My favorite part of today: teaching Abigail how to paint with acrylic paints. We spent 2 hours painting a duo of owls together. Larry saw the painting set and asked me how much I helped her. I didn't. He said that I at least must have helped her with her branch. I didn't. She watched as I did mine and practiced 3 times on paper and then totally nailed it. For other difficult parts (the shape of the baby owl, the leaves, the heart) I had Abigail practice on paper and then sketch it lightly in pencil on her canvas and we had to erase a few of them and do it again before she applied the paint but this work is all her. I was so happy to have a painting buddy. I hope that we can do this more often. I really MISS my girl and haven't spent the kind of time with her since May that we used to spend and she is becoming such a cool person so quickly!!
My other favorite part of today: we moved Joseph out of our room into a new big boy race car bed. This nudge into growing up carried over into how Joseph comported himself for the rest of the day after we set up his bed and made a HUGE deal out of it. Instead of clinging to us and crying/ wanting to be picked up while we made dinner, he wanted to play by himself in his room. (!?) At dinner, he tried salad for the first time. When Abigail sat on the staircase and cried (we told her to eat some more protein based items at dinner and she isn't feeling well so she took it poorly), Joseph went and sat by her and patted her back and stroked her hair to make her calm down and feel better. We are cautiously optimistic that maybe this trend of acting more like a little boy and less like a toddler-terrorist will continue.
