Yesterday in the car, Alaina was complaining that Emi can't say her name properly (she calls her "La la" most of the time). We all kept trying to get her to say it, but nothing worked. So Alaina said, "You need to stop and think before you speak!" Emi paused for a moment and then said, "Bounce house!" :-) (We recently bought a small bounce house for our basement from their cousins.)
Also, Alaina gets irritated with her sister a lot and often says, "Go away, sister!" The other day, Emi said, "Go away, sister!" and now has been saying it whenever Alaina starts to get stern and frustrated with her. I encouraged her to think about how she talks to Emi and consider whether she wants her to speak this way to her. Food for thought, I hope.
Emi is talking a lot these days and is very understandable in most of the words she says. She is starting to combine words more and more into 2-3 word phrases and sentences. She also impressed us in December with being able to thread beads onto pipe cleaners. She is not very fearful and very willing to take physical risks. She loves pulling a stepstool or stepladder over to anywhere so she can see things and reach things. She is still a very curious girl who wants to see everything, look inside every drawer, cupboard, watch me making dinner (it drives her crazy when she can't see what's on the stove), etc. She also sometimes looks at the back of a tablet or iPad to see how it works. She loves electronic things and pressing buttons. She also still is very friendly, social, and smiley. She loves going places and visiting people or having people come over. She has been swimming twice now and loves it (she keeps grabbing her shoes and socks and saying, "Swim! Pool!"). She's going to start taking swimming lessons this weekend. She also loves being read to and has a good attention span with that (often having a favorite that she wants us to read several times in a row).
