New Stuff LIII

Hot summer fun with those wild Woodruff girls:

1. Current Reading Selections: Jillian's favorite book right now is Paddington's Garden, while Bridget loves to listen to Clifford's Halloween. By the way, they both managed to get their hands on some of Mommy's gardening books, so both of them now carry around their own "flower books".
2. Current Favorite Play Activities: Doll houses combined with role-playing are Jillian's favorite at the moment (along with using the supposedly off-limit breakable things on her dresser), while anything that Jillian is playing with is Bridget's favorite, so Sweetie-Pie is receiving lessons in sharing and patience.
3. "Well ...", "Because ...", "Ummm ...": Bridget continues to use her sentence starters well, usually to give her time to think about her response.
4. Dry All Night!: It's taken some work, but Jillian has been making it through the night without any accidents for over a week. We started working on it a while ago, and it was pretty much hit and miss every night. When it didn't look like much progress was being made, we decided to use an incentive ... if she wanted to watch a morning cartoon, she had to stay dry all night. Well, it only took a couple of accidents (and no morning cartoons) before Jillian realized she needed to get serious. And she did! Mommy and Daddy are thrilled with this milestone. Next up: Bridget's potty-training!
5. Morning Hot Chocolate: With Daddy home every day due to grad school being done, the girls have gotten used to the every-morning routine of hot chocolate on the sofa while watching their cartoon. Jillian still slurps it down in record time, while Bridget is working on staying clean.
6. Lighter Brunette: Bridget was born with very dark brown hair, and it stayed that way for awhile, but as the summer has gone along and she's gotten some sun, her hair has really lightened up so that it pretty much matches Jillian in color. Mommy also noted some highlights in her hair recently.
7. Darkening Tan: While Bridget's hair lightens in color, her skin is definitely darkening. She has no problems tanning, and is sporting a nice brown tan. This is the opposite of Sweetie-Pie, who is very fair-skinned and tends to burn easily.
8. Letters for the Mailman: Jillian likes to write a lot (her usual several lines of squiggles on paper), and she also likes to mail them. So, she puts them into the mailbox for the mailman to pick up, though the mailman can't actually get them in there. So, eventually Daddy fishes them all out.
9. The Vanishing Nap Time: At home, Jillian has recently been spending her nap times in her room either reading books or quietly playing with her toys. It's been awhile since she's actually taken a nap, so we figure her nap times are starting to go away, or at least lessen. She still takes naps at Grannie and Papa's house and Papa Ken's house, probably because she plays so hard when she's there.
10. "Jen": This is what Bridget calls Jillian, because she can't quite pronounce the "L" sound.
11. The Nighttime Cleanup: While Jillian has always tended to make a mess in her room every day, it got pretty bad lately, so that we couldn't walk across her floor. So, we decided to have another incentive (condition) each night; namely, if she wanted to watch her evening cartoon, she had to clean up her room first -- and the more time it took to clean, the less time she had to watch TV. The first night of this was quite the cry-fest, and it took forever but eventually got done. The next couple times were much quicker, but only because she chucked all of her stuff into the closet out of sight. Sadly for her, this didn't pass inspection and she had to re-do the cleanup. After doing it for awhile, she's accepted it and does a decent job.
12. The Shadow: We guess Jillian has gotten used to having Bridget following her around everywhere and copying everything she does. The only thing that doesn't work is when there's one of something, so Bridget can't copy -- this usually leads to a lot of wailing until they both move onto something else.
13. The Boss: Jillian has definitely taken the lead role in her and Bridget's sisterly relationship, not being afraid to tell Bridget everything she should or has to do. For the most part, Bridget takes it all in stride.
14. The Translator: Well, Jillian just thinks she knows what Bridget is saying (that is not clearly understood). If we look at Bridget like we're unsure what she just said, Jillian will repeat Bridget's sentence, using words that make no grammatical or contextual sense.