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Here are some log entries from the last few months:

12.31.07 Isaac remarked this evening that “legs li ve in pants.” A week or so ago he told me that we should name the new baby Charlotte and we can have two Charlottes. He said that one will get bigger and he told me that I needed to keep the other one a baby.

Isaac has some phrases that are his own such as: “That I doo-d (sounds like dude)” meaning that’s what I did and “that will be a good idea.” Charlotte loves to approach me with demands. The two most common are “mom, I need cereals” and “I need Mps Mps” (meaning M&Ms).

1.4.08 Every night Isaac needs to make sure he’ll be safe before he falls to sleep. Lately it’s just “mom, keep me safe from all of them” but sometimes it’s “keep me safe from every thing” or “ don’t let anything come in and don’t let nothing come in either” or “keep me safe from the naughty list” which turned into “keep me safe from the nice list.” One night he was worried that babies would sneak in while he was asleep and suck on his train tracks. Another night he thought an engine would get him. One night after I read him a book about animals in the Ocean he said pointing to the book “keep me safe from those animals.” After watching Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer he asked us to take all the scary things to the dentist to have their teeth taken out. One night he even asked me to take all the bugs to the dentist too to get their teeth taken out. We went to the dentist this week for a consultation which took a rather long time and when I tucked him in tonight he said “take them to the dentist and have them take a long time.”

1.22.08 Motivated by the desire not to have three children in diapers, I decided to get serious about potty training tonight. I made some charts for the children and explained to Isaac that when he filled up the row with 5 stars he could earn something special. Whe n I brought in three packaged trucks to show him what he could earn, the urge to use the potty came quickly and to my surprise he actually went. I let him place his first sticker on the chart and then told him that he could drink lots of water and then try to go again to earn another sticker. Little did I know how effective this method would be. I introduced the concept sometime around 6:00 PM and by 8:30 PM he had successfully used the potty five times and earned his first truck! At this pace he’ll earn the other two trucks before I get home from work tomorrow! Oh well, beggers can’t be choosers!

Charlotte continues to amaze me with her increasingly complex and grammatically correct utterances. She adds endings to words and uses better grammar than her big brother. It just seems to come to her so naturally. She enjoys pointing out the obvious and comparing everything in the room. She’ll be eating dinner and say “there’s daddy’s shirt, there’s mommy’s shirt, there’s Isaac’s shirt,” then point to herself and say “Charlotte’s shirt.” While I was on the phone this evening she just climbed up on my lap and said “there’s mommy’s lips, Charlotte’s lips, Jill Pole’s lips” when I came home from work she took inventory of the room by saying “there’s a girl, there’s another girl, there’s another girl, there’s a boy.” She seems to enjoy pointing out gender. She’ll come up to me and give me a hug and say “we are girls” then point to Isaac and say “Isaac’s a boy.” We hadn’t talked about the baby in my tummy for awhile and Charlotte didn’t seem to understand when I explained to her that a baby girl was growing in my tummy, but the other day completely out of the blue she put her hand on my tummy and said “there’s a baby girl in there” I had only a moment to be astounded before she lifted up her shirt and declared that there was also a baby girl in her tummy—so I’m still not sure she understands the concept.

2.12.08 Isaac’s prayers are sometimes interesting. I remember one night he said “thank thee for Charlotte not being good for prayer.” Recently he said “thank thee for all the good things, thank thee for all the naughty things, thank thee for things that will bite me.”  Tonight in his prayer he said “thank thee for naughtyness.”

I don’t remember when a child first said this next one but I think it was Charlotte several months ago, but both children have said it since. They sometimes tell me that glassess keep mom’s eyes warm.

2.23.08 Isaac ran in to the kitchen where I was making dinner and announced “Mommie, I asked Heavenly Father on my knees for donuts.” I told him that if he cleaned up his books, I’d give him a brownie and he responded by asking if Heavenly Father would give him donuts after the brownie.

