They're Growing Up...

The "news" of this post is that my children are growing up - too fast for my liking (most days). Rhea is now capable of walking, however she still chooses not to (unless someone offers a finger or walks backwards in front of her coaxing her along). Just yesterday she easily walked through our entire house (from one bathroom to the other), which required a good 30 steps, but as I said, I had to walk backwards and coax her along. :)

Lucia's news is that she is now writing her name all by herself with no supervision or assistance, in a more or less straight line. I have pictures of her first two attempts that she made on two different days (one late August, and the other early September), and since then she's perfected the skill (of which I don't have any proof yet, but will post one eventually). See for yourselves:

This one she did all by herself in her room one day and came running out to show me. "Look, Mama, I wrote 'LUCIA'! See? LUCIA!!!" :)

And then... rendition number 2. Almost perfect! I love it. I love that the 'A' is always leaning to the left, and that she draws the 'U' with two straight lines, which she then connects at the bottom. :)



Also, within the past two days, she has gone from "merely" knowing the sounds to her letters to sounding out words. I don't want to exaggerate and say she's "reading", but she can decipher simple words like Baum (tree), Maus (mouse), Hund (dog), Zug (train), etc. Her new game is to line up all her fridge letters in some scrambled order and have me read the "word" to her, which I then do: MRFGLESABHYOT or something like that. Well, she can now sound out her gibberish as well, so I figured she might as well start sounding out actual words. :) The fun part is that she's actually enjoying the process and has a remarkable attention span when we're messing with her fridge magnets. So do I. :)