all on her own!) and August will let you know if there's a knife around because "Knife cuts auggie. ow! ow!" But at almost two, they have made an incredible, blossoming transformation in this past year that I was too busy witnessing and celebrating to blog about.
The other big news is that in August, (the month) we bought our first home, a cozy little craftsman-esque bungalow built in 1924. It's in St. Louis City, in the Southampton neighborhood, a pretty closely-knit community that has welcomed us graciously. We love exploring the nearby parks and shops in our little red wagon, and I'm having a great time pulling together the interior with a thousand little design projects that I'll try to post some before-and-afters.
Anyway, around their first birthday, it seemed like they were constantly trying to cause chaos and mayhem to themselves and their surroundings - reaching on tables and pulling whatever's within reach on top of themselves, opening containers and spreading the contents hither and yon, climbing on anything and everything, etc. Luckily, after 6 or 8 months of this type of willy-nilly exploration, they begin to understand what is absolutely out of the question (ripping the pages out of books) and what is within bounds (reading books by turning the pages carefully).
I'm happy to report that at about eighteen months, the clouds opened up, and the light of understanding that you've seen in their eyes all these months starts coming to you in actual words, and you can explain with much success why things are dangerous or yucky to do, so things go much smoother and with less crying. (there's still an awful lot of crying, however.) That's not to say they can be left unwatched for more than 30-45 seconds at a time, or that they aren't constantly trying new mischief - we recently discovered that they know how to roll down the car windows - they haven't figured out that they can then throw things out of the windows yet. They know how to flush the toilet, but we had a lock on it for the first 6 months or so. Now that we're potty training, I keep expecting to find them flushing crazy things, but so far they are pretty good about not putting anything in there.
I'm very fastidious about letting them know unequivocally whether something is acceptable or not, and I use the dreaded "no" to good effect - some might say they hear too many no's, but so far I seem to have well-behaved children with a fine amount of self-confidence and experimental imagination. After a no, i try to either give a brief reason (no. standing on your toys will break them.) or offer a positive option. (no. We don't stand on the toys, but we can play with them.) This seems to work except for when it doesn't.
Anyway, I'm going to not learn from my mistake and attempt to start blogging again - and this time I know how to post pictures! Now it's much more interesting because we do all kinds of experiments and projects, and they come up with funny and fascinating theories that I can't wait to share. And, they play by themselves for 10 and 15 minutes at a time, so I can actually sit down to write a blog post.
Alas, I hear Josie urging me to "Let's make cimanim rolls!" So I have to go. But I renew my pledge to post regular, brief, interesting snippets into my home life, and I hope you will read, follow, share, and enjoy. Thanks!
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