I Didn't Even Know It Was Their Birthday

In his before-bed babbling tonight, Mattie wanted me to sing Happy Birthday to Blizzy, Stanley, the vacuum cleaner, the Big Vacuum, the hose, the handle, the stick (these three are all parts of the vacuum), the water table (still one of their most favorite things to play with, thanks again, Auntie Nora!), and rocks.

Happy Memorial Day

We enjoyed a lovely brunch at J & Y's yesterday. It turns out James is a fan of both quiche and baby E's exersaucer-type toy! (He climbed right into it himself.) I think Mike was actually able to have some adult conversations -- I was mostly toddler-wrangling, but that's fine. :)

Today the boys wanted to go on the big boy swings instead of the baby swings! They did very well, although I don't trust them yet to not let go of the chains. (The couple seconds I took to snap this picture was the only time I didn't have my hands right behind James.)

For the second round of the hearing study James is participating in, we did the same "words James is saying" questionnaire as the first time. He's up to 217 words now (from 47 in, I think, February). Go, James!

Today Mattie said his first and last name. He also, when he was leaving the room and I asked him where he was going, said, "Be right back."

Hope you all had a good Memorial Day! We honor the memory of those who died for our country, and hope that one day we will have a peaceful world where no other families will have to make that same sacrifice.

Culturally Competent

With his toy kitchen set, Mattie showed me and talked through all the steps of cooking an egg -- he cracked it, mixed it, put in in the pan, told me it was hot, let it cool down, and ate it with a yum!

He also now knows the word "iPod" (though he says "hipod") for his music. And sometimes when he sees me with the camera, he wants to sit down and look at all the pictures. And he knows that James's FM system is a "microphone" for "brother's ear."

His favorite words for today are "this" and "that" (Matthew is in "this room", brother is in "that room"; he wants "that one, over there.")

In addition to E-I-E-I (Old McDonald) and the Elmo song, Mattie also now requests "Hammer" -- Arlo Guthrie's Bling Blang. (I consider this a parenting triumph.)

James and Mattie were in the tub the other day and they were both playing with the water coming out of the faucet. Mattie said, "Stuck!" and I asked him which part of him was stuck. He replied, "Brother!" (His leg was tangled up with James's.)

Scary Face

Mike taught Mattie to "make a scary face." Pretty good, eh?

Radio Free Jamesie

James's hearing therapist came last week, and she continues to be very pleased with his progress. However, she said that we should be using his FM system (the wireless microphone that transmits the wearer's voice directly to his hearing aids) on a regular basis, because he's getting to a stage of language development where he really needs to be hearing soft sounds (such as the ess sound that makes words plural or possessive, and initial and ending consonants).

When James is two and a half, she might refer him to speech therapy, or she may not need to -- and she said that using the FM system would be helpful in perhaps allowing him to not need speech therapy, so that was good enough motivation for us! We have basically not used the system at all so far mainly because it didn't seem like we needed to (our house is fairly quiet and he's been picking up new words and seeming to hear well), and secondarily because it seemed like a hassle.

But we started using it yesterday, and it's really not a big deal, and I have mixed feelings about reporting that I think it helps him. He's repeating words quite a bit, and today he was repeating them pretty clearly. (The mixed feelings are that I'm happy that it's useful for him, but I now also feel guilty that we weren't doing it before! Ah well, live and learn.)

Speaking of learning, Mike discovered that our bathroom radio picks up James's FM system broadcast on TV channel 13. We usually just have that radio on NPR, but Mike has an irrational hatred of the show "Car Talk", so he was flipping around the channels and caught the "broadcast" of me talking to the boys. Hopefully the neighbors won't be tuning in!

The therapist's other recommendations were to do nursery rhymes with him and to start reading more stories with plots (in addition to the type of toddler books that are more a series of pictures), because talking about past/future events is one of the next stages of language development. The story she brought with her was the Gingerbread Man, complete with cute little wooden puppets. It was so funny, though, because she was reading along and turned the page and got to the ending, where (spoiler alert!), the gingerbread man gets eaten by a fox. She stopped and looked at it and said, "I forgot about the ending -- we'll just talk about the fox eating a cookie!" She didn't want to traumatize poor James! (Those old kids' stories are pretty tough! I don't think he would have cared, actually, but I didn't mind toning it down a bit.)

Why Toddlers Need Supervision, Part 3

I was getting Matthew dressed in the nursery when I heard the toilet flushing. When I ran into the bathroom, I found James happily dunking his pacifiers into the toilet bowl! (I don't know and I don't think I want to know whether any of them made it back to his mouth after being dunked! Did that child learn nothing about germ control from all that time in the NICU??)

Learning the Rules, Sort of

Mattie is so amusing these days. When he gets a snack and he's not in his high chair, he yells, "Sit down!" and then sits down...for about a second and then is up and moving again. (I think N encourages them to sit while they're eating, an idea I fully support -- but not so easy to do with toddlers!)

And he also has the idea that he's only supposed to use "a little" toilet paper, so he pulls off these tiny quarter sized pieces and then tries to wipe his (non-poopy) bottom with it. It's really funny. (James, on the other hand, would gleefully pull off the whole roll of paper if we let him.)

