My Girls Right Now
I was just having a look through my blog and realised that the last time I wrote about my girls was this time last year, whoah! It's safe to say that they have changed a lot in this last year. Clementine turned 4 earlier this month and Hazel is now 19 months old. We are officially out of the baby bubble! Although we still call Hazel "the baby" and she's tiny, so I can get away with pretending she's still a baby for a while longer...
Over the last month her vocabulary has exploded; some of her newest words include: bus, duck, truck, book, all done, sit, car, higher, egg, up, stop, cat, hands, dinner, and pram. I just love the proud look on her face when she says something and we actually understand her! She calls me 'mumma', her dad is 'dada' and Clementine is 'Nana'. She loves her big sister so much that whenever Clementine isn't in view, Hazel will walk around shouting, "Nana! Nanaaaaa!" She's also recently learned her dad's name and will shout that out to get his attention, although it drives him nuts.
Hazel is the sweetest, most affectionate little thing. She is always hugging and cuddling us, and my favourite thing is when she comes up and randomly plants a kiss on my arm or my leg. She also cuddles and kisses her toys, especially her favourite teddy bear who she calls "Grrr" (because bears say 'grrrr'). She loves books and will happily sit next to the bookshelf, pulling each book down and flipping through it while chatting to herself and pointing at the things she recognises. She's very busy and agile; she climbs up ladders at the playground, happily goes down slides by herself and can do a very impressive dead hang off the monkey bars for about 45 seconds! Her other new development is the realisation that if she doesn't get what she wants, she can throw a big tantrum! So that's fun...
Clementine is turning into such a big kid. She's super chatty and asks "why?" approximately 5000 times a day. Her vocabulary is amazing and we're constantly laughing over the hilarious things she says. Her accent is very Australian, although sometimes people say they hear a slight Canadian twinge and other times she sounds British.
She's very social and outgoing and always wants to be around people. She especially loves babies and toddlers and when we're at the park she'll often end up "helping" and playing with the littler kids. It's very sweet. For her birthday we gave her a bike, and it's now her favourite possession. She rides her bike to the park most days and proudly shows it off to everyone, shouting "this is my new pink bike!" She's still very agile and active, and recovered from her broken arm perfectly. In fact, she's just learned how to do the monkey bars by herself. In many ways she's always been quite girly, choosing the sparkliest, pinkest clothes she can and mostly playing with dolls, strollers etc. But she'll also happily sit down in the mud with a bunch of boys and build a castle.
The girls are sharing a bedroom now, and despite a few initial challenges it is the sweetest thing to see them sleeping in their side-by-side beds and I think it's strengthened their bond. They love each other so much, and it's my greatest hope that they will grow up to be best friends.