Learning the Rules, Sort of

Mattie is so amusing these days. When he gets a snack and he's not in his high chair, he yells, "Sit down!" and then sits down...for about a second and then is up and moving again. (I think N encourages them to sit while they're eating, an idea I fully support -- but not so easy to do with toddlers!)

And he also has the idea that he's only supposed to use "a little" toilet paper, so he pulls off these tiny quarter sized pieces and then tries to wipe his (non-poopy) bottom with it. It's really funny. (James, on the other hand, would gleefully pull off the whole roll of paper if we let him.)

The other day, James had both his feet up on the middle of the rocking gator, and was about to let go of the handles and try to stand up like some trick pony rider. I told him no, and he got down. Normally, this would be a signal for the other twin to dash over and immediately do whatever his brother had been reprimanded for, and so when Mattie dashed over to the gator, I was ready to have to remove him -- but no, he actually sat down and said something like, "Stand up no-no." Wow, progress!

Mattie also remembers things. Once when James was crying, I told Mattie that brother was okay, but sometimes he threw his pacis out of the crib and got upset. So tonight when he heard James crying, he said, "Brother throw pacis out of the crib. In the room. Daddy helping!" (Yep!) And one night when I was trying to sing him to sleep, on the tenth or so round of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", I said "baby star" instead of "little star." Of course this did not escape unnoticed, so now Mattie asks for "baby star" and then wants me to fill in other names, too: brother star, Daddy star, doggie star, Daniel star, Matthew star, and so on. Tonight he started out with "Bama (Grandma) star" and "Mary Ellen star." When we got to Daniel, he said, "Daniel house! Visit!" (I didn't tell him that Daniel was visiting Grandma and Grandpa right now.)