Happy Halloween

Mattie the Monkey and Jamesie the Puppy wish you a Happy Halloween! They went trick-or-treating to three houses (but didn't get any candy, since they're too little for it -- no great loss as we have tons of leftover candy already.)

Our neighbors down the street (tonight, a cowboy and fairy princess) arrived at our house just as we were heading out, so it was fun to have company on our brief procession. We met up with our other friends (tonight, Harry Potter and an FBI agent) at Lakshmi's house. James's costume looks a lot like their dog, so we joked that he was going as Blizzy for Halloween!

The boys were very good about wearing their costumes, but they also didn't want to sit still, so it was harder to get a good picture of them than you might think. :) Or perhaps, if you've been around toddlers, it was exactly as hard as you'd think.

One of Mattie's new words for today was brother ("bu bu" -- it occurred to us this might be where the nickname Bubba comes from). He said "brother" and then went over and gave James a hug -- so sweet! (James, meanwhile, in seeing Mattie in the monkey costume and hearing us tell him his brother was a monkey, made the "ooo ooo eee eee" monkey sound!)

Hope you all had a lovely All Hallows Eve!

Sharing

Matthew was feeding James his Cheerios this morning. What a nice brother!

Mattie's latest words:  shoes, and hop (in response to "what does the bunny say?", although of course the bunny doesn't actually SAY that.)  He does "hop" with a very pronounced h and p, which is how we say it to them. Because those are soft sounds and sometimes difficult for people with hearing loss, we emphasize them in certain words ("acoustic highlighting", as James's hearing therapist would say).  It's funny to hear that repeated back to us!

I do a two-fingered bunny hop with my hand for bunny (like for shadow puppets or Little Bunny Foo Foo), and another funny thing is that both Jamesie and Mattie repeat it back, but they just bounce one finger up and down -- I guess their bunnies each just have one ear!

Dapper

Doesn't Jamesie look cute in his little turtleneck? (Thanks, Auntie Kimberly!)

His latest words are banana ("na na"), diaper ("di ya"), and dog ("da"). I think he also said water last night (looking at some fountains/birdbaths that I wouldn't let him play in), but I'm not quite sure about that one.

Wiggleworms at the PumpkinFest

We joined some friends at the Fearrington Village PumpkinFest this evening. They had a band and lots of amazing carved pumpkins -- and of course, it was a chance for the boys to wear their Halloween costumes! Tonight they were inchworms, although our friend J called them wiggleworms, which seems much more appropriate. (Thanks to Grandma for the costumes! Lots of people commented on how cute they were.) It was fun to see all the little ones dressed up, including a couple other sets of twins.

Mattie had a great time running around (and of course, checking out the tires on the cars), and Jamesie walked around holding my hands.

After an unseasonably hot couple of days, the temperatures dropped fairly dramatically this evening, so we were glad the costumes were fleecy and had hoods. Even so, everyone's hands were chilly by the time we left.

We were there past bedtime, so Mattie had a crying meltdown as soon as we got in the car. We've been reading him Boynton's Bedtime Book at night, so when we were halfway home, I started reciting the book -- and amazingly, that calmed him down! Of course, I had to also recite his Dogs book and what I could remember of Goodnight Moon and Barnyard Dance, but hey, it was good to know that something besides picking him up would get him to settle down. Woo-hoo, the power of stories!

P.S. Happy Birthday, Aunt Ann!! We love you and hope you had a fabulous day!

P.P.S.  In case you can't tell in the picture, Mike is holding Mattie and I'm holding James.

These Are the Bedtimes that Try Men's Souls

It's a good thing Mattie is cute, because he has been very difficult to get to bed recently! Even our bad habit of letting him drift off while we're giving him a bottle hasn't always been doing the trick. Ugh!

[Photo from their trip to the farm last weekend.]

October Snow

Grandma told James that it was snowing in South Dakota, but he didn't believe her! (She was telling the truth, though!)


In "new word" news, Matthew said "sock" and "bath" (though bath might not have been distinguishable from other "ba" sounds if he hadn't been pointing at the tub). Jamesie says "flower", though it sounds like "la la". And he does the sign for fish. The sign is to hold your hand facing up (like you're going to shake hands) and move it in a wave motion like a fish moving through water. When James does it, he wiggles his whole body -- it's so cute!

