Another big update

I am loving having a boy and a girl and seeing all the differences with their development.  Except for girly clothes for her and obvious boy clothes for him, I have raised them without regard to gender.  Yet, they have innate preferences that appear to be gender specific.  Theresa loves her "babies." We only have a few dolls for her, but she loves to treat them with incredible care.  She puts them in their little crib and wants me to sing "rock-a-bye baby" in order to put them to sleep.  Oftentimes when I go to feed Theresa her bottle of milk, she runs and grabs her baby so that we can feed her baby too.  I did not raise her to care for babies, but she gravitates to them all on her own. 

In clear contrast, Raffaele never took to a doll, stuffed animal, or blanket.  I did try to introduce him to a little stuffed animal with which to sleep at night (hoping it would help him sleep through the night), but he did not care to have a doll.  With Theresa, I never made such an effort; she naturally drifted to her dolls.

The vocabulary and sentence structure differences are astounding!  On August 27, Theresa spoke her first five-word sentence:  "Mommy, where are you, Mommy?"  She's just over 16 months old.  Raffaele, at 18 months, still had only THREE discernable words and no sentences.  I'm blown away by Theresa's command of  language, especially after having had a late talker.  (Raffaele has a full vocabulary and speaks in long sentences now.)  On August 23, Theresa clearly spoke the word "delicious" and was trying to say "watermelon."  On August 21 she began to speak in two-word sentences, it being to me, "stand up."  It's amazing to me that in the span of six days, she went from two- to five-word sentences.

I took Raffaele to his first dentist appointment last Friday.  It turns out he has all 20 baby teeth -- I don't know when those last four molars arrived! AND he SLEPT through the dentist's entire exam -- a first ever for him he said!   His teeth and gums are totally healthy!  I am so pleased.  What a great appointment we had.

On August 25, Theresa gave Daddy her first kiss to him.  So cute.  I'm not sure if she actually puckered.  She's been putting her lips on me and saying "MA!" for A LONG time now, so I'm glad she finally got around to kissing him.

I love having Raffaele as Theresa's big brother.  He helps her so much.  The other day, Theresa was trying to get a crayon out of a bag, and Raffaele ran to help her, declaring, "Super Raffaele to the rescue!"  These are beautiful moments to witness.  He also defends her at the playground.  Not too long ago, another child accidentally pushed Theresa, and she fell.  Raffaele (who had witnessed this) came running from the opposite side of the playground, and as I swooped him up (because it was clear to me that he wanted to punish that child), he was yelling at the child, "NO HIT BABY!"

When Theresa wakes up in the morning, she wakes up with a word. Sonetimes it is "Elmo." The other day it was "mouse." Usually, it's "Elmo;" she must dream of him.  She also likes to begin her day by leaning on me to sit, and she wants me to read to her.  How wonderful that she loves book-reading!

Raffaele continues to be a picky eater, yet he has happily taken his cod liver oil every day for the past month. He's got a really interesting palate.
 
Raffaele wrote his name in capital letters on August 4.  He does quite a lot with letters and numbers and drawings.  I''m blown away by all the little drawings that he makes.  It's very creative.  I've been saving them or taking pictures of them.  He still doesn't hold a writing utensil correctly -- and I bought him something to encourage the right way to hold a pencil/crayon -- but he does pretty well the way he's holding the writing utensils.

Raffaele likes playing on the computer.  He loves a game that we got from my brother called Trainz.  It's amazing.  He builds the landsape, the village, the traintracks, he selects his trains, and then he runs his trains.  Finally, he likes to CRASH his trains.  So funny.  I'm amazed by how much he can build on the computer.  He loves it.
 
Theresa began counting to five on July 29.  She so cute.  She holds out all five fingers.

On Sunday afternoons, after church and lunch, we've made it a little tradition to go to the park.  They have a splash area there.  Theresa LOVES running through the water and getting soaked, and I have wonderful video of it.  Raffaele does not like getting wet very much, but the last few times that we've gone, he's gotten more into it.
 
We flew to NY recently for a little vacation.  I advised Raffaele of our impending trip beforehand.  When leaving Playtown the day before, Raffaele waved, "bye-bye, Playtown. I going airplane."  I'm not sure if he completely understood, but it appears he understood somewhat.

Elmo:  Theresa loves the Sesame Street videos on YouTube especially the ones with Elmo.  I've seen so many myself now, over and over again.  She loves Elmo.  Like I said before, I think she even dreams of him.
 
We had some wonderful, early sucess in potty training our three-year-old. He was going to the potty consistently whenever he needed to go! However, he is no longer consistent and will either sit or stand there urinating on himself because he doesn't want to be bothered to make the trip to the potty. It's not like we have a big house. The potty is a few feet away! He obviously knows what to do. I would think that he would see that the resulting actions required to clean him (even bathe him at times) after such "accidents" are a major inconvenience to him, but it appears he doesn't see them that way.