Journey of a Kumquat: Week 149 and Week 62.5

At the end of last year we had a parent teacher conference for Charlotte and one of the areas to improve upon was her bicycle riding ability (as I mentioned before, little did I realize bicycle riding was a core competency of a two-year-old). That may have been 2012, but 2013 is a whole new year. Char is going through a bicycle phase... she asks to ride one when I pick her up from school (I let her do it once and was surprised with how good she was) and we have borrowed Teo's Radio Flyer which she LOVES to ride in the house. She even can go backwards! Now our challenge is that she likes to ride her bike when she should be eating dinner - because everything is far more interesting than eating at home.

Char has been a bit sick - she is rounding the corner now but we kept her at home yesterday as she looked a bit more sick than she was really. She had sunken eyes and a reddish, runny nose. She has been sick a bit the last few weeks. I think it is time to sneak in some veggies in her food.

Char did something rather surprising yesterday - she sang all the words to the Rainbow song (from those remarkably not-too-annoying-after-watching-a-million-times Signing Time videos). It was just cool - I have sung that song to her many times and she has not sung along. She has been a bit of an information vault - taking everything in so it is nice to see something come out.

We had homemade pizza on Sunday and Sophia ate it for the first time. We need to start her eating on her own - she can definitely do it if we let her - but we are sort of creatures of habit.

Sophia has started to wear the big people's shoes. She put on Yaya's flip flops yesterday and walked out of the house! Sometimes I think she is a mama's girl but sometimes I think she is planning her great escape out of the house - both my girls are explorers for sure.

Charlotte and Sophia are starting to play hide and seek before they go to bed. Honestly Charlotte is pretty rubbish at it at this point - she always hides in the same corner of her room and then runs out and looks for Sophia (even if she is the one that is being sought after) - but it is very fun and funny to see the girls giggle and run after each other in their pajamas. Char is remarkably generous to Sophia - certainly she has her jealous 'please carry me' moments but she is incredibly doting to her baby sister. I suppose I should make a point to remember these moments -- as I imagine it only gets more complicated from here.

People tell me Sophia is looking more like me these days. So hard to tell for me.

Also - Charlotte is either melancholy or cheesy in her photos generally. So seldom do I get a genuine smile!

Finally catching up with some videos:

Charlotte swims!

Sophia eats pizza with a death grip:

Sophia does the happy feet dance!

Here is a cute video of Sophia trying to catch Daddy's 'rock' puck (he is demonstrating to me that he can 'feel' the puck and he doesn't have to look down to see it is there - amazing [said the hockey neophyte that I am]):