Toddler Farm Fun

Today we took the boys to Green Level Gourd Farm, which is just perfect for toddlers! They went on their first donkey ride, played with toddler-size tractors, and saw some animals.

Farmers' Market Playground

We went to Carrboro this morning and the boys got to play on the little playground next to the Farmers' Market. They had a great time! Everything was a nice size for toddlers, especially the steps -- they were a little wider and shorter than regular steps, so Mattie was practicing walking up and down them. But as usual, the slides were their favorite!

James liked going down headfirst. He did it several times, no problem, and then I decided to take a video, and of course that was the one time he managed to land on his head at the bottom! I think the videocamera is a jinx for him!

What You've Really Been Waiting For

James took his first steps today!!! Yay, James!!!

He's doing two or three steps at a time, and standing up by himself for 20 seconds or so (getting the hang of that "balance" thing.)

Woo-hoo -- we're so excited!!

The Chairman

I thought it was cute this morning when Mattie climbed into the glider in the nursery (and made it rock). But then we were even more impressed this evening when he climbed all the way into his high chair! (Not a habit we plan to encourage, since the potential for falling out and busting his head seems a bit too high!)

State Fair

We took the boys to their first State Fair yesterday.

We ate...

Fried mac and cheese (pictured here with Mike)!
Roasted corn!
Fresh doughnuts!
Corn dog!
Fried shrimp!
Apple fritter!

So, it was a good day. :)  (The boys, of course, mostly just drank their formula, but we did give Jamesie a couple tiny bites of doughnut -- he was very enthusiastic about it!)

Mike did get his flu shot while we were there, so at least we did one healthy thing.  :)

One of our first stops was at the 4-H Children's Barn, where the boys saw sheep, bunnies, chickens, roosters, and goats. They were all behind fences or in cages, so I'm not sure if the little guys got the best look at all of them. But it's a good thing we went there early, because by the time we made it to the main livestock exhibition, Mattie and James had both fallen asleep!

Our plan had been to go to the fair early, but the toddlers once again thwarted the plan -- James was up between 5 and 6 AM and then slept in past 9 AM, whereas Mattie (who has been sleeping in more lately) decided to get up at 7 AM.  So by the time we got everyone fed and dressed it was 11 AM before we left the house.  Oh well!

We brought Mattie's puppy dog harness along in case he wanted to walk around, but it was pretty crowded, so we mostly kept him in the stroller.  The harness worked okay except when Mattie wanted to go a different direction than we wanted to go -- he'd reach the end of his rope and instead of turning around, would just try to keep going and fall over.  (Stubborn child!)  The falling over didn't bother him any, but we didn't really want him getting into stuff on the ground.

We didn't ride any of the rides.  There were a few that babies could ride on with parents, but the hassle of getting the tickets, getting them out of the stroller when they were content, etc., didn't seem worth it this time around.  (We'll try a merry-go-round or train some other time!)  We did play a couple of games and "won" some tiny stuffed fish for the boys (the consolation prize, I think!) 


It was funny that even in a place packed with small children, people stopped to look at and admire the boys.  :)  And it's a small world -- a lady we talked to at the doughnut stand turned out to be a NICU nurse up in VA (whose primary baby just went home after seven months!!  It's rare that we hear about a baby whose stay was longer than James's.)  She herself was a twin, and her mother told me that she and her brother were 2 lbs 6 oz and 2 lbs 10 oz at birth. And as we were leaving, we ran into one of our favorite UNC NICU nurses (who was just arriving). 

Next year, pig races!

What You've Been Waiting For

...the crown jewel of the State Fair, the Krispy Kreme burger (served on doughnuts instead of a bun). We didn't try this delicacy, but there was a line at the booth when we were there!

Fluid Frustration

James went in for another hearing test yesterday, but unfortunately, he had fluid behind his ears from this cold. (And he was a little fussy as well, which is unusual for him, but he'd been up in the middle of the night and probably hadn't gotten as much sleep as he wanted.) So, they didn't do the test because it wouldn't be fully accurate, since the fluid tends to decrease hearing levels. We have to go back again next month and hope that the fluid has cleared up. Ugh!!

With this test, they're going to be checking his hearing in each ear separately, so that his hearing aids can be better calibrated. They did do just a little bit of testing to make sure there hadn't been any dramatic change in his hearing (particularly, that it hadn't gotten worse), and it seemed to be about the same as before.

On the bright side, though, he did enjoy eating a strawberry at home!

