Growing and Growing

Eleanor and Madeline are growing much too quickly. Everyday I think this will be the morning that Ella wakes up speaking complete sentences in coherent English. She is moving so fast with her language skills, singing, describing her play, talking to her dolls, and mimicking every sentence out of Madi's mouth. The current favorite phrases out of Eleanor are: "I do it" "My mom" and "Me Naked." Ella does seem to have slowed down a bit on the physical growth side, so I am curious to see what her stats will be in December. Matt and I think she is working her second year molars through right now, the constant drool and lack of sleep are pretty clear indicators. As always, Eleanor prefers to be naked all day, every day. This has led to struggles during all dressing situations and Ella's current favorite look which is rainboots and a pull-up. Eleanor can put her boots on all by herself (slowly but surely) and is so enthusiastic about having a pull-up like a big girl.

Madeline is such an academic. She is always asking me how to spell words and is very focused on what the starting letter is of objects thanks to her letter-a-week activities at school. Madi is also pretty interested in the fact that the moon seems to move with her whenever we are in the car. She is unhappy about the time change causing it to get dark early and interfering with her evening activities with the neighborhood kids. Madeline has a much longer attention span now with books and loves to "read" to Ella. I am hoping she will be a reader as she grows up, but Matt pointed out that Madeline can barely sit still longer than 15 minutes at a time and gets super antsy if she is at home without any planned activities on the weekends (apparently this is the trait Matt gave Madi while Ella is much more likely to be a homebody, couch potato like her mom). Madi has been super excited to see two rainbows in the last week while we drove to school. She names all the colors, explains to me how some colors are made by mixing others, and then sings a song to Ella about rainbows. So darn cute!

 On Veteran's Day while the kids were at school, Matt and I managed to get some cleaning time. We cleaned out and re-organized the entire garage . . .  Wow!!! Matt took a huge load of stuff to Goodwill. We also took the crib apart since it never gets used and went through all of the girls clothes, reorganized their closet and dresser, etc. It was a busy and oh so productive day. I don't know why I am always surprised by how much we get done so quickly when the kids are at school, but I am shocked as usual by our cleaning skills!