1. Check out these pictures.
To me this just explains so much about what it means to have more than one child. Here she is doing everything William hates and she's loving it. (a) She's eating dinner. A lot of it. (b) She's eating chicken. A lot of it. (c) Her favorite part of the chicken-on-the-grill is the fatty, scorched, crunchy, salty skin. Which, I must say, she could definitely use in that tiny little body of hers. [Don't let those big cheeks fool you. She is tiiiiiny.]
Sometimes I find Brian and myself teetering on that fine line of still treating her like the baby because, well, she still is the baby. For now anyway. So yesterday I pulled all the meat off a chicken drumstick for her and cut it up into nice bite-sized pieces. And she ate them. All of them. And when she was finished she was asking for more and pointing to another drumstick on the platter.
By now the rest of the family was finished eating so instead of taking the time to cut up another piece of meat I told Brian to just give her the whole thing. I think she thought she'd died and gone to heaven. It was like her equivalent of a lollipop. While the rest of us had moved on to chocolate chunk and almond cookies, Luce was still mawing down on her chicken leg. My little lady.
2. Lucy didn't get a chance to nap yesterday until 3:00 which meant she was still wide-eyed and bushy-tailed at 9:30 last night. She ran around the living room in her pajamas while Brian worked simultaneously on the phone and on his laptop on a time-sensitive project for work. I sat next to him on the couch trying to place toothpicks on my eyelids to stay awake.
Lucy went back by our radiator and grabbed a couple of magnetic alphabet letters we keep there and brought them to me.
I held one up, "What letter is this?"
"P!" She exclaimed.
Sometimes I find Brian and myself teetering on that fine line of still treating her like the baby because, well, she still is the baby. For now anyway. So yesterday I pulled all the meat off a chicken drumstick for her and cut it up into nice bite-sized pieces. And she ate them. All of them. And when she was finished she was asking for more and pointing to another drumstick on the platter.
By now the rest of the family was finished eating so instead of taking the time to cut up another piece of meat I told Brian to just give her the whole thing. I think she thought she'd died and gone to heaven. It was like her equivalent of a lollipop. While the rest of us had moved on to chocolate chunk and almond cookies, Luce was still mawing down on her chicken leg. My little lady.
2. Lucy didn't get a chance to nap yesterday until 3:00 which meant she was still wide-eyed and bushy-tailed at 9:30 last night. She ran around the living room in her pajamas while Brian worked simultaneously on the phone and on his laptop on a time-sensitive project for work. I sat next to him on the couch trying to place toothpicks on my eyelids to stay awake.
Lucy went back by our radiator and grabbed a couple of magnetic alphabet letters we keep there and brought them to me.
I held one up, "What letter is this?"
"P!" She exclaimed.
I looked at the plastic letter and indeed it was the letter P. I thought it might be a fluke. So I held up the next letter and asked her what it was.
She took a little longer this time, thinking quietly. Then she yelled, "Q!" with a giant smile on her face.
What was going on?! Where have I been while my 1-year-old had learned her letters? [Of course when it comes to genius-like activities her age will suddenly go from an almost 2-year-old back down to a 1-year-old to make it all seem so much more impressive. Don't pretend you don't do the same thing with your own kids.]
After I quizzed her on the rest of the letters I discovered she knew about 75% of them. And I'm not saying that we should start her application for Harvard now. Certainly it's not earth-shattering that a girl of her age knows her letters. But I am slightly in awe that she somehow learned these all without any formal teaching exercise.
Maybe she's a good eavesdropper when I'm going over phonics with William. Or maybe she watches too much Sesame Street. (Or maybe, based on the outcome, she's not watching enough Sesame Street!) Whatever it was it made me feel proud and slightly guilty all at the same time.
Is this a second-born thing? Have your second-, third-, etc. born children surprised you with something they knew without you knowing how they learned it?
She took a little longer this time, thinking quietly. Then she yelled, "Q!" with a giant smile on her face.
What was going on?! Where have I been while my 1-year-old had learned her letters? [Of course when it comes to genius-like activities her age will suddenly go from an almost 2-year-old back down to a 1-year-old to make it all seem so much more impressive. Don't pretend you don't do the same thing with your own kids.]
After I quizzed her on the rest of the letters I discovered she knew about 75% of them. And I'm not saying that we should start her application for Harvard now. Certainly it's not earth-shattering that a girl of her age knows her letters. But I am slightly in awe that she somehow learned these all without any formal teaching exercise.
Maybe she's a good eavesdropper when I'm going over phonics with William. Or maybe she watches too much Sesame Street. (Or maybe, based on the outcome, she's not watching enough Sesame Street!) Whatever it was it made me feel proud and slightly guilty all at the same time.
Is this a second-born thing? Have your second-, third-, etc. born children surprised you with something they knew without you knowing how they learned it?
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