One of my favorite things about watching these girlies grow up is seeing new skills emerge. I don't mean the traditional "milestones" like sitting up, first steps, etc. (though those are definitely cool!); I mean moments where you can actually see their thought processes evolving and maturing.

An example of the kind of thing I mean was this morning when I dropped them off at Ximena's. While I was saying my goodbyes, Natalie said, "No Ximena have f______ arms." Neither Ximena or I could understand the word that preceded "arms"; we could just tell it started with an F. She repeated it several times, and we offered up several possible words she could mean. Ximena was wearing a sleeveless shirt, so I thought maybe she was trying to tell me that Ximena didn't have sleeves.

Generally in moments like these they just keep repeating the word in question louder and louder (but not any more clearly) and they get increasingly frustrated with every word I repeat back to them. (Every once in a while I ask the other one what the first one said; sometimes I can understand it better when the other one says it because the pronunciation will be slightly different. But usually this just results in the other one repeating exactly the same string of sounds with a "Duh!" eye-rolling tone in her voice. Ahem.)

But this time Natalie ran over to a shelf and picked up a stuffed dog toy and said, "Dog have f_____ arm!" She figured out a new way to convey her meaning to me, giving me an example and a visual clue! With this new context, it became totally obvious that she was saying, "furry," and when I said, "No, Ximena doesn't have furry arms," she got a big smile on her face and said, "Just Daddy!" Jim sometimes shows them the hair on his arms and says, "Daddy has furry arms!" but I have no idea what inspired her to tell me that Ximena DOESN'T have furry arms, but she was able to figure out a different way to get her meaning across, and it was just so cool to see the wheels turning in her head.

This weekend while we were out and about, we were waiting to pull out onto a busy road when Natalie exclaimed from the back seat, "There's a lot of cars! Be careful!" Jim said, "Yeah, those cars are blocking Daddy!" Now, those of you who know Jim know that there's only one thing he hates more than being hot*, and that's being blocked. So it made his heart swell up with fatherly pride when Natalie came back with, "No cars! No block Daddy! It hurts block Daddy! It yucky block Daddy!" Ahhh. Daddy's girl.

*Also, the other day when I was pulling in the driveway after picking them up from daycare, Natalie says, appropos of nothing, "It's too hot for Daddy!" Indeed. I'm sure Daddy agreed, wherever he happened to be at that particular moment. Good to know she's looking out for him.

Probably most of you know that the girls' awesome daycare provider is from Bolivia and she speaks Spanish pretty much exclusively with them during the day, so las niñas are fully bilingual, which is totally cool and fascinating and entertaining.

It's really interesting trying to figure out why they pick certain times to bust out with the Spanish. I think sometimes it's because the Spanish words are more fun to say, and also because sometimes there are things that you can just say in a more to-the-point way in Spanish than in English. Also you don't have to worry so much about using pronouns in Spanish since the verb often does the trick for you, which fits right in with toddler sentence construction in English!

For a long time they were fixated on the word "manos" and used it in a couple of funny situations. We have this foaming pump soap, and they like us to pump some into their hands during bathtime. For a couple of months this desire was conveyed to us by them loudly saying, "Manos! MANOS!" and they essentially used the word "manos" as shorthand for soap. When we took them out to play in the snow for the first time, they had to learn the hard way why Mommy wanted them to leave their mittens on -- and they cried out "MAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNOOOOOOOOSSSSSS!" in anguish when they realized that snow was cold on bare little hands! Now they just say "hands" and "soap" and can even say complete sentences like "Hands cold, Mommy!" so we don't get "manos" thrown about all the time anymore.

Now that their language skills are getting better they don't tend to use the Spanish directly with me anymore unless I speak to them in Spanish first, in which case they always answer in Spanish. (Which is kind of dangerous considering I have no Spanish skills to speak of! So often they answer me and I have NO CLUE what they're saying. Oops!) As soon as we walk through the door at daycare, though, the Spanish switch goes on and they start yammering away to Ximena and the 2 other kids. In fact, sometimes they get mad at me for speaking Spanish to them. Many times when they get an "ouchie" if I offer to give them a "besito" the response I get is, "No! No besito! KISS!!" This doesn't, however, mean they don't follow up with demands like, "Necesito Hello Kitty Band-Aid!"

