Lalo, Ro-Ro




Every other word out of her mouth these days is "Lalo" often as a question - inquiring as to his whereabouts or else stating that everything in the house has to do with him. If he's working on projects at the dining room table, as he often is these days, she must be sitting up in her booster seat with him - she wants to do his markers, and stickers, and gluing - all of the preschool activities that are way out of her league. Sometimes she's content to just make a few marks with a crayon - that still often ends up in her mouth - or doing a puzzle- but lots of times she's not. When he's at school - she asks about him all day long - he's the first word she utters when she wakes up in the morning - and when she's nursing before bed she pops off from drinking to ask "Lalo?" He's her whole world.

She's also referring to herself in the third person. When she wants a turn at something she'll point to herself or come running up to me with something she needs help with or a book she wants me to read saying "Ro Ro! Ro Ro!" She's even doing a few two and even three word sentences like "mama bye bye," "Lalo shoe" etc.

Leo has been pretty tolerant and gentle but sometimes takes advantage of her - tonight they each had a peanut butter cookie and Leo, mad in the first place about having to share the dessert loot with her, ended up standing at the edge of her booster chair after he'd finished his cookie and behind our backs encouraging her to feed her cookie to him - which she thinks is a fun game. He finished off her whole cookie and then she's left sitting there saying "coo-kee?" "coo-kee?"

Leo's an art project machine - sitting for hours after school at the dining room table - cranking out snowflake after snowflake after sticker collage. He can write Leo and Rosie and practices over and over again. Many of the projects are for her and we've hung a bunch over her crib - that she rips down when she's supposed to be napping.

Leo is busy most weekends on the four-year-old birthday party circuit. Today was Noah's at the tilden park carousel in Berkeley. Rosie came along and cried on the merry go round. I also had a great date at the frozen yogurt shop yesterday with Leo & his friend Merle - he's developing real true friendships now, we had great conversations back and forth about their favorite neighborhood spots, what kind of band-aids they like, their before bed-time routines, and then the whole thing devolved into poopy jokes the whole way home. ahh four.