Maggie’s about to learn to crawl…
Apr 24th, 2007 by Bethany
Saturday Maggie learned to roll from her tummy back onto her back (she'd accomplished the other direction a few months ago). Yesterday she got up on her hands and knees by herself for the first time. Any minute now she'll start crashing into the floor with her face in order to move forward a small amount and rocking as she strengthen those crawling muscles. My mom remarked at how amazing it is that kids persist at developmental tasks even when it's obviously difficult and they fail over and over. I must agree, and add that the speed at which they accomplish the tasks, and the lack of bitterness over the difficulty of the accomplishment, are also amazing.
Degen is adding new words and phrases all the time. Today he said "box" without prompting and said "Let's try again" when a DVD wouldn't play. He's been trying to learn to jump, and after seeing a three-year-old friend do a summersault he was working on that skill today. He's been helping me with laundry (I put the wet clothes on the dryer door and he pushes them inside and closes the door, even when I'm about to add more clothes to the pile on the door) and setting the table (one plate, cup, and fork at a time) and watering the garden (the garden hose is apparently his property, as he declares it "mine" whenever I try to help him). Today we practiced dancing in the kitchen, an essential life skill.
Degen likes to help with Maggie, too, though they are close in weight and he can't pick her up. Today I was giving him a bath and had Maggie on my lap and they were inciting eachother to giggles. Degen would laugh, which would get Maggie to laugh back, which would get Degen to laugh…so the cycle goes. It was really sweet and cute and made me feel good about being a mother.
Last night some friends had us over for dinner and Family Home Evening. They have a daughter who is close in age to Degen and it was fun to see my friend teach the FHE lesson to the kids. She had a big picture of Jesus and she explained who he is and that he and Heavenly Father love us and made the earth for us because they love us. Then she showed pictures of animals and plants (Degen said "ball" when she asked him what the picture of the cat was–there was a ball of yarn in the background and that was the prominent item to him) and told us that Heavenly Father and Jesus made the cat or the horse or the dog or the mountains or the ball for us because they love us. I really liked the lesson and the kids focused and paid attention the whole time and got really excited about it. She said that another good lesson (when it's warmer outside) is to do the same thing, only to go on a walk and show them a picture of a cat and have them try to find a real one outside. I'll have to try it.