Sunday, July 5, 2009

"My sister"

Esther has been referring frequently, of late, to Ruthie as "my sister." If we encounter someone at the grocery store and they ask Esther how old she is, she will respond, "I am almost 4 and my sister is almost 2." When she is correcting David and I for our treatment of Ruthie, she will still call her Sissy or Ruthie. As in, "No Daddy, you have to give one to Sissy too."

We were at McDonald's tonight for a special ice cream treat, and I asked Esther if she would like to ask the man for "two ice cream cones, please." She marches right up, no hesitation, and clearly says, "I would like two ice cream cones please. One for me and one for my sister."

It is so awesome to hear those words.

Oh, and remember how Esther used to be shy? She's still sensitive to large crowds and noises and will only occasionally ask other children to play, but the shyness with 1:1 interactions with adult strangers is mostly gone. She orders her own food at restaurants and responds to strangers questions in public. She's also made a super easy transition to a new classroom at her school. I'm sure that there are all sorts of reasons for this, typical development is probably one of them, but I can't help but think that part of the reason is that we never forced her into social interactions and we even protected her a little bit from them.


vickie2005 said...

That's awesome, Esther!!

Laurie said...

Go Esther!

dc604 said...

i also like how she tells you when she wants you to stop or she's had enough of something. when we went to eastern market, she turned to me from her stroller and said, "can we get out of this place?" and the other day when I was tickling her she says, "okay, that's enough tickling, stop." we work so hard to teach them to communicate and use their words and then we have to listen to them and honor it when they start to apply it.

Rachel et Natalie said...

that's quite an achievement. You must both be so proud of her.

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