What are these kids saying?

Clock it: Gavi called me Mom :(.  She said it on Friday morning, like it wasn't anything.  She just called Maaaam, and left off the "ma".  My heart sank.  Is my baby really this grown up that she's going to call me Mom?!?  Luckily over the last few days she's gone back and forth between mom and mama and maaaaa.

As a reminder, if you're reading this in your email inbox and want to see the videos, click here to go to the actual blog: The Stamm Fam

Here's a video of just 2 minutes in the life with this 2 year old.  You'll see the whole range of emotions:

What else is she saying?  A lot!  Minus a lot of consonants and swapping some letters but she's getting there!  Here are some of the adorable substitutions she's making:

• RoRo (Leo) - this is confusing because she also calls our robot vacuum RoRo (Rosie)
• DiDi (BiBi)
• Tay! - Okay!   Taaaay?  - Are you okay?
• She subs S for F - foap (soap),  fock (sock - yep, it sounds how you think it sounds)
• She subs T for P - tear (pear)
• Other adorable things - tee (tree), caa (cat), ruhruh (dog), tae (coffee table)
• Animals - mooo (cow), baaaa (sheep). fah! (frog), doh (also dog), cah (cat), neh (horse), you get the idea

Here is a video from a few weeks ago of Gavi helping me read Brown Bear, Brown Bear:

Leo is very curious these days!  He'll tell you that himself.  Today I met with a guy who might do some work at our house and even though Leo was really cold, he stood outside the whole time and kept saying "I'm really curious, Mom!"

The other day, he had two questions that I thought were fantastic.  First, he said "If I do this (and he did a little wiggle dance), what does my skeleton do?"  I though that was such a great question!  

He's been asking a lot about who's alive and who's dead.  "Did he die...?" is a very common question around here.  So Leo likes watching the credits roll after a movie and the other day he came to me and said "Mom, if the guy who does the voice for the cartoon dies, can we still hear the cartoon?"  I mean that kind of question takes a lot of thought, doesn't it?  I was really impressed with that one!

He also has a new habit.  Right when I'm leaving his room at night, he'll real me in.  He'll say "Mom< i have one question".  I answer the question, the he goes "Okay, now I have 2 questions.  No 5 questions."  You can't really say no to a curious kid who is politely asking questions, can you?  The questions are usually all circling around the same thought - why do I have to go to sleep, I'm not tired.  What does sleep do?  Why does my brain need to rest?  Do I grow during the day too? Why do I need so much energy?  And on, and on.

Here's Leo doing a really complex move in Tae kwon do:

Here are some other things we've been up to the last week or two:

We hung out with Riley and Asher a few more times before we separated our bubbles:

We got our very own horse:

We made tie-dye paper for valentines day!

We celebrated Chinese New Year - we're celebrating everything these days.  We made paper dragons, did a parade, read lots of books, and even ordered Chinese food and gave the restaurant a red envelope with a picture of a dragon Leo drew for them!  The kids also loooved Peking duck.

We painted snow.  Leo is completely done with winter.  He doesn't want it to be cold, he doesn't want to play in the snow, he is done with it.  So we brought the snow inside!  

Spring, we're ready for you.  Any day now.  I sure hope Punxatawny Phil was wrong this year and spring comes before he says.  We are getting pretty stir-crazy, we're ready to be able to go outside again.  

We'll update again soon!