The muckier the better…

She was on the back deck the other day, playing nicely with her sister – or so I thought…

I turned my back for 1 second to get them some sunscreen. When I next looked Miss C. has totally replanted my entire flower box. Dirt, roots, and soil everywhere. She was so thrilled – she grinned with all her 5 teeth in such a beguiling way I had to laugh along with her. She did help me plant them again – along with her very worried sister saying

“Is Grandma happy?”

Well, of course, who couldn’t be with the next world-class gardener helping me RE plant?

With all her acting and mannerisms she replied that her Mom was at home. I said, and “what is Mom doing at home?”

With a huge sigh and dramatic rolling of eyes she replied that “Mom is cleaning up my room.”

“Why?” I asked innocently.

With much more eye rolling and huffing she declared “Cause it is a MESS!”

So there Beth. You know you are most appreciated in time for Mother’s Day.”

Morgan is now a very independent little girl that is three going on thirteen, complete with attitude.

The other day I said, “Morgan, could you please go put on some pants?”.

She turned and said, “Maybe” long pause, “Maybe Not”.

…

She has to brush her teeth by herself (we still have a turn, but she’s quite insistent that it is her job), she has had us change all the doorknobs in the house so she can more readily open them (we agreed, as this allows her easier access to the bathroom at night), and she’s quite the little helper in the kitchen (Beth and her make all sorts of wonderful creations).

She is also 100% certain about the things she likes and wants.

Grandma asked her what she wants for her birthday and she said, “cake, outside”.  When we followed up and asked what kind of cake, she said, “a kitty cat cake”.

Morgan is now counting to 3, can spot many letters of the alphabet, and knows most of the animals (and their sounds) in her books.

She can now carry on a pretty complicated conversation, but still signs many of her basic words.  I asked her to say thank you to Grandma the other day and she didn’t do it.  I said, “Morgan, how do you say thank you”.  Without skipping a beat she turned and said, “with my hands”.

Her imagination is starting to kick in big time.  Every night we sing a little song that we invent each night.  She directs me to what I’m supposed to sing about and then I try and rhyme something together (sometimes even successfully).  Lately she’s been mixing and matching all sorts of weird things and then starts laughing before I even begin, because she knows it’s just silly.

Morgan is also an engineer in training.  We have these bath ducks that have little LED’s in them that blink away when they contact water.  Her green duck ran “out of juice”.  Morgan asked me to help her open her blue duck (which I did) and then she proceeded to “get the guts” from the blue duck and put them into the green duck so that it works again.  Fricking cool!

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Charlotte is now baby running around the house.  She can say “momma” and “dadda” and we are pretty sure “bath”.

She has her sister’s infatuation with the fountain, and just loves the water.  She is [knock on wood] sleeping better but seems to be having a heck of a time with her teeth still.

She just howls when we brush her teeth, but we think that might not be a pained sound but just a “I don’t like this” sound.

Charlotte is such a loving girl.  She snuggles into all her stuffed animals and if you pick her up she’ll just curl right into your arm and neck.

She’s even started giving little kisses.  Wet kisses.  If you ask her to if you can give her a kiss she’ll swoop right in and either pucker her lips or give you the crown of her head to kiss.  You never know which one you’ll get until your lips press against soft wet lips or a your teeth break against her hard head.

And now she’s trained her sister to do the same trick.  *sigh*

Charlotte is also REALLY big into piecing things together.  She loves her toy blocks and stacks them from one tower to another.  She loves putting the blocks away into containers.  Today she was sitting in the recycling and was finding the old milk lids and placing them on the old milk containers.  That’s tough stuff to do.

And today when we did our Easter Egg Hunt, I found that any place that Charlotte had found an egg, she had gone back and placed a rock from the fountain in it’s place.   Adorable.

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We’ve been doing a ton of work around the house and the girls have been busy doing their best to destroy it.

Beth and the girls are putting in a garden this year (this will hopefully be our first year without deer).

We’ve had a good Easter this year, with the girls being mostly good almost tolerable.

Happy Easter 2012!

Here are some shots from March, my Dad’s birthday, and Easter:

She knows her basic colours, can count to 5 and can sing Happy Day Guggy.

She still signs ‘thank you’ but verbalizes most other words.

She is totally day potty trained and now likes to sit on the big toilet. Today Morgan and Ashaya played on the computer and with the big exercise ball.

Auntie Berta came and we made playdough animals, worms, and cookies, and danced.

It  has been one year since she came to stay with us one day a week.  What did we ever do without her visits?  Charlotte (Guggy) is now almost one year old.  Morgan is very protective and loving of her little sister.

We can’t wait to have Charlotte on Wednesday’s and Morgan on Friday’s. [editors note: ok, maybe this last bit was added by me]

Our back creek ditch is running with lovely, rippling rills of cold, clean water.

Miss Morgan discovered this delight, and proceeded to float her boats down this children’s dream of watery amplitude. Her boots filled with water, her hands and cheeks turned bright red – still she wouldn’t give up her nautical pursuits.

She laughed so hard and worked so relentlessly that the boats seemed to float away on her glee. I think she was glad to get into dry clothes and have a nice warm snack before nap time today.

Her pictures, cards, playdough; her whole being is about Guggy.  If you ask her about her sister she will say “Guggy happy.”  That seems to be more important than – Morgan happy.

We took the stroller on a very long walk, but I guess I wasn’t fast enough.  Little slave driver!

Her favorite activity is going ‘uppy down’ on our bed.  I hope she gets a real trampoline some day.

Her new phrase is “happy?”  She uses this phrase especially if she thinks you are ‘unhappy’ with something she has done.

Christmas in all its glory was especially wonderful for her.  She packs the toy soldier around and kisses him.  She makes family units out of everything:  Mommy, Daddy, Mo and Guggy.

Ashaya and her have worked out a routine for Christmas Eve, but both very shy girls will not perform, I am sure.  Morgan’s dancing is extremely energetic and the moves are most modern, but only a very few entitled people are allowed to see this extravaganza.

They like the bird feed, so Morgan can feed the deer when she feeds the birds.  She seems to take all this wild life totally in stride.

Her favorites are still the many birds, and of course the kitty cats.  We have a gray and white cat that comes to eat now.  We call him Patches.  (Pumpkin and Patches)…

It was like I had murdered one of her friends, which if you love everything like she does, I did.

She just stared and said, “Oh no”, in a very sad voice.  I assured her it was truly okay, that the pumpkin wanted to make cookies and pumpkin bread for her to eat.

She was happy with that explanation.

Her verbal development is astounding, and she is saying new words every time I see her.

Ashaya comes after school and they love to read books together in the rocking chair.  Morgan is very fond of her big cousin.

We were outside in the gorgeous sunshine.  Morgan was sans clothes, as that is the best way to get potty trained.

It is also a really good way to get some vitamin D.  She was heavily sun tan lotioned up.   The lilies, pansies, and clematis were in sumptuous and heady bloom.

Morgan was playing on the front lawn in all this natural splendor, when a huge Monarch butterfly flew toward her.  Morgan’s eyes grew huge and she indicated she wanted to kiss and feed the butterfly.  I told her we should just let the butterfly come to her.  Well, it did.  Right to her, and lighted on a lily right at her hand.  It actually came right to her.

We have the most extraordinary pictures of a tiny, naked nymph feeding this glorious creature of nature.  They were a match made in Heaven.