Over the last few weeks, our girls have finally started to
play together a bit more, and their chemistry is pretty amazing to watch. Mariah is a very confident big sister
who is more than happy to create a make believe game on the spot and direct
Kassiah as to her role. Some days
Mariah is the shopkeeper and Kassiah is the customer, other days Mariah is the
baby and Kassiah is the mommy, and yet others Mariah somehow gets to remain
Mariah while her sister gets to be a dog.
Kassiah is slowly starting to make attempts at stringing a couple of
words together, but since her vocabulary is still limited, Mariah has become a
pretty good interpreter. Often,
Kassiah says nothing at all during their playtime, since Mariah is so busy
bossing her around that Kassiah doesn’t even bother to try and get a word in
edgewise. These play sessions
started out being just a few minutes before one of them ran to us crying and
complaining about something the other had done. But they seem to be getting a bit better at conflict
resolution since they disappear together for longer stretches
everyday. One Saturday morning
Ivan and I wondered what would happen if we just stayed in bed for a few extra
minutes while they went down on their own – sure enough Mariah pulled a
chair up to the pantry and served herself and Kassiah cereal for
breakfast! They even seem to enjoy
bath time together more in the evenings – giggling about inside jokes, and
Mariah making attempts to wash both of their hair with as much shampoo as she
can get her hands on. Lately bath
time ends in Rya screaming that ‘baby bit my finger’, which baby adamantly
denies, despite a clear baby sized tooth indent on Mariah’s finger. But to be fair – I give them both a
shout: baby for biting, and Mariah for undoubtedly bugging her sister and then
waving her delicious finger in front of a chubby girl’s mouth.
Ivan and I have been so used to feeling needed, that it’s
almost eerie when they give us a few minutes of space here and
there. I usually use those few
minutes squeezing in some dishes and laugh when Ivan tries to convince me I’m
going to want a 3rd one to 'fill up my time'. For now, I am quite content feeling
like my life is becoming ‘manageable’ again, with the odd silence here and there.
And incase you’d like an individual update on what these
girls of mine are up to…
Mariah
First of all, Mariah has started to remind us that her name
is Mariah, not Rya. Since I
sometimes tell her she is ‘bigger’ to explain certain things (like why she is
toilet trained and her sister uses a diaper) she has come to think of being
‘bigger’ as an absolute term. When
I tell her she can’t drink my coffee, she insists ‘but I bigger now, mama’. Once she came across a tampon and I
didn’t have the energy to fully explain it so I told her it goes in a
‘bum’. Sure enough, there she was
the next day trying to push a wrapped tampon through her underwear because ‘I
bigger now’. Her other cute
reasoning language is that if she’s explaining something to you, Mariah will
say ‘cause why? Cause…’. Thanks to her gang of sassy girlfriends at school, she went through a brief phase
of exclaiming ‘that’s not fair!’ and ‘well..’. It took a few days of me saying ‘no more well’s’ before she
stopped and then started correcting me when I said it. Mariah’s favourite nursery rhymes
lately are ‘Mary had a little lamp’ and ‘Baa baa black sheep have you any
wool? How I wonder what you
are’. When Kassiah isn’t in the
mood to play with her, Mariah usually pretends she’s an angry teacher who threatens imaginary children that 'I will put you in
the toddler room’ if they don’t sit criss-cross applesauce for circle time. And when she’s drained from her long day of feistiness,
Mariah and I lie in her bed belting out the songs from Frozen before falling
asleep.
Kassiah
Our sweet little Kassiah seems to be reaching her terrible
two’s a bit ahead of schedule.
She’s become pretty irritable and cranky lately – and will often be
found going limp into a ball of tears over the slightest issue. But when she bounces back to normal,
her cuteness is only growing along with her words. Her favourite word strings are ‘hoddog peez', ‘tatoo (thank you) mama', 'dada gowan (gone)', 'wateh peez', and sometimes 'Yaya Ow' (to tell on her sister). She has begun the ‘No! I do it!’ phase, which requires a great
deal of patience since her motor skills are lacking. Yesterday we tried to take the girls on a stroller walk, but
they both insisted on pushing their own strollers, so the walk became very,
very long. Ivan learned first hand how independent
Kassiah is becoming through a little social experiment she played
recently. I told Ivan I was
popping out to the store for an errand (which he verbally acknowledged but
probably only half-processed since he’s a man). Twenty minutes after I left the house, Ivan called my cell
phone and asked ‘Where are you?...and did you take baby with you?’. The people around me must have thought I was crazy, since I
yelled ‘NO! WHAT DO YOU MEAN?’. To top things off, I heard Ivan and
Mariah drop the phone as they scurried off to frantically find Kassiah so I couldn’t even
call back for clarification.
Apparently, Kassiah had decided to quietly sneak upstairs and hide under
Mariah’s blanket – without saying a word during Ivan’s first scour through the
house. He claims he and Rya looked up at each other from the t.v. a couple times, wondering aloud 'where's Tu-tus', but assuming I had taken her since she hadn't made a peep since I left. Or at least that’s his
story and he’s sticking to it!
