Meredith (at and just beyond age two)
- "Hold you" - addressed to us when she wants us to hold her; she quickly grew out of that unfortunately. Anything cute that she says tends to very quickly get replaced by more proper diction and grammar.

- "I did it" - probably her most popular phrase

- "flof floor" = third floor. it's almost impossible to replicate how she pronounces this, but she doesn't hesitate to throw new words out there, even if they don't sound quite right.

- Meredith loves her gymnastics class and calls it "nastics". She likes to "dangle", "jump" and generally "play, play, play". One particularly noteworthy time involved a brief visit by a six foot Elmo. Meredith came back home relating her story in very typical clipped but highly pertinent phrases: "scared me. BIG. high me (he waved hello to Meredith). he dance (showing an up and down waving motion with both arms). play ball." Laura said she practically climbed up her leg when he first appeared and, though intrigued, Meredith made sure Laura and she were strategically posted on the opposite side of the room from BIG Elmo for the brief time he was there. Something was clearly not right with that thing!

Jane's activities (Jane just turned four)
- follows her sister around pretty faithfully as Robin to Regan's Batman. Regan is a benevolent dictator, as we like to refer to her, but can't always get Jane to line up to do what she wants. Jane will put her foot down from time to time and choose a different path, which sometimes really sets Regan off. Regan will cry and Jane seems to secretly like it! By the way, Regan and Jane sleep in the same twin bed almost every night.

Regan's activities (Regan is five closing in on six)
- Regan is in a fascinating stage where she's learning to read and write. She writes notes and "books" all the time these days - I mean extremely prolific. Her notes are written in a kind of cryptic phonetic spelling that is extraordinarly interesting. If you were to just write words and sentences based on how they sound, it would come out pretty much like Regan writes. It's really fun to try to parse through it and get the hang of it.

- Regan is a sponge for information and conversation. She listens to everything we say and processes it and then later on uses it. When Jake was laid off from BofA, he thought he artfully delivered an age appropriate message to the girls that Daddy was not going to go to his old work anymore and was going to get to look for a new job (read in a very positive, upbeat tone)! Laura overhead Regan later in the backseat of the minivan telling Walker carpooling to school that her dad had "lost" his job the other day. Clearly a different message than what her Dad thought he delivered!