Love of Language

There needs to be some documentation of the growth of our girls. The past year and a half has seen so many changes.

With language acquisition, Chloe was much different than Maggie. Maggie's marker for language progress was the birth of Chloe. When Chloe reached the same age of 16 months the word count for Chloe was probably a little higher than Maggie's, but Chloe's vocabulary was almost all signs: 70-ish words but only 10 or so were vocal. At her second birthday, Chloe was still a quiet girl, but she'd put a few two-word sentences together with signs. After her second birthday, Laura said that she felt like living with Chloe was like living with Lassie. Chloe would point, and grunt to get what she wanted. Chloe would display her satisfaction or dissatisfaction in grunts and gestures until she'd get what she wanted, and the rest of us modified our behavior to Chloe's actions.

At Christmas time (2011) Chloe was surprising us with short spoken sentences of two or three words together. You know you have a quiet child when they're almost 2 and a half and two words coming out of their mouth at the same time surprises you.

Now Chloe is almost a couple of months past her third birthday. Sadly the signs are almost completely lost. She has maintained her cuteness by saying 'W's for her 'L's, 'D's instead of 'G's, and 'T's instead of the hard 'C's. A "little guy" who is "so cute", ends up being a "wittow die" who is "so toot". She had us laughing the day she said "Oh, deez".

Chloe is still somewhat quiet, but you can really catch her talking when she has her dolls and toys. During play time you can hear some vocabulary, but it's all of the inflections and tones of voice that really display Chloe's character. Almost any toy gets put into the family, and when left alone Chloe will have whole conversations between "mommies", "daddies", "babies" and the occasional sibling. The babies seem to miss Mommy a lot, but Mommy is quite re-assuring that the babies will be okay.

Singing is another part of vocal play time for Chloe, and she will sing the “ABCs” or “Twinkle, Twinkle” in loops all throughout the day.

Maggie has had her own adventures in language. She continues her love of letters and words. It is fun to watch her mind work. A year ago or more, we were driving in the car and Maggie asked if we too could see the ".... flamingo?" Laura and I were stumped. Then we finally caught on. Flamingos are birds with long necks. Cranes are birds with long necks. We were diving past a series of 4 or 5 cranes doing construction on I-15. Case closed.

Laura and I haven't done anything spectacular with Maggie to help her read. We've just kept words and letters as games to play. Maggie was the one who decided that letters were fun and we got a few DVDs on the alphabet to help her out. Loving the letters has turned into reading, with the help of some picture books from the library. Sometimes I'm not sure how much Maggie is reading and how much she is recognizing word shapes, but I know she does both. She will read a few pages during reading time. If the book is a favorite (and not too long) she might read the whole book. Maggie will make a few mistakes, but if you point at the words she got wrong, she'll try again and then some of the reading kicks in. When I've tried to check out a picture book in Spanish, Maggie has gotten mad at me because she doesn't recognize the Spanish words. She only wants to read English.

The fun part about Maggie reading is that she just expects it to be part of the conversation. If there are words in front of her she will try and read. This is the same game she did with letter recognition, but now she’s trying whole words. I have received series of text messages of "maggie", "maggie", "daddy", "mommy", "coco", "love", etc. as she hunts and pecks at an open keyboard at home.

When I'd take her running, sometimes she'd get after me and I would have to go back so she could read the signs we had passed. She'd ask for help on some of the bigger words, but Maggie gives them a good effort first. Maggie has also surprised her primary teacher when she was reading the words as the teacher was writing on the board, "I can forgive others".

Another surprising example of Maggie reading was when I took the girls to see the primate skulls display in the hallway at UVU. I pointed at a label and told her that it said "chimpanzee". Maggie looked at the next label and read “orangutan” even though the label said “Pygmy Orangutan” – she was skipping the word she didn't know. The display only has skulls and labels. There are no pictures, so I was impressed. Then Maggie found “gorilla” and since she was on a roll she also tried to sound out “Gigantopithecus” (an extinct primate, larger than a gorilla). Maggie did pretty well. She got a couple of “g” sounds in and a “t” sound or two and a mumble to finish off the last syllables. This isn't a species I’d heard of before, and I still have a hard time saying it as well as Maggie did.

I know they've said more cute stuff than this, but I had to get at least a couple of things down. It is fun to live in a house with such bright little girls.

I may have to rename this blog "Faceterest" or "Pinbook" to see if either will help Laura to start posting again.

Conversations with Maggie

Me: I think you're cute.

Mags: I think you're cute.

Me: I think you're smart.

Mags: I think you're smart.

Me: I think you're funny.

Mags: I think you're funny.

Me: I think you're pretty.

Mags: I think you're pretty.

Me: I think you're silly.

Mags: I think you're ssss....grumpy.

Me: What?! Why do you think I'm grumpy?

Mags: Oh...because of your face...

hmmmm, I'm not sure how to take this.

Maggie's latest animal interest

Yesterday, Maggie was looking through my UVU bag to see what treasures she could find. She found plenty to play with, and she found a new animal to ask me about.

