Amanda Rachel & Robin Beatrice
Amanda was born on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Robin was born on Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 9:24 pm

October 2010

 We've had an incredibly busy month. We took a road trip to visit Elijah and Maggie in North Carolina for a weekend, visited our local fire station, had several playdates with Casey, went to the annual Fall Festival, and of course, celebrated Halloween.

Robin is turning into a toddler more and more each day. She's up to 7 teeth now and uses them often. However, after a traumatizing incident involving some of her hair being caught in the snap closure of a bib one night, she refuses to wear bibs anymore. She is absorbing new knowledge daily and often surprises us with things that she knows. She is learning body parts, but has also learned how predictable her parents are. We knew that she could point to her nose and ears, so we kept asking for those. In the same order. So eventually, regardless of what we asked for, she would point to her nose and then her ears. Her vocabulary continues to grow, as well. She still says "Uh-oh" (though it comes out sounding more like "Uh-oooo") and now also says "Up" and "Down." She's still figuring out the meanings of them, though, and will sometimes reverse them, standing at your feet with her arms outstretched screaming "Down! Down!" Her favorite word though, hands down, is "Guk." It's her equivalent of the word "Smurf" for those little blue people. "Guk" is Robin-speak for cup, sock, book, duck, and truck (among others we have yet to determine). As the month wore on, we were able to distinguish subtle differences in her Guks, such as "Gock" for sock and "Gook" for book. She also expanded into 2 syllable territory with "Gracker" (cracker) and "Ga-gurt" (for yogurt-- and has been generalized to anything served in a bowl with a spoon). Her other new pastimes are dancing to the ABCs and waving "hi" to everyone-- even to her own shadow on the kitchen floor.

Amanda is still her happy, creative, silly self. She loves nothing more than to sit at her arts and crafts table coloring, gluing, and creating "projects." She is having a great year at school despite not being in the same class as Casey. Luckily, the two classes of 4 year olds collaborate on many projects and also go to the playground at the same time. Amanda has yet to complain about not seeing Casey enough. The preschool hosted all of the parents one evening for a "Back to School Night" where we went into Amanda's classroom and did a group activity with her teachers. Upon entering the room, the parents first played a game of "Who am I?" The teachers had placed a short description of a child at each chair. It was our job to walk around, read them and try to figure out which one was made for our child. We read Amanda's and immediately knew that this was the right one. It said: "I am an intelligent and personable young person. I am a take charge kind of person and not afraid to show it. I have a real sense of family and am an artist at heart. I can spend all day drawing and talking and never get bored. I will grow up one day and be a force to be reckoned with in the court room. I will be a lawyer but the judge will ask me for advice." We often say that she will be a lawyer one day; she is nothing if not a negotiator.