Changing and Growing

Beth and Luke went through a joint growth spurt!

I'll start with Luke. We're still working on signing with him (he hasn't really signed anything back yet) but he seems to be making more of an effort to "communicate" with us. He's started saying "mamamama" which was exciting, because he'd only been babbling b and d sounds up until now. He gets really upset when he doesn't get his way, and he pouts so much I just want to giggle because it's still sort of cute! If he's going for something that he shouldn't (usually a cord!) I say, "No sir Luke!" and sign "no," and he'll turn around and smile huge at me then keep going for it. As if he's saying, "Ya mom, I hear you, but this is the coolest cord ever and I need to put it in my mouth to give it a taste!"

Beth's spurt revolves around her voice. She's been changing vowels around and gets the biggest kick out of it! She'll say, "Mimi and DiDi" instead of "Mommy and Daddy," and so I decided to sing the "Apples and Bananas" song to her. Oh my goodness she loved it! That was definitely a hit, so we sing that at least a few times a day now! She's also using her voice to scream and squeal, and usually she says "no!" in a long, drawn-out squeal. Ohhh it's really testing my patience because it's so shrill and it makes Luke cry! I correct her by saying that in our house, we don't use our voices like that and if she wants to scream she can go outside and use her outside voice. Not sure it would be great for the neighbors to hear her yelling "no!" though. :-/

I just bought a new discipline book called Discipline Without Distress: 135 tools for raising caring, responsible children without timeout, punishment or bribery. The book is thick, it's going to take me awhile to get through it, but the title alone sold me! It looks very promising to me as it goes along perfectly with our no-spank approach and gentle discipline ideal. Now, if only I could find the time to read it- time to get offline! ;-)