Wyatt and Greta: Updates

Every morning when I go in to wake Greta, the first thing she says is this: "Where's Wyatt?" If he's already in my arms, she says, "Hug Wyatt." If I haven't woken him yet, she says, "I want to go hug Wyatt and wake him up." At night when I put Wyatt to bed, Greta is usually already in her bed, but last night, she stayed up with me until I got him to sleep. We sat in the dark together in his room - - I in my rocker with Wy, and Greta in her rocker with her baby doll. We rocked and sang to our respective babies, and when Wyatt was asleep, I took G to her room for the same treatment. I cannot imagine her being more enamored with Wyatt. Wyatt is doing funny things recently with his tiny tongue. He pokes it out in a pointy, little lizard way every few minutes, and it is just darling. He's found his hands and enjoys putting them together like he's praying. Sometimes he falls asleep in that position. Tonight when I was getting Greta to sleep, I said, "I love you, Greta." And for the first time all on her own, she said, "I love you, too, Mama. And I love Wyatt. And Daddy. And [insert big sweeping motion with her arm] my room. And Nana and Grandaddy and Grandpa and Grandma. And Aunt Lodi and Uncle Bruce. And my kitchen." Whew! Once the love took hold of Greta, it didn't let go for awhile. Wyatt is about the most calm baby I've ever been around. When I wake him in the morning, he opens his eyes and greets the day smiling. Then he almost instantly starts to kick and wiggle. With his eyes, his smile, his arms, and his legs - with his entire being - he greets me. If anyone needs to know what it's like to feel loved, just look at Wyatt and he will show you. Greta has taken to saying, "Maybe later" to things that she doesn't want to do. Tonight Paul asked her if she was ready to take a bath and she responded, "Maybe later." Then as I was putting her into her bed, she vehemently protested, crying and screaming, "MAYBE LATER! MAYBE LATER! MAYBE LATER!" I couldn't help but laugh at the sharp distinction between the words she said and the way in which she said them. Wyatt loves baths, being held, not being held, sitting in the bouncy, laying on the floor, looking at his mobile, looking at his books, stretching out and being cuddled. As far as I can tell, the only thing that ever rattles him is GAS. Otherwise, the child goes hours - -sometimes whole days -- without crying or fussing. It's a little unbelievable. Greta loves to sing songs and act out her favorite part of school: Circle Time. Sometimes at night when we all hang out in her rooom right before bedtime, Greta asks that Paul and I sit with her for Circle Time. As I sat with her for Circle Time tonight, she said, "Good morning everybody. Today we talk about . . . ." and then she kind of trailed off. I know that her class is doing a little unit on the sky lately, so I inserted, "Clouds? The sun? The stars?" Yes, the stars. And from there she broke into: " . . . like a diamond in the sky. . ." I can't keep up with the new things that Greta knows and more so - the things that she understands. I see her trying to express herself and she literally does not have the words to say what she means. Her thoughts are far outreaching her vocabulary even though it is growing by the minute. This morning she said that the truck next to us was stinky and I said that the smell was "exhaust", and I got her to repeat that word a time or two. Tonight in bed, she talked about the stinky exhaust of the truck. She remembered! Recently I've made the distinction between a city bus and a school bus. Now she calls them each by that specific title. Where Greta is growing in verbal, mostly, Wyatt is just taking off physically (and in all ways, really). He's now totally outgrown his 0 to 3 months wardrobe and is firmly in the 3 - 6 months clothes. Some of them are snug, honestly. It happened within a week: I took some clothes to school as back-ups in case he needed a change and presto, change-o - - days later when he needed to use the spare outfit, it no longer fit him. I love them both so much that the feeling often becomes a physical knot of something in my chest. Watching your own children progress is something very different from what I ever anticipated. More lovely, more touching, and a million times more entertaining. I laugh more than ever. Ponder more. Certainly love more.