Growing Kidlets

Sorry friends (if I have any left!). I'm trying to strongly curtail my computer time so that I have more time for my children and household responsibilities. Irene is four now, and very grown up. Just today, she randomly stated that she needed to do her kitchen work. (FTR, she doesn't have kitchen work yet, other than what I ask for her help on or she offers to help on.) After hearing doors opening and closing and a little pot banging, I went to see what her kitchen work was. She was unloading the dishwasher! Yes, it was clean, but she didn't know exactly where everything went. Since she started, I let her finish as much as she could, and she really knows where most things belong already! I think I need to start giving her more to do in the kitchen!

Helen is starting to talk, and says some very odd little things. If she hurts herself a little, like if she bumps into a door on the way past, she says "ow" very softly. Another is when Mark gets home from work or someone she knows well walks into our house she says "hai!" excitedly. With Mark, she sometimes says "hai, Da!" I just made up a list of all of the words I could think of, and then I compared it to Irene's list at 18 months (Helen will be 18 months very soon). The differences were striking. Quite a few of Irene's words were names while Ma and Da are Helen's only names. Even more striking was the difficulty of the words. Helen's words are all one syllable, and either with the consonant sound at the beginning or at the end, with three exceptions: baby, hot and wow. Compare that to watty (water) or zockies (socks) from Irene. I've known for a while, though, that Helen's language development is much slower than Irene's was, and that's ok! Her physical development has been faster so far, so she isn't behind, just focused on something other than talking.