Dankoo

Toddler life is so hard to keep up with! The week just flies by with much fun, cuteness, and sweetness (along with some not so fun temper tantrums), and I get to the end and think, "What happened?"

Well, one major thing that happened is that Aunt Clara and Uncle Brooks got engaged! A lot of people have been slipping up calling Mr. Brooks "Uncle Brooks", but now, it'll be true :) We are very excited, and they said not to worry, they wouldn't schedule their wedding for July, so hopefully Baby T. will come along and be able to enjoy the festivities of their wedding in the fall.

Yes, unfortunately it is still Baby T. The strange thing is, I had this dream that convinced me that the name had to be the more traditional one that Wally liked. I was SO convinced, but I decided to tell Wally later since I woke up around 3am with this revelation! Then, the same morning at breakfast, Wally said, "You know, I've been thinking about the names, and I really like the Celtic one and its meaning and how it seems to kind of match or go along with Wallace (ie. the middle name)." So, we are still at an impasse. Sigh! My mom is about to go crazy wondering what it's going to be, and she's just started calling him by the traditional name for peace of mind.

One of the reasons why I have problems remembering what happened is that by the time I find the camera, get it on, and ready, Rhianwen has moved on to other things than what I had wanted a picture of. For example, in the picture below, Rhi was spending a good 5 minutes trying to get her shoes on, and I was trying to get a picture of her sitting patiently on the floor with the shoe halfway on a pj'ed foot, but instead got a picture of her bringing the shoes to me!

She does look so cute though.

Spring has arrived, and we have had a lot of fun outside despite the wetness, for which we are very grateful. Our creek is now really a creek, and Rhianwen loves going out there to throw sweet-gum balls, sticks, berries, dirt etc. down into the water. The bigger the splash, the better. She loves to sit on my lap and lean way over and look down at the rocks and flowing water. We even saw a big crawdad the other day traveling upstream. Our hawk was trying to eat him, I think, b/c we saw the hawk diving into the creek, but I guess either he got another one, or this one escaped. Another enjoyment are flowers. Lots of violets have sprung up around Rhianwen's slide, and she will pick them and bring them to me. She also loves throwing the spent pansy blooms that I remove into the watering can. And of course, playing in any standing water is fun along with digging up dirt and mud. We get quite messy now. Rhianwen and daddy planted a bunch of vegetable seeds the other night, and they are waiting to see some sprouts. It'll be fun in the summer to go picking with her.

In devotions, we rediscovered the Wiseman/Foolishman Song, which Rhianwen affectionately calls, "Sing Rain". She loves that it has motions to go along with the words. We tried getting a video, but as with most toddlers, she was more in the mood for finding a book for mommy to read than for doing what we wanted to do :) Hence, the song is a little abbreviated, oh, and mommy needs to pay attention to the words.

We have been considering getting Rhianwen a "realish" looking babydoll and stroller later on this year for when Baby T arrives so that she has something she can nurture, but she finds plenty of her own toys to do this with now. As you know, Snowbear reigns supreme in this area to the point that we have put a diaper on Snowbear at bedtime a few nights this week per Rhianwen's request. But she has also found that "the man" is fun to rock in the LaZBoy, and today she was tucking him under her arm to rock.

"The Man".

I've read that the average 2 year old learns 20 new words a day. She's not 2, but she certainly can repeat almost anything we say, and many words are staying in her vocabulary. She also will speak in paragraphs, though most of the time it's toddler language that makes no sense to us. She got really excited about helping daddy work on his truck this past weekend, and was talking up a storm to him while doing it, but alas, we could not interpret her monologue. I'm a little sad that I am not fluent in some foreign language, so that she could benefit from her natural ability to pick up words without effort. We still can't get our minds around preschool for 2 year olds though, so for now it will be the English language with a few Spanish words mixed in. Maybe we should look into tv shows, I just find the glazed transfixed look a little creepy.

Oh, I almost forgot the title of this post. Rhianwen is learning to say "Thank you"/"Dankoo". It's so pleasant to hear!