Counting and singing

Alita is learning to count and sing. She doesn't like to sing on command, but we often catch her singing an entire song to herself that we didn't even know she knew the words to -- Baa Baa Black Sheep, She Sells Sea Shells, Pussycat Pussycat, Twinkle Twinkle... At the park the other day, she and Lucy sat down on a towel together and sang "yippee yippee bumblebee" with hand motions, clapping and thigh-slapping!

Alita can count to ten now, and sometimes she even gets to twenty... but the numbers between thirteen and twenty include "Thursteen, Saturteen... Twenty!" She can reliably count about 4 objects, and anything more than that is "five" which we think is her way of saying "a lot." She is starting to understand family and relationships, and she can rattle off all the names of the people in a family when prompted. She's starting to also express a sense of time, using "yesterday" to indicate things that happened in the past or already; "almost nighttime" means it's getting late in the day, and "it's daytime" is what she says when she wakes up and it's still dark outside.

In New Zealand, we left Carina and Alita to nap in the same room together (napping is getting harder and harder for Alita to accomplish on her own) and they sat and entertained each other with songs, reading books, and playing together for 2 hours!! We watched it all on the video monitor; it was hilarious - and they got along so much better when left to their own devices than when all of us parents were intervening.

Alita refers to herself in the second person -- she calls herself "you" and refers to all her things as "yours". It's a really tough concept to explain because every time I say "that's YOUR book, this is MY book" she agrees, and says "that's your book!" She has been working on asking questions but doesn't quite have the words for questions yet so she'll say "Daddy's going?" for "where's daddy going" and "Daddy's doing" for "what's daddy doing". When she gets in the carseat, she'll say "going? Going?" to ask where we're going. She knows the name of our street and has some sense that we live in California.

Springtime

It's Springtime in the Tobey Saenz household. We're back from a great trip to New Zealand, mommy is back to work, and the 4 person household is feeling a little more manageable each day. Highlights recently have included mommy's trip to DC to meet Michelle Obama's team. Daddy was explaining to Alita that Barack Obama and Michelle are in charge of the whole country. Alita looked at him quizzically and asked, "who's in charge of the living room?" Later that day she told us Kona is in charge of the living room. Last week, we had Cass and Mike over for dinner. Because we're focusing on potty training recently (ever since returning from NZ Alita has had a lot of success going diaper-free!), Alita was sitting at the table "sans pants". She started fiddling around under the table and then asked loudly, "Mommy, A-ita putting fork in fa-china!". Uh-oh.

Dakota is getting bigger every day and is a really happy, mellow kid. She spends long periods of time awake and looking around; she loves wiggling on her floor mat, and she is starting to look at objects that are close by. Alita loves giving her hugs.

We just got 5 baby chicks. They are living in our dining room for now until our pre-fab coop arrives. Alita is thrilled about having chickens in our house. They're a little more interesting than the polywogs we had in an aquarium for about a week!