Little Kids

We drove three hours yesterday to get to Nana's place in southwest FL. As we headed down, the girl's new "children" status hit me full force, and it's not left me since.

With their expanded vocabularies, the twins are now capable of holding complete conversations, not only with me, but with my husband and with each other, too.

This means that slowly, I will stop being their only confidante, friend, and conversational partner.

The joy! The rapture!

Not that I don't love discussing the color of the new pink socks versus the old pink socks for hours at a time, or fielding requests like, "I want a whole bagel, no, cut the bagel in pieces, no, I wanted a whole bagel, waaaaah!"

But a break from that every once in a while is bound to do us all good. Me for my sanity's sake, and them for their lives. Just kidding.

What's basically happened is this: over the past week or so, the girls have connected the ability to talk with the growing expanse of vocabulary their taking in, and they've added thought. So that when they speak, I'm no longer listening to rote repetition or simplified versions of conversations we had yesterday. I'm hearing new stuff, I'm getting new episodes, and they no longer need me as gatekeeper. They can talk to each other, words building upon words in glorious conversation that twists and turns as one and then the other gets an idea from the information presented.

They blabbed non-stop to each other yesterday in the car. They sang. They played games. They counted cars, coming up with the idea on their own. Dulce had Lilly show her how to work a specific toy, over and over again until she got it. They pretended to "be mad," and made each other laugh hysterically with their acting.

You'll probably not hear me refer to them as babies any longer. This was the development I'd been holding out for. This, to me, says they're now little kids.

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