What are Nathan and Charlotte up to?

Well, Charlotte is starting to talk more and more every day. The words that she says pretty clearly are: Mommy, Daddy, Mama, Boppa (Papa), up (which has 2 meanings...up like she wants to get up and she also says it for "cup"), dog, ball (bah), hi and bye. Nathan is the best at getting her to try new words and practicing her old ones. I'll overhear him quizzing her while they are playing. He taught her "hot dog" but it's not one that she uses often :) Last night they were playing on our bed while Wayne and I were watching TV. Nathan got her to crawl under the covers, and we could hear Nathan going over all of her words and adding new ones. He was so proud when he taught her two new words (and we shouldn't have been surprised to hear what they were!). Nathan ripped the covers off of them and said, "Mommy! Daddy! I taught Charlotte new words!" And then to Charlotte he says, "Charlotte, say Poo-Poo" And she said it! "Now say Tee-Tee." And of course she said that too! He was so proud of himself, and Wayne and I just looked at each other like we're not surprised that's what he's going to teach her. They went back under the covers and played school some more. Nathan tried and tried to get her to say "eye brow" but that was just a little too challenging :)

The two of them are playing so much more "together" now. Charlotte just loves doing whatever he does which has its pros and cons. Sometimes Nathan just wants to do his own thing and gets frustrated when Charlotte tries to join in...like when he's playing with his dinosaurs and builds a big forest with all of them and then she comes over and knocks them down. But other times, they really play well together. The other night I was cooking dinner and Nathan asked Charlotte to play spies with him. He got his rolling back pack, a play sword for each of them, and was telling her to run and hide because the bad guys were coming. She followed him all over the house and did whatever he told her to do! It was so cute because Nathan was making up all sorts of stuff and doing karate moves, and Charlotte just copied him. He told her to hide under the table and wait for him to come get her, and she did it. Then he told her to follow him into the living room and she did it. It was the cutest thing!

The other thing that Nathan is loving right now is a series on Netflix called "Dino Squad." It's a cartoon type show about dinosaurs that also teaches a lesson. Usually I just turn one one, but don't sit and watch it with him. Well, last week Nathan just watched one of the episodes and was then being overly sweet to Charlotte. He let her play with him and if she knocked something over, he didn't get mad. If she wanted a toy that he was playing with he gave it to her. I remember him saying, "Come here Sweet Girl, do you want to play with my cars? Oh, you want this one? Ok you can have it. Here, let me help you put it on the track." So I said, "Nathan, Mommy is so proud of how sweet you are being to Charlotte! You are such a good big brother!" And this is what he said to me..."I just don't want to be a bully because bullies are mean, and I just want to be nice." I asked him where he learned about bullies thinking they must have talked about that at school, but he said it was on Dino Squad. So I thought how great it is that he likes this show and is really learning something!