City girls, nature girls

This week, Madeleine demonstrated that she is a DC native. On our drive downtown, we were the lead car as we pulled away from a stoplight when Madeleine remarked 'It's like we're in a motorcade!' She's also shown an unusual ability to know both where we are, and to have preferences about which route to take. I'll decline to attribute these characteristics to either side of her family as they have both positive and negative implications, but will offer a couple of examples:
--On the way home, Madeleine prefers Western Avenue to Connecticut Avenue and Brookville Road and will request that route at the appropriate intersection.
--Last year when we were crossing town on Military Road, Madeleine spoke up from the back seat to remark "You'd better turn, Mama, or you're going to hit Georgia." I'm still at a loss to explain how she knew we were headed for Georgia Avenue, or how she knew how much I dislike driving on that road.
--Madeleine reprimands cars that get in front of us - mostly I agree with her if someone has cut us off, but sometimes she shows a preschooler's colors and just wants to be first.

In contrast, Josephine is displaying her love of the outdoors. Actually, both girls have been enjoying some warmer weather. Last weekend, we spent a lot of time in the backyard playing, in addition to sweeping, raking, and mowing. And, we've been able to continue our outdoor time in the evenings this week as the weather has been so lovely. Madeleine likes to have her neighborhood friends over to play house, jump rope, and do art, and Josephine just likes to be. Josephine is happy with everything so long as she is outside. She likes sitting in the toy car, peeking out of the windows in the toy house, and just standing and holding on to something/anything. She practiced walking outside quite a bit, but was also seen speed-crawling across the grass. We know how much she loved hanging out outside by the scream and head toss whenever it was time to go inside.

Madeleine and Josephine's grandparents are visiting beginning tomorrow, so we'll look forward to more walks and outside playing. They're hitting town just at the right time to see the cherry blossoms too which makes this prospect even nicer.

Spring dress

Today is the first day of spring and to celebrate, Madeleine chose to wear her 'cherries' dress. Madeleine paired this very sweet, full-skirted halter dress with a black pullover trimmed in faux fur and knee-high black boots. She does look awfully sweet, prompting her friend Aidan first to tell her that she looked like a hula girl and then to whisper 'You look beautiful.' Much giggling followed.

I think that Madeleine was about two when she first developed preferences over what to wear. However, in retrospect, I realize that I was still pretty much running the show. Sure, she might select a t-shirt, but would then complacently don the matching pants which I selected. Those days are over. Last week, one of Madeleine's outfits featured a too-short white tank top paired with a soft pink plaid skirt that rides on the hips (revealing a wide swath of tummy) and bright red/blue/green striped tights. While I still tend to purchase outfits, many of these a la carte items are never paired together again, except under duress. Generally, we allow Madeleine to select her own clothes following certain parameters regarding coverage (the tummy incident above was unusual), warmth, and appropriateness (no fancy dresses or costumes for school). On the weekends, the parameters are even looser and fancy dresses and costumes are permitted.

Josephine remains in the doll stage and wears whatever we want. If she could state it, her preference would probably be to be naked except for socks which she likes to remove and shove in her mouth. Socks are probably Josephine's favorite clothing item both for chewing and for comedy purposes - she knows how to use them to get a laugh. In contrast to her older sister's creative dress, today Josie is wearing a pink turtleneck, pink and lavender flowered pants, and lavender suede shoes. I'm concerned that Josephine may follow her sister's example and develop her own clothing preferences at an earlier age than Madeleine did. Josephine is certainly figuring out how to express her own opinion in other areas.

Great Communicators

Josephine and Madeleine are both working on their communication skills. Madeleine is navigating the sometimes competing forces of politeness and respect versus getting what she'd like. On Tuesday, Madeleine joined me and two friends for lunch. Madeleine was thrilled to be out - skipping, holding my hand, and beaming. It was a beautiful day, so we sat outside and enjoyed tacos and the sunshine. During a lull in the conversation, Madeleine asked if perhaps we'd noticed the bakery just inside and wondered aloud if we might all enjoy a cookie after lunch. After a brief discussion, we all decided that we would indeed enjoy a cookie and stopped at the bakery on our way out. Polite direct requests are also appreciated, but I was impressed by how Madeleine worked her wishes into the general conversation and made sure that everyone was included in the benefit (i.e. cookie).

Josephine's communication skills are also evolving and are much more rudimentary, not to mention loud. At home, Josephine may throw her head back dramatically and yell if you happen to say, walk away from a piece of buttered toast she was planning on eating. She'll also let you know if she'd rather that you didn't leave the room right now, thank you. Reading this, I realize how Josephine's preferences are strongly focussed on people and food. She will still happily swap one toy for another (note to Madeleine: this will end shortly), but is much more opinionated about edibles and those she loves. At school, she's prone to crawling over to a teacher and then laying her head on the ground and crying. I was sitting with her earlier this week when she crawled over to where Ms. Beverly was sitting and did this. Ms. Beverly looked at her calmly and said, "Oh Josie, are you ready for lunch now?". Indeed she was as Josephine immediately sat up and stopped crying. Josephine seemed to know that it was Ms. Beverly rather than me who controlled the coveted plate of food.

