Such a good big brother!

We continued to miss Alex while he was gone in Kenya this week, and were absolutely thrilled to have him come back today! The nights got worse again after Kiana came down with (another? the same?) cold which made it hard for her to breath at night, as well as showing her first points through of another set of teeth (the ones connecting her middle four to her back teeth). We continued the manic playdates all week (Frankie, Olivia, Derek, Tyler, Jake), but slowed down a bit for this weekend in time for the first SNOWSTORM of the winter! Saturday there was about 6 inches of snow, which was very exciting! We still managed to get to baseball school on the train through the snow, but waited till Sunday to go sledding (with Tyler and Jake). (We had dinner with our neighbor Cherie that night, which was wonderful!) Sledding was AWESOME!!! Kiana wanted more and more and more of it, and Aidan went down with Tyler by themselves and had a blast!


I was extremely proud of Aidan this week for stepping up and being a really incredible big brother. There were a couple of playdates with his friends (who didn't have younger siblings) where the friends were being too rough with Kiana, and he - without ANY outside direction whatsoever - stepped right in and protected her (physically and using language)! He let them know that it was not okay to push her around, and I was SO proud of him!


Aidan and Kiana have also been just incredibly cute together as siblings this week. At church this Sunday, Aidan turned to me and said, "my snuggle tank is empty - for her!" He and Kiana then proceeded to give each other hugs and snuggles for about five minutes!!! Later in the service (after both kids had let me know they were not up for Sunday school and were in the main church with me), when everyone else was singing "Make me a blessing, make me a blessing, make me a blessing, to someone today!", they both did a sort of hug-dance together, laughing and laughing and laughing! It was a little loud, but it was definitely a blessing for me! I love seeing my kids love each other!


QUOTES/NOTES FOR THE WEEK:

AIDAN:
- "My eyelashes are like snowplows!"
- (About Kiana, who was holding a ball with a rattle inside it under her shirt) "Looks like she's got a baby in her tummy -- a jingly baby!"



KIANA:
- Some of her new words: "Dah-ee" (sorry), "Day-oo") (thank you), "pee" (please/ pee), depending on context), "nah nah" (night night), "dee" (TV), "joos" (juice), "pay-ee" (playing)/ "pay" (play), "dee"/ "me" (me), "bah dah" (brother)
- Some interactions:
* Pretending to be a lion: Kiana runs to the other side of the living room, turns around, raises both hands, and rushes towards me and Aidan saying "roar!!!!!!!!!" (Repeat x at least 10!)
* She got off of her bed by herself for the first time today! She usually scoots off on her tummy, but waits to hold my hands to get her toes the last few inches before touching the floor. But this morning, she slid off all by herself without hands, and then clapped her hands to her chest repeatedly in proud excitement saying "Dee! Dee!" (Me! Me! [I did it!]). She had to do it again (with the same hurrah afterward) because she was SO proud! (I was proud of her too!) :)
* At Jake's house yesterday, she found two stuffed monkeys, and very animatedly held them both up to me saying, "do!" (two!)! I have been saying "1... 2..." with her for a long time (e.g., "one armie, two armies! one leggie, two leggies!"), but I was amazed to see that she really understands the idea of numbers!