when do they know what they know and brain things

watching the girls learn, remember and do from memory are some of the most fascinating and enjoyable things. this in tandem with watching their personalities develop makes it even more enjoyable!

for starters when the heck does fear develop? tamsin is afraid of pandas, dont know how or why but she is. we have other animals with black and white faces but its a panda that sends her in to hysterics. this started a while back (i think i may have mentioned in a post but i dont remember when exactly) and i removed a panda stuffed animal. we have a color book,  the page for black and white shows a panda and i read it to them a lot. right after we learned tam is afraid of pandas i stopped showing her the black and white page. then maybe 2 months ago since had been a while since she had seen a panda i showed it to her again, still terrified. how does that work? fear? remembering? recall?

i started teaching them animal noises about 6 or 7 months ago, a few they picked up right away like cow and duck and dog. after i would ask (and respond) what does a doggie say; i would follow it with 'what does mumma say?' and then hold a finger to my mouth and say 'shhhh'. they never really got the 'shhh' and finger to the mouth. but then a few weeks ago they started back up with it! with out me prompting!! the dogs bark and they 'shhh' them!! again fascinating. their brains learn, remember and recall information. so cool.

i read them chicka chicka boom boom. when we get to the point in the book when the letters fall out of the tree elyse gets upset (not quite tamsin panda upset but agitated). i noticed it and made a mental note of it over the past few months but never really thought about it. then yesterday i put in our chicka chicka boom boom dvd. as soon as the letters fell out of the tree elyse started crying. we played it a few times and each time it was the same thing. crying. is she sad? does she feel bad for them? i cant believe she is empathizing or feeling emotions for letters or whatever it may be. or maybe she is like mumma and doesnt like the messy chaos of the letters in a jumbled mess. whatever it is, it is amazing to see the growth and development in her and tamsin.

God is pretty amazing and its so easy to see him, his creativity and his God-ness in them.