[Top picture is Mattie, bottom two are James.]

Wearing the Pants

I was a little disappointed that the boys were getting to the age where they couldn't just wear one-piece outfits all the time, but who knew they would look so cute in their long pants?

Home Sick Home

My trip was great (except for some travel snafus -- Dear Delta, if you cancel a person's flight scheduled on a Thursday, it is not helpful to rebook them for a flight on Saturday), but both babies and Mike were sick when I got back. Matthew seems to have had the worst of it. He had a terrible runny nose, a nasty cough, and just wanted to be held yesterday (and all night yesterday night and the night before). He's not completely over it today (in fact, he threw up at least twice from having so much mucus), but he was in better spirits and seems to be improving.

James had a bad cough the night before I left, but except for some residual sniffles seems to be doing pretty well. (Although literally as soon as I finished typing that sentence, he had a pretty dramatic coughing fit.)

This illness was particularly poorly timed (as if there's ever a good time to be sick), because this weekend we were supposed to go to the Baby Reunion for the fertility clinic that helped us have the boys. (By the way, to get to the clinic from our house, you take the freeway and get off at the exit as if you were going to the State Fair. But to get to the fairgrounds you turn right, and to get to the clinic you turn left -- because life isn't fair. Get it? Ba-dum-bum!) "Reunion" is a bit of a funny name since we haven't actually met the other attendees, but we'll go with it. This event has been on our calendar since August, and we were looking forward to seeing the wonderful doctors again, showing off the boys, and getting to go to a children's musuem that we'd never been to -- so all in all it would have been a fun afternoon. We were really disappointed to miss it, but we didn't want to pass on these germs to all the other kiddos. Ah well, maybe next year.

In better news, Matthew's latest word is "mailbox." :)

Daddy Time

I'm traveling for work tomorrow and Friday (off to give a talk at Harvard, ooo la la), so poor Mike has to manage bedtime on his own two nights in a row. I hope the little guys behave for him! (Matthew was up from 2-ish until after 3:30 AM last night -- I'm hoping he got that out of his system for while. And little Jamesie has a runny nose. So, we'll see how it goes.)

We were encouraging James to walk this evening by seeing if he would go from one of us to the other. He took a couple of steps that were mostly just controlled falling forward, but he's getting closer and closer to doing it on his own.

Our babysitter let him play with the (empty or mostly empty) container of puffs, and he was putting the lid on and taking it off. He and Mattie both enjoyed getting to hold the container -- usually we don't let them for the obvious spilling reasons. Jamesie also seemed to be doing very well with his sippy cup of water tonight, at least when he wasn't throwing it on the floor. :)

[Photos from 10/8 and 10/10. With the number of geek friends we have, I'm surprised people weren't making a bigger deal out of Binary Day on 10/10/10!]

Let there be Light

[Photo from Saturday.] Why, no, they're not quite ready for crayons yet -- the hostess gave us some, and the boys maybe gave a token scribble and then the crayons went right into the mouth. Ah well, worth a try!

Matthew's latest word is "light", and he may have also been saying "down" the other day. (He was squatting and standing up, and definitely saying "up" when he stood up, and I think "down" when he was down, but I'm not positive about that one.) And when I asked if he wanted to walk up the stairs with Mommy's help, he knew just what I meant and held his hands up; when I told him his shoes were in the closet, he walked right over to the hall closet (which is impressive because we just started putting his shoes in there a couple days ago). Smart cookie!

Also, when he'd taken a toy away from James, I told him to give it to James, and he walked back over to James and held out the toy. He didn't actually hand it over, but still, it's a step in the right direction!

Mattie has also gotten very fond of Goodnight Moon recently (which is funny because it's not one we would usually pick to read to him, but these days he often looks through the books to find the one he wants). He especially likes pointing out the fire in the fireplace on the cover and then the one in the picture of the room. He even wanted to take the book to bed last night, which would have been cute except that he still needs us there when he's going to bed, and opening and closing the book in his mostly-asleep state seemed to prevent him from getting all the way to sleep.

I think Jamesie did the sign for "thank you" yesterday. I said "thank you" when he handed me something, and he put his hand forward from his chin.

James has been a little clingy recently, but it seems like just with me -- he wants me to pick him up a lot and doesn't want to be put down. (Mike says it's because I spoil him by giving him a tour of all the stuff on high-up spots that he can't reach.)

Sunday at the Park

Just pictures today. :)