Caroline and Zion and Battle Berries

Caroline has been delayed almost two months behind in her gross motor skills up until about 10 months.  Then - BOOM.  She took off and caught right up.  

9 months 3 weeks - sat up from laying on own.  She was crawling at about 10 months, and pulling up about a week after she started to crawl.
At 10 months 2 weeks she was crawling all over the house.





She said her first word at 10 month 2 weeks - "Ca. Ki ca.  Ki."  Cat.  Kitty Cat.  Kitty.  But she whispers all of them when she is saying them.  And she listens with delight when I talk about the "ki ca" back to her because she knows exactly what I am talking about it.  Her next word about the next day or so was "Da" when she saw Tim on the computer screen while we were video calling him.



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I am in love with Zion's wide eyed delight in kindergarten.  He had shy delighted happiness when he made a "new friend" on the first day of kindergarten.  His new friend was a girl but he didn't know her name.  The second day of kindergarten he made another new friend who was a boy.  He loves the idea of having friends.  I think it feels very grown up to him to talk about new friends after hearing his brothers talk about their school friends.  But he is just adorable.  Today I asked him what they had for snack and he said it was a "bunny snack.  Nobody knew what it was called but we all liked it."  He just kept talking about bunnies and it was just so cute.  :D  Bunny is a little kid word and he is still so little and cute to me.  He also was wide eyed and happy about eating in the cafeteria.  Kindergarten.  Where all your big kid dreams come true.

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I saw this bag of...green things...on the counter the other day and asked Israel if he knew what they were.  "Oh yes," he quickly affirmed.  "They are battle berries."

"Battle berries," I repeated with mild astonishment.  I had never heard of such a thing.

"Yes - we throw them at each other and have battles with them."

Oh.  :)
                                


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The kids were playing outside the other day, happily doing their own thing and the day was just beautiful, and I watched them and thought how the much of the goodness of childhood is made up of dirt, sand, and water.  :)  They just never grow old.