More new words! "Scoo me" (excuse me), "kick in" (chicken) and "seet" (feet). The last two both occurred for the first time tonight, within about half an hour of each other, oddly enough. Like I said before though, she waits until she knows she can do something and then she takes off. Amazing, truly. She also signs "change" now, and has connected it with having a soiled diaper. It's amazing.

J is THIS close to crawling. While at my friend's house the other night, he pushed up on his hands and knees and crawled about three paces in order to get a truck that was just out of his reach. B took this to mean that we must get him "boy toys" because otherwise, he'll never crawl at our house. I think he'll be fine.

Both babies want so desperately to be big kids. J gets frustrated when his sisters walk/crawl out of the room and he can't follow, and S2 gets frustrated when her sisters run out of the room without her, or do pretty much anything that she can't follow. Tonight, I was brushing V and S1's hair before their bath, and S2 crawled over and stood in front of me signing "pretty" and whining until I brushed her hair too.

We're fully in the throes of toddler-dom, and the "Terrible Twos" have started really early. It does seem to be a little easier to handle than it was with S1, however, as we're doing a lot more validation and redirection, and a lot less sighing and eye-rolling and getting frustrated. We're parenting differently, and all four kids seem to be thriving as a result.

Not much else is new. We found a soccer class for V to participate in this fall, so we may end up taking the girls on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, at least for the 8wks that S1 is in gymnastics, after which we may switch back to Wednesday. Not really sure yet.

I'll be taking the tax preparer course from Jackson Hewitt, and then I'll work as a tax preparer this season in the evenings, just for something to do to get me out of the house for a few hours. I need a little time alone each day in order to feel human.