Little Lovelies

We had someone come to stay with the girls while Steve and Christina both went to commencement for the university Saturday. We can't wait till the girls are big enough to come "help" and hang out for this every year, but it hit us this year that one day it will be our girls actually going THROUGH commencement. These little lovelies? Hard to believe:

They have started doing such funny new things. They still sign often for please and thank you, even though they can say these words, maybe because this is how they first used them. Here is Clara finishing her "please" sign, trying to get Elena to share her water:

It didn't work right away, but she and Elena have both learned to say "Share!" and will often go to their sister, say this, and promptly yank whatever the desired item was out of a sister's hands. We discourage this, and Christina has been working on reluctant sharing by setting a time at which an item will be shared, and then counting to it by saying "1, 2, 3" (often the one who needs to share will then happily turn over the item). Clara has keyed in to this, too, and now walks up to Elena and says: "Share! Un, two, tee" while putting her little fingers up to her face to show Elena she's counting. So funny!

The girls have also taken to announcing to us what they are doing. A favorite is saying "I sit!" (they seem very proud of their sitting) but today Clara was playing with the calculator, which they often do, and turned to Christina to say: "I calc!"

Yep, the calculator is quite the favorite toy - here Clara and Steve "calc" together:

We took the girls this weekend to see a ballet performance a friend of our was in (Maeve, of the Maeve who skinned her knee and we heard about it from the girls for months, if you're keeping track on that front). Anyway - they made it through almost half an hour of the performance, sitting still in their own chairs in the back row. They clapped after every act, and Clara (our future dancer/singer) started mimicing the hand gestures of the ballerinas during their performance. It was utterly adorable - they may end up in dance class before you know it.

When we got home, Elena was trying out some ballet moves. This is a terrible quality photo, but the move was too dear not to post!

Both girls are getting so much more independent. They want to do so many things themselves. Elena especially has been showing this in terms of her clothing. She wants to pick it out, and she wants to put it on (and most of the time she succeeds). Today, after several options were presented to her for an outfit, she went through her drawers and picked this blue swimsuit cover-up and some lime green leggings. The girl has got some style!

We are now all officially on summer break, and we are thrilled! We celebrated with a family barbeque tonight, and the girls had hot dogs and cowboy beans and grilled pineapple with us and it left us all eager for the rest of our summer together.