Baby squirrel rescue

Baby squirrel rescue
Originally uploaded by Drumbone

Sent from my iPhone

Zoe losing her morning nap

As further proof that the twins really are different from each other, Zoe has dropped her morning nap before she's turned 1. She also wakes up before Zadie. So it just seems like she doesn't need as much sleep as Zadie. Zadie was the fussy one when trying to go to sleep swaddled as a newborn, but ironically, she's done very well with her naps. So our stretch of keeping the twins on the same schedule has finally broken. We will try and get Zadie to lose her morning nap within 4 weeks to realign them and get them ready for daycare. But in the meantime, it's gonna be hard with the girls being on different sleep schedules from 10am to 3pm. Zadie naps at 10am and 1:30pm, and Zoe naps at noon.

Zack's a Fish, Zadie's a Dog, and Zoe's a...Raspberry

Zack turned a corner in swimming class two weeks ago, where he became very comfortable holding his breath and keeping his head underwater for a while. This lead him to improve by leaps and bounds in class since he's not worried about his head staying down. We even went diving for things on the bottom of the pool with him, and while i helped him go down and come back up, he couldn't get enough of it! Now the problem is keeping him swimming on the surface because he wants to be underwater now.

Zadie is the master walker now and can walk around the house without falling down. She has taken a fascination to the dog water and food bowls, and will grab food and try and eat it or splash her hands in the water if we aren't careful, or even go after dog chew bones. The dog doesn't seem to mind, but...uh...we do.

And Zoe has been turning on her best raspberry imitation over the past few weeks. Zack now calls her the Putt-Putt Monster for the sounds she makes with her lips. She seems very happy letting out the bronx cheers whenever she feels like it.

Tooth count:
Zadie: 7
Zoe: 2

More bath fun

More bath fun
Originally uploaded by Drumbone

Sent from my iPhone

Rub a dub dub

Rub a dub dub
Originally uploaded by Drumbone

Sent from my iPhone

Fun at the park

Fun at the park
Originally uploaded by Drumbone

Sent from my iPhone

Mohawk from side

Mohawk from side
Originally uploaded by Drumbone

Crazy hair day

Crazy hair day
Originally uploaded by Drumbone

Zackasaurus

Zack was asked what he would say if he were a dinosaur for a class project. Well, instead of "Rrrawwrr!", he took it as a cue to explain the answer in detail, which the teacher recorded. Here's what Zackasaurus said:

"T-Rex. He looks like a dinosaur. He is green. They are all different colors of T-Rex. I am a red T-Rex. I'm a big T-Rex. I'm smooth and I have sharp teeth. I eat meat and other dinosaurs. I live in a T-Rex house - it's just a plain house. I have dinner and have snack - that's all. I fit in big, tall houses. I'm gonna make tall tall houses up to the sky and the volcano will be next to the other T-Rex's house. I have 65 neighbors - some speak Spanish and some speak English. I have an owie right here - but my owie on my knee is going away. I would have other T-Rex friends, but I'm not a dinosaur. I'm just a person. I'm a T-Rex. I'm all done."

Zadie's first steps

She took her first 2 steps yesterday and I actually got it on video! I need to capture it and upload it and will do so hopefully later today

Zoe walks and Zadie talks

I've been lax in my blogging duties lately and need to catch up. The biggest news is that as of a week ago Zoe is walking. On the day she turned 11 months old, she took her first set of unaided steps. This is interesting because Zack did the same on the day he turned 10 months, and Zoe was born a month early, so Zoe and Zack have started walked at physically the exact same time. I wish we had good video, but she never seems to want to walk when we have the camera ready. and Zadie, not to be outdone, now waves and says "Hi" when new people come into the room, she's also babbling a very wide range of sounds and noises, and pointing to things as she says them. The interesting thing about Zadie is that she had been consistantly a month behind Zoe in doing things for the first time (except for getting teeth), but at around 10 months she hit a development spurt within a two week period to catch up to Zoe and even pass her on things like verbal development.

This week Zadie is super-fussy, perhaps because tooth #5 is coming in, and Zoe's new favorite activity is putting toys and things into and taking toys out of my mouth. Is she trying to feed me?

Toilet Fun

I wish I had a picture of what happened - it was both cute and shocking - but if I did, it would have meant that I wasn't doing my job as a parent in stopping what I saw as soon as possible. I came home around 6:30 right when Jen was leaving so in the transition as I was tending to Zack, the girls crawled off down the hall. I then heard a sound coming from the bathroom that sounded like the dog was drinking water out of the toilet loudly. I didn't think much of it until I saw the dog in the living room and realized the girls were doing something. When I went into the bathroom I saw Zoe and Zadie both happily standing at the toilet bowl each with one hand on the rim and one hand smacking the water in the bowl both with huge happy grins on their faces. Fortunately the water in the toilet was clean, but they both earned themselves instant baths. And we need to make sure Zadie especially doesn't think to try and tip herself in to get a drink. It's time for latches on the toilet seat! Funny, Zack never was interested in the toilet and we never needed to do anything to thwart him when he was a toddler.

Ultimate Time-Out

I've got to keep track of the bad as well as the good. Zack has seemed to turn a corner in not behaving well. Yesterday after a great day of fun, he didn't want to leave our friends house, was warned numerous times, then hit his mom and once strapped in the car, hit his sister next to him, and lost all privileges for the day. He was put to bed (against his will) at a new record: 5:45pm. After much screaming he passed out for a while. He was able to wake up, regroup and eat dinner and get ready for bed with mom around 8:30pm and earn back his book-reading privilege. This morning went well, but he seemed to break down again when I dropped him off at daycare, which he hasn't done for a very long time. We'll see how it goes, hopefully he can behave better for his grandparents who arrive for 2 weeks tomorrow.

First attempt at harmony

Curses to my camera for cutting out too early (or perhaps for some, not early enough)

Family at the Gym

Here another video of the family at the My Gym in Palo Alto (great place BTW!)

Time-outs a plenty

A new record for time-outs was made tonight. A whopping 6-minute timeout was earned by Zack along with a revocation of book-reading privees and an early bedtime for multiple infractions that included spitting milk, multiple screaming, kicking dad, throwing bath toys, and generally just being a frumpy face. All of this meant an early bedtime for mom too...

Where do we sleep?

Zack has a fever and went to sleep early in his bed. At some point he then got up and relocated to our bed and Tobey followed. Now that we are ready for bed, there doesn't appear to be any room left...

Zadie dances the pole

For the first...and last...time.

Hidden night vision twins cam

So what do twins actually do in their crib at night after we put them to bed and walk away? I tried to hide myself in the corner of the room with the lights out to capture what they do, it's pretty interesting. I was hidden for the most part but had to come out a few times to rescue the pacifiers.

How a 3-year-old thinks

Zack swung his stuffed animal cat named Polly around and it hit his sister Zadie.
I said sternly "Zack! Be careful! Don't hit your sister with Polly. Polly has hard shoes that could really hurt her." Zadie didn't seem to mind as it was just the soft part of the cat that hit her.

Zack said, "OK." So he went and got a smaller stuffed animal and walked over to Zadie and whacked her hard across the back with the toy. Zadie cried in shock and pain, and before I could say anything to Zack, he held up the smaller toy to me and said, "See, this one is soft!"

I guess I need to be more specific in my instructions to him in the future...