Charlotte's gettin' into stuff. (Alli, that was for you - get it?) And a Finley update, too!

Charlotte enjoys trying on Mommy's clothes and jewelry (photo), doing anything Finley's doing, and is starting to put two words together! She calls Finley "Heeney" and loves to name everyone in our (extended) family. When I ask her if she's my little girl, she always says, "No! Gago!" (she is insisting that she is not a little girl, she is a dog) For the record, Mommy is a fish, Heeney is a "Tat" and Daddy is a "Heehaw" or a "mun-key"

Tonight when I got home from doing some errands she very proudly used two words together as she greeted me at the door with, "Hi, Momma!"

Finley is good at all of his letters now and is starting to take a stab at spelling words on his own. He's very excited about learning new things and is full of questions. He is also interested in counting and the beginnings of addition and subtraction as they relate to items he is counting (clementines, for instance...). As he gets older and more capable, he's also becoming more willful and stubborn, which has caused some struggles. For example, one morning last week he ended up delaying his breakfast for 2 hours because he refused to wash his hands before eating - if he doesn't want to do something (for whatever reason), it's very difficult to convince him otherwise without a big blowup. Even so, he's almost always very affectionate and sweet. Sometimes he announces out of the blue, "I love everybody!", and last week one day he asked me to stop the car right then and there so he could give me a kiss and a hug. At school he has become more comfortable with art projects and singing. His singing talents and creativity have inspired a few boyish parody songs (imagine adding bathroom talk to your favorite Christmas songs...).