Today I realized for the first time how much Liva and Laia already understand. It started after they woke up from their afternoon nap. While they were sleeping our neighbor rang our doorbell, our black cat Tatanka was out in the stairway, all scared and huddled up in a corner, poor thing! He must have "escaped" when we got back from our morning walk, being busy with Liva and Laia, the stroller, bags etc, I never pay much attention to anything else. Tatanka came running inside when I called him, then collapsed on the floor and slept - he was only out there for about 1½ hours, but it must have been a dreadful 1½ hours for him. When Liva and Laia woke up, I brought them into the livingroom and explained what had happened. Tatanka was sleeping in a corner of the livingroom, I'm aware that Liva and Laia didn't understadn everything I told them, but they got the point - they both crawled off my lap and went over to give Tatanka some loving. Liva is really good, she's gentle and careful, Tatanka loves being touched by her! Laia is a bit wilder and doesn't quite understand the difference between stroking and hitting.... She'll learn.
On our afternoon walk I decided to try some more. I told the girls things like "look at the big dog over there", "look at the birds eating", "wow, look, it's a butterfly", etc. I was behind them, and used no gestures (they wouldn't have seen them anyways), they both looked around until they saw the dog / birds / butterfly, then started pointing and making their talking noises. They clearly understood!
When we got home, Liva was extremely tired and whining. Laia had a pacifier, I couldn't see any other pacifier around and didn't feel like looking for one. Since Laia was in a great mood, I told her to give Liva the pacifier. She looked at me, took it out her of her mouth, then put it back in. I told her Liva was sad and needed a pacifier, she looked at me, took it out of her mouth and - what do you know! - gave it to Liva. I was surprised, impressed and proud all at the same time! My big girls (who are almost 1 year old)!!
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