Interractive and Imaginitive

The boys are really starting to become little people with more expressions and language.  Thanks to our vacation in the Outer Banks Evan is now much more vocal and attempting more words, though they are still mispronounced and most of the time are missing the first and or last letter's pronunciation.  But the key is that now he's trying to make himself heard and will pay attention to my mouth and imitate when I pronounce words, where before he was much more timid and soft spoken and gentle with his language and did not repeat or imitate at all.  Both boys love to sings songs and are now singing along with us or the television which is so much fun.  And this has led to a much more interactive and imaginative form of play between the boys.

They have not yet demonstrated any twin-speak, that secret language that infant multiples sometimes have that no one else can figure out.  Instead they are playing chase or "I'm going to get you", playing peek-a-boo with each other, playing with blocks together, crashing cars together, climbing on the windowsill together, taking turns going down the slide head first. 

The boys are playing more imaginatively with their toys too.  At times throughout the day they will just wander off with a toy and sit quietly and play with that toy and I watch and listen.  Evan's favorite thing to do right now is to build towers (only for Cameron to charge across the room and knock it down, which makes Evan laugh).  It's taken a long time with lots of my building the towers and his crashing them to find that there's fun in building them as well as knocking them down.  Cameron has not shown interest in building just yet but enjoys the crashing towers quite a lot. Cameron's favorite thing to do now is to play with his Little People action figures in their firetruck, dump truck, or pink airplane.  He walks the people on and off the vehicle, flies them around, sprays water, has conversations about what is happening to the people.

Today I noticed a new social and developmental skill emerging which is fun, especially since both boys are struggling with a head cold that is making them clingy and more tired and they have been  puking more in their sleep.  Whenever they are sick I see less language and less developmental skills improvements, which is true for anyone who is sick and feels like crap but the delay is more pronounced for kids who have a chronic illness.  If you were vomiting in your sleep through out the night for two years straight you'd feel pretty crappy and not perform at your best all the time too. 

Today I noticed that the boys were very interested in lining things up to make a choo choo train.  Cars, Geotrax train parts without the track, and little Matchbox/Hotwheels cars.  We recently scored a ton of new toys from my older niece and nephew which included about 20 cars.  I found that Cameron was "parking" the cars on the keys to their toy piano using the shorter "black/purple" piano keys as the lines in the parking lot.  Evan was lining the cars up as though he was parking them on his parking garage and then racing and crashing them in a traffic jam on the ramp.  This kind of play is a great sign of more fun things to come because they have been delayed in these areas for a little while and we have known it would come around but it is so much fun to see their own little selves finally coming out.