New things

New experience and knowledge from the last few days:

• cousins visiting from New York
• Smith Playground in Philadelphia
• new bicycles
• sprinkler in the backyard
• first official play date with B and her kids
• "We'll come another time" proved true - second visit to the farm
• deer
• dinosaurs
• astronauts and rockets
• people in wheelchairs
• tacos

Learning

It's pretty incredible how much our kids have been learning in the last two-and-a-half weeks. They've been learning about:

• English. They're picking up lots of new words every day. The top category for new words is car-related: van, flatbed truck, SUV, station wagon, fire truck etc. They are also pretty comfortable with colors, farm animal names, counting (A to around thirteen, D to around six), basic verbs, and simple commands: wash your hands,  close your window (in the car) etc.
• Survival skills. Running out in the road is adegena (thank you, dead squirrel, for illustrating my point), the hot stove is adegena etc.
• Playing. I've noticed their attention span has gotten longer and they don't just flit from one thing to the next anymore. Yesterday they played BY THEMSELVES for half an hour. It was the first time they were not in immediate contact with an adult since arriving in the U.S.
• How various machines and electronics work. They can open their car windows, talk on the phone, A can more or less use a mouse etc.
• Who's in charge. Most mornings, they need to check this. They will do something that is blatantly not allowed (hit someone, run outside in the rain in their pajamas) and I think they're just doing a little experiment - are daddy and mommy still the boss? When it turns out we are, they cry just a bit, then relax and settle down.
• Trust. Initially, if I took something from one of them, even for a second, like if a book was being held upside down and I took it to turn it right side up, there would be screaming. Now the kids have learned I don't randomly grab things from them, and they let me take things to fix them or help with something. Same with Daddy going back to work. On Monday we needed to call him a couple of times, and we talked about him a lot and there was some "Daddy ayme'tam" (Daddy isn't coming), but by today (Friday) they knew Daddy would come back.
• Ice cream. It is yucky.