After helping me unload the dishwasher, Mason-Kate promptly threw her hands in the air and shouted, "I did it! Mommy, I did it!" I smiled and told her thank you. Apparently she wanted more. She came over to me, kindly grabbed my arms and said, "like dis mommy, do like me!" So I followed her instruction and threw my arms in the air. Then she said, "Sing with me mommy, I did it!" So, we sang and we laughed and we sang some more. The thing is, she has moves that only she can do. She throws in these random jumps and skips as she sings and dances. So cute. When I asked her if she wanted to take dance, she responded by saying, "yeah and my boys clap for me."

What To Do When You Are Two?

Mason-Kate is all of two years old. And she will show you in all of her many ways just what two years old means to her. She will giggle, she will dance around, she will take care of her babies, she will put herself in time-out, etc. She is two. Doing speech therapy with a two year old can be entertaining or stressful depending on the day. Today was entertaining even though, admittingly so, MK was being less than cooperative. The height of the session came towards the end when MK was being shown cards of the "hard" sounds. They have pictures of dolls, dogs, geese, zippers and such. MK can say all of them except "doll" for which she says "goll" every.single.time.no.matter.what. I realized today that she knows it is a hard word for her to say as she announced "no, Lisa, I can't say that word."
Another enlightening moment occurred this afternoon. The boys participate in a Spanish class on Wednesday mornings. There are two other children in the class with them and they have a sister from China (and a brother waiting to come home!). We have become good friends and try to have lunch together after class sometimes. Today we decided to dine at our house. The big children were all upstairs playing and the little girls followed along. My friend and I enjoyed "15 minutes peace" while visiting downstairs, no interruptions, no crying, nothing but the mumblings of happiness upstairs. Alas, as I have said before, all good things must end and so it came time for them to pack up to go home. Before I ventured upstairs, J, MK's friend, told me that she and Mason-Kate had been playing in Mason-Kate's room. I was so pleased. MK has a friend that she looks forward to seeing and playing with AND they actually played, together, alone, all by themselves in Mason-Kate's room. How sweet. Then upon entering MK's room, I realized why no one should ever leave two, two year old girls alone. To them, I am sure they saw nothing but beauty. They had very carefully taken every single piece of clothing out of MK's dresser and very diligently placed it on the floor. The girls, pretending to be the little mommys that they are, had gone to great strides to make sure their babies were well taken care of....they had gotten crib sheets and placed them in the doll bed AND it was neatly done. They had managed to spread out a blanket perfectly, no humps, and all of MK's puzzles were on the blanket to put back together again. It was quite cute. Later, after it was all cleaned up, I asked MK why she had taken it all out of her drawers and her response was, "Jaida, me, decorating my room mommy!"

Mason-Kate was born with a cleft lip and a cleft palate. Her cleft lip repair was performed in China when she was 5 1/2 months old. Her medical records state that she was part of the "Tomorrow Plan". I have always wondered exactly what that meant and today I got the answer. The Tomorrow Plan Project took place during the years of 2004 - 2007. It was launched by the Chinese government and was one of the largest humanitarian aid initiatives in history. Christian World Adoption agency helped promote and support this project. The purpose was to provide corrective surgeries to 30,000 orphans with special needs. Amazing!

Pryce announced today that he loves going to school in his pajamas. Me too! Many days I wear a hat due to the fact that we are just going to be around the house so why get all dolled up. Last week I took Pryce out shopping with me while Colin played golf. I told P I was sorry that I had a hat on AGAIN. He looked up and said, "It's ok mom, I like you like that!" He always knows what to say!

On most days I am quite confident when teaching the children. I feel as though I am teaching them what they need to know and then some, on most days. And then there are the days when I wonder why I am not as smart as they are! For instance, Colin had co-op homework that we were looking over together. One of his questions was about a maglev train. Assuming that he had no idea what this was, I told him he was going to need to do some research on it. No research needed. He quickly rattled off exactly what a maglev train was, how it operates and compared it to a monorail at Disney. Ok, so how did he learn this? His science book? No, he read it in a Disney book he read awhile ago! Unbelievable.

And Mason-Kate. She is so precious. She is still on her kick of telling us how much she loves us. When I tell her that I love her to the moon and back, she tells me that is too far! She is busy playing with probably the worst behaved child in her Mother's Day Out program so I am taking the approach that everyone needs a friend, even the not so obedient ones. She is growing up way too fast! Really.