Growing Girl

A lot of time has passed between updates so I'll attempt a lengthy one to catch everyone up on the news. First off, my parents have left San Francisco in favor of New York for the summer, so they can be there when Elsa gives birth and help out in the first month+ of Elsa and Chris's parenthood adventure.

Elsa's due date was just a couple of days ago, so she's feeling like a watermelon:

Check back here often, because we'll update this space as soon as we hear something is happening. We're all very excited! Mather has been practicing how to pronounce both the chosen boy's name and the chosen girl's name (the gender of the child is still a mystery). Mather will get a chance to put that practice to use when we all fly to New York for five days at the end of July.

In the meantime, we're house-sitting Downey. Mather is being very careful to water Nanna's flowers, so that they'll all still be blooming when she comes back in September:


Mather has grown a lot in the last couple months, both physically and mentally. Her vocabulary has been quite impressive for a while now, but she's starting to string words together into expressions. About a week ago, she looked up at me and said "thank you, Daddy!" after I gave her a piece of my cinnamon roll. She also understands possessives, and says things like "Mommy's phone" or "Daddy's coffee".

She has also taken on decision making responsibilities. I picked her up from daycare on Tuesday and while I was trying to wrangle the stroller, she took off in the opposite direction of home - she was headed right to the playground, shouting "playground! slide! swing!" along the way. We ended up at the playground for over an hour.

Her recognition abilities seem to be going up as well. Instead of saying "baby" when she sees herself in the mirror, as she used to, she'll now sometimes say "Mamer!" (her pronunciation of her own name). And while she's actively played with Momily and I around the house for a while now, she's just starting to show more interest in cooperative play with others - today she spent quite a bit of time playing with a friend in the park. The friend, Annabelle, is a little girl we've known for quite a while, since Mather was about 6 mos. old. Annabelle's mom is a member of our Friday Panhandle playgroup, and Mather and Annabelle also often see each other at music class or the library.

Today was the first time they really made an effort to play together, rather than just near each other or around each other. Here is a little montage of their time in the playground:



They even gave each other a little kiss goodbye when Annabelle had to go!