Girl gang

Madeleine's preschool pals: Mairav, Addie Rose, and Elise

What's in a name?

Since Josephine's birth, Madeleine has enjoyed using various nicknames with her. For a while, Madeleine picked up the nicknames that we used and called Josie 'Buddha Baby' or 'Chubby Monkey.' It always sounded so sweet to hear Madeleine repeating back what she heard us say. More recently, Madeleine adopted her own nickname for Josephine and started calling her 'Smudge.' I think Smudge is a derivation of Smoosh which is a name our friend Alison uses with Josephine. In any case, Madeleine always uses the nickname Smudge sweetly, and like a parent, reserves Josie's full name for times of trouble and hair pulling.

This weekend however, the question of nicknames took a turn for the comical. On Saturday morning, Madeleine announced that she had a new nickname for Josephine: Gross-ephine. After her announcement, Madeleine laughed (cackled?) hysterically. Michael and I were dumbstruck: how could we not have foreseen this nickname. Just 5 months after her sister's birth, Madeleine has cracked the code of how to torment Josephine for the rest of her childhood. On a brighter note, we didn't make too much of a deal of Gross-ephine and Madeleine didn't mention it again for the rest of the weekend. Here's hoping we can take advantage of another 4 y.o. trait: the short attention span.

To round out the big girl and little girl news for the week:
-Josephine learned to blow raspberries on Saturday and practiced this skill, moistly, for the rest of the weekend.
-Madeleine is still adjusting to the departure of her best girlfriends from preschool. She enjoyed a playdate with Mairav on Sunday, and told us how much she missed Addie Rose and Elise who we will try to see soon.
-Both girls had invitations to birthday parties on Saturday afternoon so we had to divide and party. Madeleine attended Evie's 5th birthday down the block, and Josephine and I attended Neve's 1st birthday in Virginia.