At first she thought it was a tiger. As you can see, the yellow on the edge of the mascot's face isn't hard to imagine as the stripes on the face of a tiger. Good dad that I am, I let her know that UVU's mascot is a wolverine, and then we googled some pictures so she could see what a real one looks like.

Maggie was very impressed with the little fur-ball. Looking at one picture, she said, "Like a bear." Then with next picture we looked at she said, "Like a skunk." You should be impressed with Maggie. One of the common names for the wolverine is "skunk bear". The wolverine is a carnivore like a bear, and part of the same family as skunks, the Mustelidae, which also has weasels, otters, badgers and such.

With Maggie's new-found enthusiasm, today Laura and I decided to take the girls up to campus as I ran a couple of errands to get ready for school. Even though this enthusiasm is probably short-lived - what did you expect from a three year-old? - I thought it'd be fun to show her some of the wolverine statues on campus. Between the few statues and the multitudinous logos, Maggie and copy-cat Chloe were busy pointing and exclaiming,

"Wurmereem!"

I never realized how many mascot logos were on campus. It was borderline sensory overload.

Even YOU can use Venn diagrams!

Dear Coco,

Daddy still loves you.

Entitlement Trap

I was able to attend a couple of days of Education Week this year. It was such an incredible experience. One of the classes that really touched me was done by Linda and Richard Eyre. They have so many wonderful parenting ideas and I was really impressed by the them. I was especially interested in the idea of building a family economy. My girls are both so young now, but I still worry about teaching them the right way to handle money and how to avoid them feeling like they are entitled to every new gadget or name-brand thing that comes along. I have been thinking about this for a while now. The class on 'Building a Family Economy' was exactly the answer I was looking for.

The Eyre's new book is The Entitlement Trap. It's not on sale yet, but if you pre-order you can get an awesome deal, and be entered in to win some unreal prizes. I'm passing this on cause I think they've got some excellent parenting tips available. I know I'm always looking for good suggestions.

To read more about the book and to pre-order go here.

Bear Lake with James and Jody's Family

We were lucky enough to get to go to Bear Lake again this summer. James and Jody invited us to come and spend a few days with them. They came to Utah for a Dental Conference so we got to hang out with them here, then we drove up to Bear Lake together on their way home. We had such a great time. The Condo that James rented was beautiful and the weather was perfect. Maggie and Chloe were spoiled with attention from their Aunt and Uncle and Cousins. It was absolutely wonderful. Maggie has asked about everyday since we got back when we can go back with Uncle Jamesy to Bear Lake....I'm wondering the same thing, hopefully soon!

Chloe and Davin.

Of course she is doing her typical 'smile'.

The aftermath of doing her 'smile' with sandy fingers.

Maggie was so excited to ride with James on his new Boat.

Last year in Waterton, James took her for a ride in the Kayak, she talked about it for an entire year. I think the SeaDoo make just as big of an impression.

I love this picture.

I think it's so cute that they are both matching with the red life jackets and sunglasses.

Just catching up on a little light reading. Dave has to teach from a new book next semester, so some of his vacation was spent reading his new text book...exciting, I know. At least Maggie loves biology books too. (Dave loves it when she tries to say "mitochondria".)

Hanging out on the beach.

I think this is such a cute picture. I think these 2 look so much alike. Chloe was in Heaven playing with her cousins. I love it when my girls get 'Cousin Time'.

Playing in the water.

Rylin, Chloe and Maren.

James, Davin and Jody getting ready to take Davin on the tube.

Playing in the Sand.

Maggie sometimes makes a funny face when I tell her to smile at the camera. This time I told her to smile and show her pretty teeth, it worked out pretty well.

This is Chloe's smile with her 'pretty teeth'.

It didn't work quite as well.

Me at Bear Lake.

I had to take this self-portrait as proof that I was really there.

When we went to Bear Lake in July, Maggie would not get in the water. There were lots of sticks and seaweed floating at the shore and she was a little freaked out. This time was much better. It took her a little bit to get used to being in the Lake, but after a while she LOVED it. Once she figured out the water was safe, Maggie spent the next twenty minutes just jumping up and down and splashing.

What a cute couple.

Chloe was probably in the tube for over an hour. The kids would bounce her and spin her, she thought it was the greatest.

Swimming around with Daddy and Maren. Maggie paused in her bounces long enough to look at the camera.

James and Jody on the beach after a SeaDoo ride.

Jamesy Baby

Check out his awesome hair...he's a little wind blown.

My Cute Momma!

I can't even tell you how much I love this woman, look at how cute she is. This is a picture from my parent's blog. She is on a boat crossing the Congo River, how cool is that. They are crossing between Brazzaville and Kinshasha with Elder Kola (an Area Seventy) and Brother Kubangila (Country Public Affairs Director). While they were in Brazzaville and Kinshasha they were able to meet with several of their Missionaries from when they served in Ivory Coast, It's been fun to hear names that I recognize from when I went to visit.

I'm so proud of my parents, I think they are pretty amazing. I love hearing about their adventures and the many, many miracles that they have been able to witness. The Church growth in Africa is unbelievable, the Church is True!

Their blog address is http://daphyafrica.blogspot.com/ if you would like to see more :)