Finally, Madeleine and Josephine were happy to meet baby Sally this week. Sally's parents are Michael's old friend Chuck and his wife Kim. Sally is just two months younger than Josephine, but does outweigh her a bit. On this initial visit, as a crawler, Josephine had a locomotive advantage, but this will surely expire before our next visit. In any case, Sally seems like a sweet, funny girl who we look forward to seeing more.

Countdown to Kindergarten

This morning, while Madeleine and Josephine enjoyed a playdate at Drew's house, I registered Madeleine for kindergarten. I think that Madeleine will do great in kindergarten - she's doing fine academically and knows how to understand instructions well (though she doesn't necessarily always do so) thanks in great part to the instruction of Ms. Rosemary. That said, Madeleine seems to have inherited some of my propensity for worrying. Two days ago on the way home, she was in tears after announcing that she doesn't want to go kindergarten. She decided that kindergarten is boring, and is upset that it means that she'll have to leave her current school. I can actually understand her concern about changing schools - she's been at her current school since she started there in the infant room 5 years ago. Several parents have told me that their kids missed the school after the excitement of kindergarten wore off, with one kid summing it up that "they don't love me at my new school like they loved me at my old school." In the end though, I think the outgoing and adventurous parts of her personality will take over and she'll have a whole new gang of friends in no time.

As Madeleine mulls the implications of kindergarten, she's also recognizing more music and remembering more lyrics. She's been learning some basics of classical music at school and occasionally mentions what she’s learned about Mozart, Beethoven, and Pachbel (which Madeleine pronouces Pach-O-Bel to rhyme with Taco Bell). At home, Michael’s been listening The Police a bit lately and Madeleine’s picked up the tune to Roxanne. She started singing it at the dinner table the other night, so Michael and I began working on some substitute lyrics. We’d rather our five year old didn’t sing “Roxanne – you don’t have to put on the red light. Roxanne – you don’t have to sell your body to the night” and are working on an alternate version that goes something like “Roxanne – you don’t have to put on the night light. Roxanne – you don’t have to sell your comics in the night.” Last week, I changed the radio station suddenly when I realized that she was singing along to the Garth Brooks Song “Papa Loved Mama” and was heading into the lyric “Papa loved mama, mama loved men…”

Josephine continues to master walking – it seems like she adds a new step to the sequence every day or two. Crawling though continues to be her primary method of locomotion. When she needs to get somewhere, she’ll take a few lurching steps to get going, but will then hit her bottom to go into crawl mode and really zip. Josie’s also increasingly a mimic. In the bathtub this morning, she practically wrestled Madeleine to get to hold a small plastic pony hairbrush. Once she had it, she alternately chewed it, and tried to comb the nearest pony’s mane. Josephine also loves to hoist her fat body up onto child-size chairs – her favorites are the pink wicker armchair in her sister’s room from which she’ll beam with pride at anyone watching, and the small chairs in the infant room where the babies eat. If Josie thinks it is mealtime, she heads right for the table, gets in a chair, and looks around for the food.

Baby Steps

Josephine has started taking her first steps. Last week, Ms. Beverly reported that she was holding on to a bookcase when she suddenly took several steps into the room. When she realized what she was doing, she got scared and quickly sat down. The teachers however, clapped and cheered! I've been in the Infant Room when other babies were beginning to walk and one of the nice things about the teachers is that they're still excited about this process. Over the years, they've seen many babies master this skill, but they still get excited for each baby and cheer them on.

Over the last week, we've encouraged Josephine to step towards us. She was reticent at first, but in the last two days has gotten more courageous and will now take two or three wobbly steps before diving into our arms. She's catching on that this is an exciting game and seems to look for the cheers and clapping that follow each attempt. Overall, she seems to better understand the back and forth of simple games. Yesterday, she and I rolled a car back and forth to each other, and last night, we all played a game of football in the living room. Michael, Madeleine and I would throw the soft football to each other and on her turn, one of us would hand the ball to Josephine. Josephine would accept the ball and then cruise around the coffee table to hand the ball off to someone else.

Madeleine is really enjoying the new interactive components to Josie's playing, and also does a good job of watching out for potential dangers - small items, paper, and stairs being some of Josephine's preferred hazards. Madeleine had a great time last Sunday playing in the unexpected snowfall. She headed out at about 11 to build a snowman with Kate and Sophia across the street. After a brief break for lunch at their house, we all went up to the school for sledding, snowballs, and more snowmen. A number of the neighborhood kids were up there and she spent most of the afternoon there before coming back to our block to play in the snow with Drew. She finally came home at about 5. We ate an early dinner and went to bed early, too. One of the advantages of the fact that Madeleine can't quite tell time, is that 8:30 comes earlier on some nights than others. Both girls were in bed and sound asleep by 7:45.

This week, Madeleine is very excited about the possibility of another 'pajama day' at preschool. She's asked Ms. Rosemary about it every day and on Wednesday, took a calendar to school so Ms. Rosemary could pick a day. Madeleine swears to me that tomorrow is pajama day, but I'd like some independent confirmation before letting her wear her monkey pajamas (she's already selected the pair) to school.