Last Monday Leah turned three, and this Saturday we held her birthday party: about 15 kids, some Leah's friends, some Hannah's friends (such as Arthur, a French boy), came along with their siblings for a few hours to play on a bouncy castle we set up downstairs, play some games and of course eat cake--some kids spent a while standing next to the cake devouring the last little bits piece by piece!
All went fairly well despite some small hiccups, such as Leah being somewhat overcome when she first saw all the people, and the candles being blown out by the wind, and the bouncy castle pump having some issues so the bouncy castle never properly got up (though it didn't stop the kids playing in it most of the time). At least Leah didn't have a break-down like Hannah did earlier this year during her party! This morning we took them to see the My Little Pony film; I suppose it was not as bad as I expected, but only because the Paw Patrol film (a few months ago was really bad (it was just 3 or 4 short episodes back-to-back and very painful) and Hannah managed to survive the scary scenes (Leah didn't seem to mind them)!
Leah doesn't stop talking nowadays in English (she's still not willing to talk much in Chinese during her Chinese lessons though her listening is fine) and is adorable. She tends to play with Hannah a lot, but copy her less and less, with more of her own opinions and certainly a willingness to make her own mind up on what she wants to do, eat, drink and so on irrelevant of Hannah. She no longer needs a nappy during her lunch nap (and the lunch nap is so important Leah voluntarily tells us she is tired and goes to lie down), but still does at night unfortunately.
Last week, whilst Hannah's kindergarten was closed for a couple of days in celebration of German reunification, Hannah went to Leah's kindergarten but Leah refused to let Hannah go in the bigger kids class. It was sweet with them going to kindergarten together. And they are still both so sweet. Google Photos Assistant has been stringing together little videos of the two of them growing up, as well as Hannah's first day at kindergarten three years ago. Her hair was much shorter, very boy-ish and she had similar abilities as Leah has now; though Hannah was much more sociable back then; today Leah doesn't really have many friends she plays with which might have something to do with her having played with Hannah so much.
It is weird seeing photos from when the kids were so young--without them it is hard to even remember what the kids were like then as they are always changing and my memory can barely keep up. Amazing to see videos of when Hannah was Leah's age and see how much Hannah has changed, and then to realize Leah will also change so much more still in the next few years.
Still, until they get over-tired at the end of the day, they are fantastic kids. Probably all they need is for us to focus more on reading and writing with them. I feel Hannah is maybe a bit behind, but never mind. She's very much a fan of listening to books and drawing pictures so I am sure it will come.
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