Here are some great pictures of the kids that our friend took at New Year's. Kate often puts her hand in her mouth this way. She also tends, while breastfeeding, to put her hand up to her forehead backwards (palm facing out) in a somewhat similar position to this. I wonder if she's thinking "Woe is me!" when she does it. It's kind of a woe-is-me sort of gesture.
Another new gesture besides clapping and waving--"So big"! I love that one. I never really knew about this phenomenon until after I had kids--"How big is Katie?" You ask. Then she puts her hands up high and you say "SOOO big!" It's as sweet as anything that ever was! She also has done both kinds of waving now (close and open the hand, and swivel the wrist). Betcha you didn't know there were two kinds... but there are. Actually, I'm thinking the Miss America wave is slightly different than either of these, so maybe there are three kinds, or more!
She is still a complete chatterbox when she's home, but when we go to see people she doesn't always show it, at least not right away. She takes a good while to get used to new places and new people. Sometimes she even stares warily at new people until she gets settled in. But she's definitely moving her language along--when we say "clap clap" to her, she responds back with a vocalization that sounds very close to "clap clap."
She's also getting closer to crawling. She'll move forward onto her hands and knees from a sitted position, but then her one leg gets stuck underneath and she just rocks back and forth. If she makes it over the stuck leg, using momentum, she ends up sprawled out on her belly. She doesn't mind at all, but it isn't quite crawling. She's clearly gonna be a mover and a shaker, though!
I like this picture of Finn, but at the same time it doesn't quite look like Finn to me. The mouth position is off, although I think it was just that he was caught in the middle of saying something.
Finn's language is getting more and more sophisticated, although I can't quite think of the best examples right now. He sometimes calls us "parents." He likes to sing the alternate verse to Row Row Row Your Boat (the one that ends: "Ha ha, fooled you, I'm a submarine!"). Actually, we all like singing that. :)
He sometime sulks as if he's a teenager, or at least so it seems to me. "I don't want to do nothin" he'll say in a dejected voice. I hope he's just getting it out of his system early. No major progress on the potty training front. We're looking at preschools this week, so hopefully potty training is somewhere on the horizon. He still thinks Mommy and Daddy and Katie and Bobby are his best friends! Thank goodness for those moments!
Have to run... I'm not supposed to be blogging; I'm supposed to be heading home from work.
