The girls turned twenty-seven months at the beginning of November and we’ve posted photos for the month. This month included a trip the LA Zoo, Halloween, and an airplane trip to Boston for Erin and Albert’s wedding. We didn’t include photos from the wedding trip–we’re going to push those into the next month’s pictures.
Over the last month, the kids have picked up a couple new phrases. When one of our kids is having a temper tantrum, the other will say “No Screaming!” (which is what we tell them). In Eleanor’s case, it’s “No Heeming” for some reason. Eleanor has also been fascinated with her “boogies”. She’ll say “I boogies” (the verb kind of gets dropped somewhere in her pronunciation) when she gets her nose wiped. She’ll also say “I runny nose”. With the Halloween holiday, the girls have been noticing all of the pumpkins. They call out “a pumpkin! a pumpkin!” whenever they see one. We need to respond “yes, a pumpkin” or they’ll start to say it more frantically.
In preparation for our trip to Boston, we tried to expand Eleanor’s culinary options. She’ll eat most fried foods. She’ll also eat spaghetti, as long as it doesn’t have a red sauce on it. We prepare it with some soy sauce and sesame oil. She’ll eat most meats and most kinds of noodles, but she won’t eat any short pasta: no ziti, no penne, no fusilli, no rotini, etc. Miranda has also been voicing more of a preference for what she likes to eat and what she doesn’t. She used to be more indiscriminate about what she would eat, but she has definitely been showing her preference for things that are more fatty, salty, or sweet. At the same time, she does still like tofu and broccoli. Finally, the girls are strangely more willing to eat something if I’m snacking on it. I’ll have a bagel or a cup of yogurt while sitting on the sofa, and they’ll come over to open their mouths to ask for some. If we just give them the bagel or yogurt, it ends up largely unfinished.
Recently, Miranda’s been showing much more of a preference for Agnes. There have been a number of cases where she’s asked for Agnes to do something and won’t accept me as a substitute (putting on her jacket, getting her shoes, getting her milk). Eleanor doesn’t seem to care quite as much.
We’ve been trying to get the girls to ask for things more politely recently. So, instead of “I want milk. I want milk!”, we try to get them to say “I want milk, please”. We started by responding to their demands with “what are you supposed to say?” and they’ve learned to respond with “please”, but now we’re instructing them “You’re supposed to say ‘Can I have some milk, please?'”, which they translate to “I want milk, please”.
Next month will include the wedding and Thanksgiving.