It’s official. He’s all grown up. Well, he thinks he is. I know the truth. That doesn’t detract from his charms. He has now lost 2 teeth so there’s evidence to support his claims. For his birthday we did a socially distanced outdoor party with his twin cousins. They played on his present, the ninja training obstacle course. Moriarty and I designed a cupcake cake styled after the centipede from James and the Giant Peach (which we were reading at the time). He helped with all stages from design to final presentation. I insisted the legs have boots of another color. It was really fun.

Last year Pip and I started him on an allowance to give him a chance to make decisions about purchases, delayed gratification, etc. However we haven’t been able to leave the house, so we worked up a scheme with my dad. Given the opportunity he would fill my house with Lego for the boy, but I saw this as an opportunity to merge spoiling him with the allowance idea. We created the Lego store. My dad sent many (many) sets, I broke them out by price, then we give Moriarty an allowance every week to shop in the store. He can choose to spend it all at once, or save some toward a larger set he can’t afford on one week’s allowance. I think this is brilliant! It did have the side effect that he whines and begs more, but we’re setting clear boundaries or the store will be closed for a while. Thus far he has saved $5 out of his $100…

His reading is getting much better. This week he read 10ish pages of Hop on Pop to me, without help. He’s sounding out words, self-correcting, using pictures as guides, and it’s amazing. He’s been doing science experiments with the nanny and I got to walk him through is first graph. He also helped me with actual science for work (adhesive efficacy).

Pip, Moriarty, and I have also added daily meditation to our night-time routine. We pick a short (5-10ish) min guided meditation and do it together. Often the facilitator asks rhetorical questions, but Moriarty answers them out loud. He kinda whispers his answers. I have to try really hard not to laugh. After bedtime ritual I get some alone time and the boys play Minecraft. It’s the only screen time he gets these days and I like that it’s a building game and they do it together. Pip is super into it too.

Lorelei is talking a lot more. She’s repeating many words we say, initiating a new word every day, and using all this new power to boss me around. Mama sit! Come. Help. Cashews cashews cashews! Water water icccccccccce (she’s obsessed with ice water because we all drink ice water). She’s making a lot of animal sounds with cock-a-doodle-doo being the funniest. She’s also still obsessed with Barbara Ann and asks for it many times a day (and music/dance in general). She knows that there are pictures of her in my phone so she’ll take it out of my pocket and say ‘show’ or just ‘Lorelei’. She loves to go outside and signals this by putting on her boots then coming to find us. But she also wears other people’s shoes so sometimes it’s Pip’s slippers, or Moriarty’s boots. She also wants to wear all of Moriarty’s clothes, often several layers over her own clothes. That works out fine because he prefers to live in his underwear. Actually, he’d prefer to be naked but I won’t let him sit on any furniture naked so here we are.

Her physical skills are improving. For Christmas the kids got a climbing dome but she’s too short to use the larger spacing, so I created a cargo net for her to climb. She’s also started jumping off stools and trying to do forward rolls. We tried potty training a month or so ago but after 7 days she still wasn’t identifying the sensation of pee before it happened. We paused and will restart this weekend. She tells us when she’s peed. She asks to use the potty. She’s obsessed with her poop. She’s ready. Hopefully that connection will hit this time.

It feels like the kids are actually playing together now. Not all the time, of course, but before Moriarty would play near her, but now he makes up games that include her. We were waiting for this and it’s amazing.

Photos here, password: mal