Their favorite things to play together are babies, night-night (see below), Dora castle, play kitchen-namely picnic, playground and slides, dancing, monkey pajamas, and running around the house naked dancing the jig.
Lily goes into Addie's room in the morning while I'm getting 5 more minutes of sleep. Oh how I love that. What a difference it makes to have FIVE minutes to get out of bed and go from dead sleep to get up in one motion. I love it. I hear the cutest conversations in those five minutes between the two of them, and some times I even come in and see Lily in the crib with her. It is so sweet. Here are a few of their conversations:L: Addie, do you like these shoes. Oh. Do you like THeeeessseee shoes?
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oooooooh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Rinse and repeat
Usually the play well together for a long time and then eventually Addie will start destroying all that they have created and Lily will get frustrated because she likes to have things just so. Sometimes that means that Addie starts "eating" all of the food Lily has laid out nicely for the picnic. Or Addie wakes the babies up from their nap, when Lily has them laid out in quiet locations, nicely swaddled. Addie says "weee" as she pulls one corner of a blanket and the baby spins and spins out of it's swaddle and on to the floor. Of course if you know ANYTHING, this is not the correct way to play babies, just ask Lily. Addie isn't always a destroyer, they play nice for a long time, but that's usually how the game ends if they aren't on to the next first. Addie's favorite thing about babies is to sing "Rock bye Baby, Tee Top" and she pushes their face into her child rocking back and forth. Seriously, cutest thing. EVER. If either of them see the other one down to their skivies the other also has to get "nay-nay" which is how Addie says naked, and that is what both of them call being naked, or even shirtless for that matter. Then they call it "dancing the jig" and the dance with their hands above heads shaking back and forth while bumping bellies. I swear, I couldn't make this up if I wanted to.
The also LOVE their bath time together as well as their snacks. For so long Addie has held her distance from Lily because she didn't like being loved THAT MUCH. Read: too tight and too smothered around the neck or over the face. But lately as Lily has learned to lay off a little, Addie initiates more hugging and snuggling with Lily and Lily LOVES it, this is the sisterhood that Lily has been waiting for. In the picture below they are sharing a chair eating a snack and thinking it was the best thing ever. It was their "After mommy gets home from work" snack (while I eat..er...scarf my dinner). They were totally pumped about it, and they ask me to take a picture. Okay, Lily asked and Addie said, "yeah, yeah, yeah, cheeeeese".
Sometimes I think my heart couldn't be more full for these two and then I see them loving each other and I think I might burst, just burst. The sweetest thing.
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hey,
ReplyDeleteread abot your "dilemma" on aupairmom. unfortunately, the comments on that entry are closed, so i'm taking this route ;-)
i'm german and used to be an AP so my perspective is not that of a host mom. and first off, i tend to go with "s". from my experience with german APs, my gut tells me, she would be better (not that j would be bad at all! you are lucky to be choosing between two very fitting APs)
have you asked "s" why she does not continue in her job? the apprenticeship thing is very common in germany and not at all a sign of less education. but her reason to do something different and not "keep working" would be of interest to me.
"j"'s red flag for me is her bf. yes, he can be very supportive but i have seen SO many relationships go down the drain during the AP year...this can turn out to be a real strain on her emotional state of mind (i don't want to jinx it).
good luck on your decision!
franzi