Even though they don't initiate conversations with me in Spanish, they do often speak to each other in Spanish, or a mixture of both Spanish and English. Tonight we were watching TV on my bed when Rita accidentally kicked Natalie a little bit as she was wallowing around. Natalie took offense: "Rita, no kicking! Cuidado!" Rita started to scoot over a bit, then noticed my feet were in the way, so she pushed them out of the way accompanied by, "Excuse me! Espacio! Dame espacio!"

It is really amazing to watch their language skills just explode -- in two languages at once!

I also uploaded a bunch of new photos in the April, May, June, and July galleries. Definitely gotta check out the pink cowboy boots in July.

For some reason whenever the girls see a man, they say, "Little man, Mommy!" I have no idea where this came from. I first noticed it a few weeks ago when we were going in to the house from the car and they saw the mail man across the street. "Little man, Mommy!" The mail man is not so tall, so I thought they really did think he was particularly little, so I didn't think much of it (though I did point out that he was "the mail man," hoping they'd blurt that out when he came to our door instead of "little man"), but then they were calling it out from the backseat whenever we passed any random guy walking down the street, and the other day at the mall Natalie said "Little man, Mommy!" about a guy in the food court a couple of tables over who was clearly 6 feet tall.

And the other bit of background for this story is that whenever we get the girls ready for their baths, once we get them stripped down to their diaper, we call out "Naked baby!" Or when one of them proudly takes off her own clothes, we always ask gaily, "Who's a naked baby?" So they take great joy in saying, "Nakee baby!!"

Cut to this morning, when I pull up to Ximena's house. A guy a couple of doors down is walking out of his house, and he's not wearing a shirt. First Natalie calls out "Little man, Mommy!" and then Rita says, "Nakee baby!" Which of course leads to the inevitable, "Little man nakee baby, Mommy! Little man nakee baby!" Luckily he just needed to get something out of his car and was back in his house by the time I had started getting them unloaded from the backseat, else he really would have wondered what the heck they were jabbering about.

The girls haven't really watched much TV up until now. We don't have a TV in their playroom, there's no TV at their daycare, and it just hasn't been much of an issue one way or the other. But this morning they wanted to come into my room and "help" me get dressed for work instead of hanging in their playroom like they usually do, so in order to avert the grabby-hands of fear that usually ensue when they're in a less-than-optimally-babyproofed room of the house, I put them up on my bed and turned on the TV.

Dora the Explorer was on. They've only recently become aware of Dora -- because she's on the pull-ups they've just started wearing during the day at daycare. (Ximena is far braver than I and is working on potty training.) This is also how they learned about the Sesame Street characters and Mickey Mouse -- from their diapers, natch! I think they may also have a Dora book at daycare. In any case, Dora is relatively new to them, but they have taken quite a liking to her just from the pull-ups. (They also immediately obsessed on Elmo once they became aware of the pictures on their diapers, and on Mickey Mouse when we started using those. I swear there is some sort of encoded message to toddlers in the drawings of certain popular characters because they just latch on instantly to them. They never gave a crap about the other Sesame Street peeps or the Lion King pictures that preceded Mickey Mouse.)

It's pretty amusing because they say her name with a good rolled-R Spanish accent because Ximena is pretty much the only person they ever hear say her name. It comes out more like "Dor-da" than the way you would more swallow the R with an American accent.

Anyway, I turned on the TV and they immediately assumed the requisite toddler TV-watching posture -- sprawled out on the belly, propped up on elbows. How do they know?

And then...magic! "Dor-da! It's Dor-da! Dor-da talking, Mommy! Dor-da TALKING!" As if all their magical toddler dreams had suddenly come true! They never knew it could be so good! Not only does Dora look sassy on their diapers, but wow, she also TALKS! Why had no one made them aware of this before?

And then...the narration of the entire show began. "Monkey wearing boots, Mommy!" "Find ice cream truck, Mommy!" They only watched it for about 10 minutes (Alas, we did not get to see Dora and Boots find the aforementioned ice cream truck!) but all the way on the drive to Ximena's they continued talking excitedly about Dora and the ice cream truck.

So yeah, I'd say Dora is a hit.

Yeah, well, it's quite clear that I totally suck at this blogging thing. What can I say; I'm lazy!

So anyway, the girls are getting to the level of communication skills that the pretty much bust out with something HI-larious and repeat-worthy on a daily basis, so I figured I could try to be a better baby blogger by running here to post the cute little snippets of HI-larity. So. We'll give that a try and see if I can stick with it for more than 30 seconds.