Toddler time!

Well, it finally happened. After weeks of being forced to practice walking between Erin and I the kids gave it a shot on their own. The amazing thing is that the both made their first solo attempts at exactly the same time. They were playing on the kid couch that the love so much when they apparently just decided to give it a try. Erin, Nana and I were talking about how amazing they are when they both stood up and walked over to Erin to give her a big hug and a kiss. It was pretty awesome but now we are realizing how much more work it will be to keep track of them since they are so fast. Now they are starting to try and walk on their own more and still fall down a lot but it doesn't seem like it will take them much longer to nail it.

Perfect parenting day

Erin pointed out that it has been almost four months since I had wrote a post, which made me feel bad for letting all of you down. Today I wrote a parenting bio about my perfect day of parenting for a proposal and it seemed like a reasonable topic to post so here it is. Enjoy!

My perfect day of parenting begins around 6am when my wife and I hear our son stirring in his crib. We hang out and listen to him as he babbles a bit to himself, eventually waking his sister up. They make noises at each other and giggle for a while before calling out 'maaamaaa' or 'daaadaaa' around 6:30. When we walk in to get them they do a happy dance and squeal with joy. We get them changed and take them into the living room where we all play for a while until it is time for breakfast. Sarah will sign for her sippy cup of milk and then for Matthew's, handing it to him since he doesn't know the sign yet. After a huge breakfast of oatmeal, banana, blueberries and rice chex we clean them up and hang out in the play room until 9 or so when they decide it is time for a nap. We then use the next two hours to clean up around the house, surf the interwebs and get caught up on things in general. With twins, there never seems to be enough time to catch up. When they get up at the same time around 11 we'll load them into the jogging stroller and take a long walk around the neighborhood, stopping by Gerstle Park to play with other kids for a while. On the way home we'll stop in at Sol food or a burrito place for some lunch and they scarf up rice and beans along with a sippy cup of milk each. Getting home around 1pm it's straight to bed for a solid nap. When they get up around 3, we'll head out again to meet our friends and their kid or kids, depending on who's around that day. More playing and romping ensue while the adults hang out and watch from a distance. We get home around 5:30 and it is time for dinner. They eat pasta, pizza, fish sticks, and anything else we throw together with gusto, except for vegetables, which Matty has taken a dislike to. Back into the playroom or the back yard afterwards, we play with them and they make us read the same books over and over again. “Yum yum, Dim sum” is one of their favorites. "Why, oh why, my little shui mai, do I love you so?" We'll playfully work on walking and vocabulary while playing then it is into the bath where they play more and happily splash each other for a bit. Cleaned up and ready for bed we get them into sleepers and sleep sacks then they hit the soon-to-be-retired bottle. Once done we say goodnight to all the stuffed animals on the shelf (polar bear, black bear, Raggedy Andy... the list goes on and on). In their cribs by 6:50 and sound asleep by 7, my wife and I look at each other and say, once again, "How did we get so lucky?". We then make something for ourselves to eat, wind down with some tv or a book and call it a night.

   

Awesomely bad potty training device

Since Erin was in Vegas the other weekend and this just showed up in my RSS reader today, I thought I would give it a mention: The Jack Potty!

Original article here.

It is awesome in that I certainly would love to have a one-arm bandit toilet in my bathroom and bad in that this is not sending a very good message to my kids. Maybe I will be of another opinion in whenever the time comes for potty training but for now I think I'll pass. Also, what happens when the kids hit the jackpot? I shudder to think.

Birthdays and bronchitis

It looks like I am just getting this post in under the 'month of January' wire. It was a super busy month, with us returning from our east coast expedition with the kids. Somewhere along the way we got a nasty stomach virus which hit right around New Year's Eve and ended up being both fotunately very short-lived and unfortunately severe. We infected our hosts in two states with the affliction and felt very bad about it but in the end there was nothing we could do except wish them well. After returning to the best coast, we got some more stuff unpacked and organized while the kiddies played in the jumper, the go-cart and just generally amused themselves. That is one of the most amazing things about them getting a little bit older, they actually enjoy just hanging out with each other... not always, but enough that it helps us to be able to get some things done around the house. After that both Erin & I had birthdays later in the month but since we don't really matter nowadays, I'll spare the details. This weekend we pretty all much caught a cold and couldn't do too much. Matty has been coughing for what seems like months, but each time we take him in they says his chest is clear and to wait it out. Erin took him in today and the prognosis was slightly different: bronchitis but we still have to wait it out. Maybe a couple of weeks for the symptoms to go away and then another two weeks for the cough to go away. It pains me to listen to his little body making so much noise but it hasn't really affected his happy attitude so hopefully he can power through.

Matty and Sarah both traveled well considering it was a 4.5 hour flight going east and a 6.5 hour flight coming back. That doesn't include the delays and other difficulties they had to go through. Here is a pic of us heading east:

We paid a visit to the world famous Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Rochester. Not as famous as the original Syracuse location, but the food rocks the same! The kids both enjoyed a couple sides with thier baby food.

Speaking of eating, Sarah is now getting two top teeth and the two of them have a lengthy list of food they like to eat. Sweet potatoes, broccoli, chicken, cheerios, pancakes, carrots, fruits, the list goes on and on! They are growing so quickly, Matty weighed in at 19.5 lbs today. He's a bit of a tank.

Once we got back home we worked on cleaning up and getting more stuff unpacked while the kids amused themselves:






Sarah has only figured out how to crawl backwards while Matty is doing the army crawl to get around and he is pretty good at it.