(Ana playing with a food cover.)
Yesterday I got a text message from Tami letting me know that Ana just told her "I love you" for the first time. I am jealous! Happy, and jealous. As Ana is getting a little older she has been cuddling me more and more and occasionally asking for me which feels super good. She still wants her Mami above all others and needs her Mami to be the one to make it all better when she is hurt. But she likes Papi to pick her up and show her around. And she is so sweet and funny saying "Yeah!" in her super positive and optimistic way to answer questions and laughing and running around.
A couple of days ago Tami told me that Ana just said her first complete sentence of several words, too. "I want wa-was now, Mami." Wa-was means milk to her. She also still says Daddy to mean Enzo weather talking about him or pointing him out in pictures. Where did she get that? She will yell out "Daddy!" when she wants Enzo and she will talk about him and if you answer her with "Enzo is right over there," she will say "Yeah!" and run over to him.
Enzo, who is almost three now, started pretend writing. I looked it up because I remember this being a developmental stage and it is. It shows up on all the lists for 3 to 5 year olds, so it's happening at the right time. It's so neat and surprising to me even if it's normal, though. My kid is making small wriggly circle-like shapes that are the right size for written letters and they arc across the paper one after the other in rows. We saw this for the first time earlier this week when Enzo brought the paper, which had originally been a list Tami was making, and a pen he found and showed us the writing he had been working on for several minutes scrolled all over the paper. Then he said "P is for Papi" and wrote one of his proto-letters and continued with other letters and words. Super cool!
(Enzo with Aunti JoJo after his haircut.)
Also to note, just for the record so that when my kids read this they have a more complete picture of themselves as children, Enzo has become the worlds most picky eater. Unlimited fruit and bread; that's what he wants. Tortillas are ok too as a form of bread. Cheese is the third food group he loves but we have emptied the house of it in an attempt to bring him around to a better balanced diet. So far, that pretty much means that everything we serve him is ignored except the bread/tortilla and the fruit on his plate. The one addition is that lately he has begun eating eggs again. All this leads to limited eating, the need to buy a lot of apples because he can eat those one after the other, and a nightly routine of Enzo saying that he is hungry and me reminding him that we just had dinner and then assuring him he can eat again in the morning when the sun comes up.
Ana continues to happily eat anything. She eats whatever Enzo eats and whatever he does not. She likes salsa, yes, salsa. When there are chips and salsa out she grabs a chip and goes straight in for the salsa with it. When Enzo decided he would eat the corn bread but not the bean soup, we were having for dinner he invited his sister to sit next to him to "share," as he explained to me, and they happily ate off of his plate together until all was gone. Cute. I like how Enzo has learned to use "Sharing" to get what he wants out of life. He is becoming strategic, my little brat is. So then I add more bean soup for Ana but I accidentally gave her more from the adult chili batch instead of the kids batch. She takes a spoon full, makes a face, and then apparently adjusted, goes right on finishing the rest of her spicy bean soup.
In funny family news.... apparently we talk in our sleep. A few days ago Tami was awake in bed while our two kids sleeping next to her started calling out "Mami...Mami.....Mami!!" over and over and back and forth. After a while of this, she tells me, I, who had fallen asleep in another room down the hall yell out to them in my sleep "Mami has to go to work!" Ha! What dreams were we all having and how did we reconcile all of this in each of our dream worlds? At least Tami got a good laugh out of it.
(Getting the bug ready for the Niles Festival of Lights Parade on Friday.)