Valentine's Day. Gotta love it!

Yesterday, daycare was closed, the roads were nasty and icy (no plows in our neighborhood), so AJS and I had quality time with the kids and could watch them under a microscope. Dash is now a week shy of 20 months and Rosie is 4 years, 3 months.

Rosie likes to have animated playtime, where she makes up dialogues between her toys; I've been wondering about some of her catch-phrases, like, "his eyes were bigger than flashlights!" or "then, we'll have to slice off your head"? (Me: shaking head.) She loves to play with Dash and we hear a lot of "c'mon Dash!" and "follow me!", but we also hear a fair amount of "get Dash away!" One of her favorite shows on Noggin is "Little Bear," which we watched yesterday. There was a very sweet episode in which Little Bear was making drawings of all the things he loved about his mother, and during the show, I got plenty of hugs and kisses! One of the special favorites of Little Bear is Mother Bear's chocolate cake, so we spent some of the afternoon making guess what? Chocolate cupcakes. Yummy.

Dash is picking up lots of new words. Using "please" is something we've been drilling into Rosie for months, and while it's not sinking in much with her, Dash has started to say "peesh" which is the cutest. Other words are mom-ma, dad-da, duck, car, up, on, off, book, boot (all shoes), boown (balloon), booboo, BYE!!! (at top volume), ree (read), baish (water), moo (milk), laliesh (olives), heesh (cheese), caak (clock), cack (crackers), cowk (chocolate), haaiiee (in a whisper, means quiet), Momo (Elmo), Bawa (Dora), and a few more that I'm not remembering right now. Somehow, a name for Rosie hasn't materialized. Maybe since she is available for him most of the time, he hasn't needed to identify her with his words?

Yesterday, Rosie and Dash had several campouts (lights out, flashlights on), colored and painted together, and watched a little television together. Later on, Rosie and I went to her grandparents' house for some one-on-one playtime with Grandma. Quite a busy Valentine's Day. Romantic, though? Not by most definitions.