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...of fairness

Up until recently, Abram has really been a dictator in his and Selah's relationship. When we get out two cups, plates, bowls, spoons, whatever, he decides what color he wants and gives her the other. When they are playing with toys and she has one he wants, he takes it and she would usually just go and find something else. I probably should not have let this go on, even though she really didn't care at the time, for many reasons. But the main reason being that now she has found her voice. Her literal voice and her opinions. And she's not a push over any more.

Now, when a toy is taken from her, she hits. Not the best response, but I can understand the frustration of having things wrenched from you hands all the time. So we are working on that. She is also learning colors and new words and phrases every day and now when the cups, plates, bowls, spoons, whatever come out, she wants to have a say in which one she gets. Purple is her favorite right now, so if either are purple, that's the one she wants. Problem is that Abram likes purple a lot, too. So we've had some mediation that has had to happen recently over the color purple. Who'da thought?

I remember this from my childhood. My sister and I are just a little bit closer in age than Abe and Sel (maybe three weeks closer) and my parents were constantly having to give us turns picking cup colors, favorite chairs, toys, whatever. They tried to be as fair as possible, but sometimes they couldn't be, or they didn't have the patience and they made the choice. When we would freak out and complain that it wasn't fair, their standard response was, "Well, life isn't always fair."

In looking back on blog posts recently, trying to recall as much information about my past pregnancies as possible in an attempt to predict what will happen this time (futile, I tell you), I realize that Selah got a lot of in-utero screen time. There were weekly belly photos, videos of her wiggling, and a lot of stories of how things were going. Abram was reported on quite often during that time as well, but I wasn't nearly as blog-oriented when I was pregnant with him.

But Simon, poor Simon. I think I've taken two "belly photos" and taken a few videos of him wiggling, maybe one of which has actually been shared. I consider it an accomplishment that there are any sonogram photos of him on here at all and a small amount of text. So I haven't been as fair as I could be, but his brother and sister are a lot more demanding right now than he is. I suppose when he's born, he'l be stealing some of their thunder for awhile, so perhaps it will all even out. I just hope when he nears two years old and finds his own voice and everyone is on a more equal playing field, Quinn and I will be able to oversee fairness among this Smith ranks as much as possible, with reality and grace informing it all.

So, in an effort to be fair to all of my children in this post, I thought I would share videos of each of their most recent accomplishments.  We will start with the youngest:

Simon: Definitely getting longer (although he is apparently at his max length and now just putting on the chunk) and learning to stretch and straighten his legs in there. He's less of a tosser and turner than his sister, so I get more of the same movement over and over: bummy out on one side and feet digging in the opposite hip. Hopefully still head down!  Enjoy this lovely long video of my tummy.



Selah: Talking up a storm. She regularly amazes us with new vocabulary and phrases. She told me "Ah miss you" the other day when I came home from a day away. And last night when I said "I love you" to her before bed, she said "wuv oo too". Also, "No want it" has been a standard for my opinionated girl for awhile, as well as "want it". She told me that her shoes were "too small" the other day. I checked and they were. She likes to name all associated people when we are talking about someone. Like, when we say something about Katie, she proceeds to name everyone in Katie's family. This is a video of her answering the New City Catechism question 3 (her favorite).



Abram: Today we discovered that he can count backwards from 10. For some reason, I feel like this is a pretty big step in his mental processing. Maybe it's not. But it seems like thinking backwards through something takes a certain type of thought that is not used in the memorization and recitation of going through a sequence, like the numbers and alphabet (both of which Selah can do, also, by the way)... (Sorry, this is not Selah's section, it's Abram's. Still working on that fairness thing).



So there you go! A special mention for everyone :)

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