9.24.07 I had pulled the vacuum and other similar items out of the kitchen so that I could mop the floor. When Isaac saw them in the living room he said “This is a vacuum store.” I wasn’t intentionally correcting him when I replied “yeah, it looks like a vacuum store.” He quickly responded wi th “Not looks like a vacuum store, it is a vacuum store!” I didn’t realize how often I respond to his declarations with the phrase “yeah, it looks like_____” until I started getting the correction: “not looks like ____, it is ____!” He’ll tell me that his block creation is a rocket and I’ll say “yeah, it looks like a rocket” to which he responds “not looks like a rocket, it is a rocket.” The latest correction came as we were reading our new batc h of library books. I had this book about exotic cats and on the cover was a mostly white cat. Isaac declared that Jill Pole (our kitten) was on the cover of the book to which I replied that the kitten looked a little like Jill Pole and you can probably guess his response, it was “not looks like Jill Pole, it is Jill Pole!” Then he opened the book and said “more Jill Poles.”

Charlotte has embraced negation, particularly at bedtime. I’ll say “it’s bedtime Charlotte” to which she’ll replay “no bedtime” then I’ll say that it’s time to change her diaper and she’ll say “no diaper change.” “Time to read scriptures” = “no scriptures.” When I tell her that it’s time to say a prayer and she’ll say “no prayer” and as I say the prayer she sometimes says no to the things in the prayer. “thank thee for Isaac” = “no  Isaac” and so on. Just before I lay her down in her bed I always tell her that I love her, to which she replies “no love you.”

When she’s not negating everything I say, she’ll often pray with me. It started out just at night when I’d say prayers with her before laying her in her crib. She’d start saying “Thank you, Isaac. Thank you, mommy. Thank you, daddy. . . .” with a big “Amen” at the end. It wasn’t long after she started saying night time prayers that she started also joining in on other prayers. Now she’s to a point where we say the prayer over dinner and we can hear her sweet little voice saying “Thank you, Isaac. Thank you, mommy. Thank you, daddy. . . .” Our prayers at night often have a little girly echo and even in sacrament when someone gets up to pray we often see Charlotte bow her head, fold her arms and say “Thank you, Isaac. Thank you, mommy. Thank you, daddy. . . .”

I need to write in my log more often because each story I finish reminds me of another to write. Last night we had some family over for dinner and Isaac was so anxious to eat that he pointed to his grandfather and said “Grandpa, close your eyes and put your arms like this” after which he demonstrated his best praying posture.

I was adding to my log today and I went back and read some old entries.  It was fun to read about some of the ways Isaac and Charlotte related to each other.  Here’s a few entries that I thought were of interest.

(this is from when Charlotte was only 6 days old)  1.20.06 I laid Charlotte on a blanket in the living room and went into the kitchen to get something. Charlotte let out a cry, and as I went from the kitchen to the living room, Isaac came running towards me crying. I found Charlotte soaking wet with my cup and some ice next to her. I assume Isaac tried to give her a drink of my ice water which resulted in him spilling ice water all over her face and shirt.

2.8.06 Today during scripture reading time I was holding Charlotte and Isaac kept leaning over and saying ‘kiss, kiss’ then he’d give Charlotte a kiss. The funny thing was after the kiss he’d act like he was picking the kiss back up and then putting it back on his lips.

3.10.06 I was in the kitchen when I heard Isaac saying ‘door, do or.’ I went into the living room to find Isaac had placed his toy truck on Charlotte’s lap and was trying to teach her how to open the door. He’d say ‘door, door’ and put her little hand on the door of the truck.

3.12.06 I found Isaac showing Charlotte a book. He placed it on her lap and was turning pages and babbling.

3.21.06  I opened the freezer to get some meat out for dinner and he grabbed a burrito. Rather than fight with him, I decided to let him carry it around a little. Next thing I know he tossed it on Charlotte’s lap and said his rendition of her name!

Before bed I was cleaning out Charlotte’s nose with one of those bulb syringes and she was crying. Isaac could see that she was unhappy so he ran over and hit me on the head to get me to stop.

5.5.06  Charlotte was sitting in the high chair and Isaac was playing with her and trying to entertain her. I heard both of them laugh and looked over to see that Isaac was dancing on the table and laughing and Charlotte was watching her brother and laughing. I think that’s the first time that she’s ever laughed when no one was physically touching her!