At home, we've enjoyed playing outside. As you can see from the picture above, Ben really loves to draw what he would term "gigantic" dinosaurs on the driveway with chalk. He is sitting next to his T-Rex masterpiece above. While at home, we've also been doing little crafty projects. We've made paper plate suns, egg cartons bugs, played with "slime" (cornstarch and water), made ice cream in baggies, and done lots of cutting, pasting, coloring, and gluing. I also found window markers made by Crayola, so one day, we drew all over the porch windows. It was really fun! Of course, I also can't resist slipping in some math and literacy activities that I call another "project"... Ben doesn't know the difference and I find it quite exciting - that's the teacher in me!
As you can guess, Ben is still really interested in dinosaurs. He also likes playing with his Legos and cars. Brant and I have noticed that Ben's imagination is really running wild lately. He teeters on the edge of reality and fantasy all the time, to the point that I have to clarify with him whether he is pretending. Last week he decided he was going back to Florida for vacation, so he and Abby took all the clothes out of his drawers and packed them (ironically, they were all winter clothes) in his Lego bins and backpack and told me he was ready to go. On other days, we act like animals. Since I ran Dam to Dam, he tells me he is going to go to his race, but that his race is a car race. The conversations he has with himself are interesting, and pretty priceless. The expressions that he uses and the way he converses with us, and sometimes tries to negotiate with us, shows how much he is really growing up.
In the last few weeks, Abby's talking has really started to take off. We've noticed that sometimes she is hard to understand because she is trying to put a string of words together, but the number of words and phrases she is saying has really increased. Some of my favorites with her lately is that she has merged words together to create her own. For example, "Mankie" means "My blankie" and "wa-ink" is "Want a drink." We are also finding that Abby is going through an "in-charge" stage. I have managed to curb her from saying "Mine!" to "My turn", but she wants to do everything herself, from brushing her teeth to climbing in her seat to dressing herself. I know I'll appreciate this independence and determination when she is slightly more coordinated to actually do these things in a timely manner, but right now it has proved to be a bit challenging.
In other news, I finished Dam to Dam last weekend successfully! The race was a 20K (12.4 miles) and I ran it is 2:02:58, which was slightly under a10 minute mile pace. I was pretty happy about it, as my goal was to run 10 minute miles, and I didn't feel all that great for a majority of the race. I was kind of nervous about the whole thing, probably didn't stretch like I should have, and didn't sleep well the night before. All in all, I was pretty proud of myself.
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