Social Graces

Matthew has become quite the conversationalist. Today at the playground, he asked Daniel, "How are you doing today, Daniel?" And Daniel replied, "Good." Mattie also spontaneously asked another little boy what his name was (the other boy was a bit younger, and so just stared at him in response -- but his mother told Mattie what the boy's name was). And a girl was pushing the merry-go-round when he was riding it, and when she got on, he said, "Thank you for pushing!" and later, "We're riding together!" And he asked Grandpa, "How are you feeling today, Grandpa?" He has a very polite and concerned tone when he's saying these things (and all of them were without any prompting from us) -- it's so cute.

And Jamesie made a friend on the playground today -- he and another slightly older little boy were running around, pretending to fall over, putting mulch on the toys -- they were having a grand time together for probably 20 minutes or more. It was really cool. And Mike was chatting with the boy's dad, and it turns out his younger sisters are preemie twins (born at 28 weeks, only four months old now). Small world.

The boys were crazy tonight at bedtime. We left them in their cribs, and I overheard this conversation:

Mattie: "I want to get out, too! Help me! Help me."
Jamesie: "Come on, Mattie! Come on, Mattie!"
(Just what we needed, them egging each other on! A few moments later, they both came racing down the hall, and couldn't have been more pleased with themselves. We put them right back in the cribs, though, so their triumph was short-lived -- still took them a while to settle down after that, though.)

P.S.  Daniel is doing very well riding his bike!