Katharine Lange: Arwyn Week 39: Clicking with the Dolphins

It was a big week of visitors at the Transue household. Uncle Cody, Aunt Jen, Cousin Soren, Grandma, and Grandpa all came to see us, so Leia and Arwyn stayed home from school all week. Arwyn really increased her crawling distance, but still doesn't wander much for the heck of it. She's too busy playing and standing where she is, but if you leave her alone, she'll crawl over to your vicinity to continue her business. We busted out the tunnel and got her to go through it once, which was in stark contrast to Leia, who always enjoyed doing marathon laps through the thing! Not sure what the attraction is, but Arwyn has also started eating my hair. She'll grab a chunk and suck incessantly, grab it back when I pull it away, and by the time she's done, my hair is soaking wet! Time for pony tails I guess. Arwyn's only human word is still "Da da da da," but amazingly enough she has learned to talk to dolphins! Her tongue clicking skills are off the chart, and she doesn't understand why we just smile, laugh, and randomly click back instead of responding to her code like the animals do!

Leia's week was a mix of good and bad. Her grandparents spoiled her properly, so we were able to bribe some nice behavior out of her, but she also had her fair share of tantrums. She made lots of improvements on the potty training front, which was great, and is getting more amenable to our constant requests to please try and use the potty, but we still had several accidents. She even got out of the hot tub to pee one day! We went skiing with her best friend McKenzie, and as soon as "Kenzie" arrived, she went from wanting me to hold her all the time to wanting to do everything by herself and totally showing off. This was a good thing for her skiing confidence, but unfortunately she just wasn't quite ready to go by herself from the very top! I was trying to get her to turn, but she just wiggled her butt back and forth, so apparently she takes after her Uncle Worm. Kenzie was able to snowplow and make turns on her own while her Dad held her on a ski leash in case she got out of control, and I was pretty impressed with her skills. I decided I am way behind schedule with Leia, that she too is actually ready for a leash, and that we need to get our game on this spring! I prepped her by saying we have a "Magic Leash" just like Kenzie's and got her fired up to ski by herself while we just hold her leash. The next time we went out with Dad and PopPop, she did very well with her leash. Plus, we had her pick names for her legs (left leg is Izzy, right leg is Jake - characters from her favorite TV show), so we were finally able to tell her to push on her Izzy leg or Jake leg to make turns. It worked really well! She may not know her left and right yet, but she sure does know her Izzy and Jake! We even got her to snowplow a little bit, but she really prefers to go fast. Another huge change was her ability to have her friend Echo over to play, and she shared all her toys with no fussing. It was so great, the two of them went off playing and doing their thing, and we didn't hear any tears or fights!