Status report: Chloë, 4 years 1 month, and Maia, 28 months

These girls. How they grow. How they amaze. How they annoy. In other words, all is on schedule and perfectly healthy.

Chloë is such a big girl these days. She acts old...I mean, when she's not crying for ten minutes because we refused to let her change her socks so that her clothes would match. Eric has taught her checkers and a number of card games, and she wants to play those all the time now. She's also learned how to think about hypotheticals. Some time ago I asked her about a hypothetical, and she couldn't get past "but that isn't true." The other day we read "Olivia Meets Olivia," in which Olivia is designated Olivia One and does various things to deal with a second Olivia in her class. Afterward I asked her what she would do if she had another Chloë in her class. She said, "Well, I would be Chloë One, because I'm the first one I know, and she would be Chloë Two."

She likes to get in people's faces a lot--not aggressively, just darting in for lots of kisses or to show me something an inch from my eye. She's still pretty clingy; we had trouble leaving a few times when we were in Daytona Beach, even though she had tons of family around her and our assurance that we wouldn't be gone long. But she's eagerly looking forward to preschool again (next week!).

She and Maia are still great pals. In the morning they'll often greet each other with a hug. They squabble about who gets to play what--Chloë definitely isn't old enough to understand the "other people have rights too" concept--but they love to play together, and make up games and stories, and Chloë will include Maia on things like decisions while she's playing a game on her LeapPad.

Maia, in the meantime, is our fiery little girl. We're definitely getting more of the Terrible Twos with her than we did with Chloë. (Does this mean the threes won't be as bad?) She very often refuses to clean, saying, "I don't want to," and we then have to yell at her and/or threaten room time before she complies. Chloë tattles on her all the time, and it's annoying, but it's also true that she's not nearly as obedient as we'd like. When we bake I still have to yell at her about not putting measuring spoons in her mouth and not sticking her fingers in the bowl. Or picking up the spilled baking soda off the counter and licking it, though really if that actually appeals to her I'm not going to oppose it. 

She's not progressing on potty training, but she's not backsliding either; she uses the potty sometimes, but mostly she just uses her diaper. She's much more likely to use the potty the later it gets past her bedtime, though.

She loves to sing. She's not very firm on the ABC song, but she can do Twinkle Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep and part of the Dora theme song with the best of them. When Chloë wants to dance (which she does, often), Maia will generally dance along and start singing whatever's in her mind.

She asked me to sing a song about "woman" last night. After I did ("big women, small women, short women, tall women"), she sang, "I love woman, lots of woman!" As Eric said, maybe there won't be any grandchildren out of that one. However, her bedtime song is usually the Soft Kitty song from "The Big Bang Theory," passed on from Uncle Bob, with a couple of added verses by me because it gets monotonous when she wants to hear it for the tenth time that night. Her latest potty-training prize is a tiny stuffed kitten, now named Banana (mostly by Chloë) because it's light yellow, and when I tuck her in she hands Banana to me and says, "Sing kitty song," expecting me to make Banana dance to its tune. She still hasn't given up playing kitty, being kitty, loving kitties. And mewing when she wakes up. I think we all know what she's going to be for Halloween.

In the meantime, Chloë and I ended up talking about Christmas at bedtime tonight (it followed naturally from her checkup tomorrow and cranberry juice...just trust me) and she said, "I love Christmas and Thanksgiving! They're my favorite days!"

"They're good days," I agreed, and prepared to say something about having to wait for them.

"Every day is a good day," she sang, her head nestled against me as we snuggled. "Every day is a good day!"