More Things To Say

It is hard to believe that it's been three weeks since my Some Things to Say post.

It is hard to believe that it's ONLY been three weeks since my Some Things to Say post.

In a nutshell: it wasn't all just-for-that-day.

Joy's speech and all-around developmental burst has continued at an awesome pace. There is literally something new every single day. To put this into perspective, we've had stretches where if there were even one of these new things in two weeks' time, we'd have been over the moon with delight.

Joy is now vocalizing regularly with her signs (more, open, all-done).

She is chiming in at the end of each line of familiar songs if we pause and leave off the last word, including a long-awaited return of the bed-time lullaby chime-ins.

She is waving and speaking both for greeting ("hi!") and farewell ("buh-bye!")

She is imitating familiar words, particularly when prompted.

"Joy, can you say 'coffee'?" (We have a tradition in the grocery that she gets to smell the open bag of bulk coffee beans.)
"FEE-fee!"

"Joy, tell me 'gold-fish'!" (Goldfish crackers at snack).
"Fee-fsh!"

"Want some music?" (Baby Einstein soundtrack on CD).
"muh-ick!"

Besides the songs she chimed in on, here are -- surely just some -- of the words she attempted yesterday, either in imitation (often prompted) or initiation.

Coffee, goldfish, music, candy, kiss, pear, chip, go, open, bye-bye, ball, more, drink, juice, lion, cracker.

Happy, happy Mother's Day!

Growing Girls

Both Joy and Rose are making transitions from one clothing size to another.

Of course, it would happen simultaneously. And it would happen right when the stores have finished selling off their winter clearance and have barrelled all the way into summer. Shorts! Swimsuits! Beach wear!

Does nobody realize that we're supposed to have a low temperature of FOUR DEGREES here on Thursday?! (And yes, that would be Fahrenheit.)

Fortunately, I have two girls. So I have a nice stash of hand-me-downs from Rose to Joy. Joy doesn't mind a whit. Rose doesn't mind secondhand goodies either, perhaps having absorbed my delight in thrift-store shopping. It's cheap, it's eco-friendly, it supports good causes, what's not to like? It also beats new-clothing shopping in another way. One of my favorite Rose-clothes stores, Kohl's, has the cutest girl-stuff in their little girls department, sizes 4-6x. Except that Rose is now a size 7, so she moves over into their big girl department, sizes 7-16.

I will NOT dress my 7-year-old like a teenager. Give me thrift-store selection any day.

Anyone got any favorite not-too-expensive stores for that in-between girl stage, beyond little-girl but not yet tween/teen?

Meanwhile, the most definitive up-sizing for Joy was with her footie-jammies. The 4T's were getting snug on her, which was just as cute as could be. I love putting her in footie-jammies because they've got that long zipper all the way up the leg, and she can close that zipper the whole length by herself.

Unfortunately, she'd been doing a lot of unzipping too during her middle-of-the-night wakeful hours. We'd been finding her in the mornings with her feet still in the footies, but the rest of the jammie all unzipped in a heap around those footies.

So we moved her up to Rose's old 5T footie-jammies, which fit surprisingly well.

Even more surprising? The night-time unzipping stopped.

Clever, growing girl. She was trying to tell us that she was too big for her jammies!