Out of Reach and Within the Lines - The Ever-Developing Minds of Two-Year-Olds

Isaac and Abby LOVE their toy animals.  And by toy animals, I mean expensive figurines that Great-Grandma Larson just HAD to buy them for their birthday last year and even sent them home with more every time we visited.  This last trip home, after Great-Grandma Larson passed away, Grandma White bought them a set of baby animals.  And what used to be Isaac's thing (playing with them for hours on end) turned into Abby's thing.  She loves to match up the families and will even corral them in so they are all facing the center in a nice circle, huddled together for safety or company or whatever else her little mind makes up. 

For Christmas last year, Dave's brother bought them a horse lego set.  And man did Abby FALL IN LOVE with that set!  She cannot get enough of her Hu, Hu, Forseys (she has a hard time saying horsey, but we keep practicing - and she's getting better)!

So in the last few weeks, she has developed quite the fascination with the baby animal horse that is brown just like the "Mommy Forsey" from her Leggo set.  Problem: There is one brown colt from Great-Grandma Larson and one black colt from Grandma White.  And the Lego horsey is BROWN.  You see where I'm going here, right?  So she HAS to have the brown baby horsey to have a complete FAMILY of horses in the corral.  And that would be okay if the black colt weren't just a little bit bigger than the brown colt and, therefore, the ONLY acceptable baby horse for BOTH of the twins.  I have taken both colts away on more than one occasion because they couldn't stop fighting over them and would NOT take turns playing with the brown baby horsey.

Today Isaac innocently walked into the office where I was editing some pictures.  He handed me an almost empty wet wipe tub.  He said, "Mommy - please put up!" and pointed to the TOP of the bookcase.  I was confused.  I said, "You want me to put the wet wipe container up here?" and pointed to the top of the bookcase.  "Uh-huh. Yeah."  I took it from him and looked inside en route to the top shelf.  There I saw two wet wipes wrapped around and over one baby brown colt.  I was amused but still complied with his wishes to put the "empty" container up. 

As soon as I had it on top of the bookshelf and said, "There you go, Buddy!  It's up!" he got the most satisfied look on his face.  He looked toward the office door and said, "Mommy!  Now Abby no get horsey!" HA!  Wow the thought process that must have led up to that one!

And not to leave Abby out of today's post . . . . My little girl is growing up just as quickly and is so incredibly SMART right alongside her brother!!!  We went on a date last night - the first since our anniversary in December (except for the adult session of Stake Conference, which doesn't really count).  I laid out coloring books and the matching game and books to read and showed the babysitter their toys and plugged in the "broken" television in case she ran out of ideas.  They colored for a while, then played, then watched Dora and Diego.  And I noticed when I came home that the sitter had sat down and colored WITH them because a portion of the pages were very neatly filled in, within the lines of the images they were coloring.

Tonight as I made dinner, Abby sat at the table coloring.  When I went over to see how she was doing, I saw that she was very focused, coloring as carefully as she could in tiny little scribbles so she could stay WITHIN the lines!  And she did a fabulous job!  And I don't know why looking at and thinking of that beautiful coloring job has brought tears to my eyes all night long.  But it has!  It still is! I'll have to post a scan of it!  You would be proud, too!

And Brianna stood without holding onto anything for a few seconds and even took a few shuffles forward with the bus filled with blocks that Great-Grandma Larson got for the twins for their birthday last year. She'll be walking by the end of the month, mark my words!  That is one DETERMINED little girl!  I LOVE it!

Sheesh - all this talk of things from Great-Grandma Larson is making me wonder if they're going to have any presents to open next year now that she's gone!  I'll buy one from you, Grandma!  I'll wrap it and take a picture for you, too!  Thank you for doing such a FANTASTIC job of loving my children while you were alive!  I miss you!