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S and A are now fifteen and a bit months and I LOVE it! They're little enough still to be cuddly, gorgeous babies, but grown up enough to be wonderful, individual people.
They can communicate, but not talk.
They nod, and grin, and manage to produce an entire vocabulary with about four consonants and three vowels. They understand pretty much everything I say to them and they can express a preference with an amazing combination of gestures, smiles, frowns and yelps. Oh, and they both know what noise a tiger makes too.
They are mobile, but can't really get around without me.
A is walking, just, but it's still that hilarious zombie, arms-outstretched walking that invariably ends in a bump and a toothy grin. S is crawling, very fast, and only cares that A can walk and she can't when A gets praised and she doesn't. Funny that.
They get stroppy when they are told off, or can't do something they want to, but they also haven't yet worked out that the person who's doing that is me, so it's me they turn to for comfort: "Mummy, it's so awful, I wasn't allowed to pull your glasses off your face. Comfort me...."
They know what goes where and how their world fits together, but they're still so amazed and fascinated by the tiniest things.
I can keep them entertained for ages with just a hair clip, or a piece of tissue (they do have actual toys, incidentally...), but if I hand out the toothbrushes in the wrong order, or try to put A's shoes on S's feet, woe betide me.
I just think this is the most amazing stage. Watching them as they turn from babies into children.
And it's not that I don't adore L, or think that the stuff she's doing is amazing, but she is now, aged nearly 3, much harder work. I remember, as she went from 3 months, to 6, to 15 and then into the ages that are no longer counted in months thinking every stage was better than the one before, but that's not true any more. She's more complicated, and complex, and intelligent and demanding, and has opinions, and thoughts and preferences of her own which I can't (or not always) solve with tickles and raisins. And I think too, that as she's grown older, I've realised that the stuff she's doing at any given point in time isn't, any more, just a stage that all babies pass through. She's not a baby any more. She does what she does because she's L.
But is that right? Are "stages" just an illusion? Or are they going to keep getting better (or worse)?!