The other day, James had both his feet up on the middle of the rocking gator, and was about to let go of the handles and try to stand up like some trick pony rider. I told him no, and he got down. Normally, this would be a signal for the other twin to dash over and immediately do whatever his brother had been reprimanded for, and so when Mattie dashed over to the gator, I was ready to have to remove him -- but no, he actually sat down and said something like, "Stand up no-no." Wow, progress!

Mattie also remembers things. Once when James was crying, I told Mattie that brother was okay, but sometimes he threw his pacis out of the crib and got upset. So tonight when he heard James crying, he said, "Brother throw pacis out of the crib. In the room. Daddy helping!" (Yep!) And one night when I was trying to sing him to sleep, on the tenth or so round of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", I said "baby star" instead of "little star." Of course this did not escape unnoticed, so now Mattie asks for "baby star" and then wants me to fill in other names, too: brother star, Daddy star, doggie star, Daniel star, Matthew star, and so on. Tonight he started out with "Bama (Grandma) star" and "Mary Ellen star." When we got to Daniel, he said, "Daniel house! Visit!" (I didn't tell him that Daniel was visiting Grandma and Grandpa right now.)

Playground and Pizza

The boys got to go to a new playground this evening. We went over to the aquatic center, because we're planning to sign them up for swimming lessons. (I'm not sure if any actual "swimming" is done at this age, though. Hopefully it'll be something beyond just "put your face in the water and blow bubbles", which James at least can already do. That kid loves to put his face in the water!)

The downside of James's climbing ability is that now he's getting curious about going down some of the climbing ladders on the play structures, which he definitely can't do yet on his own. It's funny how their new abilities these days also seem to require more rather than less adult supervision!

The temperatures were up into the 90s today. It turns out James has inherited his mother's tendency to turn bright red in the heat (not sunburn, just flushed.)

We stopped for pizza on the way home and ran into some friends there (who, unfortunately, are moving out of town next month) -- it was nice to catch up with them. At the end of the meal, James decided that he wanted to eat his cheese puffs and Cheerios with a fork. It was funny to watch, but he was pretty good at it!

Checkup

Mattie had his two year check-up at the pediatrician today. He is wary about the doctor's office, but he did very well! He got to stand on the big boy scale (25 and 3/4 lbs) and get measured on the big boy wall yardstick.

He liked holding the doctor's flashlight and then let her look in his ears with no fussing. He didn't even cry too much after his shot. (He did, however, want the door open and wanted to go out in the hallway every chance he had, and said "all done" several times before the appointment was over!)

He's 25th percentile for weight (go, Mattie!) and 75th percentile for head circumference, following the first-born Barr cousin tradition of melon-headedness.  :) 

Everything looked fine physically and developmentally.  Yay, Matthew!  The only recommendation the doctor had is that we can now switch him to lower-fat milk. 

Open the Door

Turns out Mattie's joke was a preview of coming attractions -- he can now open the doors in our house!  Uh oh, watch out, world!

Bye-Bye

Grandma Georgia and Aunt Mary Ellen are at the airport heading home -- it's going to seem empty around here without them!  We had a great visit and we're so glad they came!

Comedy Gold

Mattie's first knock-knock joke:

Matthew (out of nowhere): Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Matthew: Open the door! Open the door!

We though it was hilarious. :)

Margaritas and Cake

We had too much leftover cake to finish on our own, so Mike invited friends over for margaritas and cake (which turned out to be be a more-appetizing combination of margaritas and tacos, followed by cake. Thanks to Georgia and Mary Ellen for making the tacos!) The margaritas were also a tasty way to use up the remaining strawberries from last week's strawberry-picking expedition.

Mattie was excited by the meal because he got to have "pips" (chips -- he likes salsa), and Jamesie actually ate some of the taco meat.

In other news, some of our safety lessons seem to be making an impression on Matthew. Several times recently, he's spontaneously said, "No walk in the road! Cars are in the road!" That's right, kiddo! (He's also repeating a lot of what we say -- pretty amazing.)

Mattie has also been sleeping in his fire truck toddler bed, which is good, since he seemed to not want to be in his crib any more. It's still taking him a pretty long time to fall asleep at night, though (which is frustrating because I end up being in there -- hard to let him cry it out when he can just get out of bed!)

Birthday Evening

We went over to the neighborhood lake this evening. Matthew and James seemed to think it was a quite satisfactory beach, even if it doesn't have any waves! The only downside is that it gets deep (by toddler standards) fairly quickly -- James went face first into the water twice and was not amused, but it didn't stop him from wanting to get right back in.  He liked running up and down on the sand, while Mattie was all about the water. 


 

Birthday Morning

Happy birthday to Mike! After a delicious pancake breakfast (compliments of Grandma Georgia, using Aunt Jeannie's recipe), we went to the arboretum. We enjoyed lunch at Top of the Hill, followed by gelato at Sugarland, followed by napping babies at home!

Beach

The water was cold, but the boys enjoyed the beach anyhow! (Matthew was calling the sandy part a "sandbox", even though I told him it was just sand!)

River View

We enjoyed a beautiful afternoon in Wilmington, walking around by the river. As usual, the boys have been great travelers (except, also as usual, Matthew threw up mid-trip -- I suspect just due to drinking tons of milk and not eating much).

The boys are delighted with our hotel room, simply because it has a long hallway to run down and walls to race to. Ah, the joys of youth! Unfortunately, they are also delighted because they can open all the doors, including the front door, since they have pull-down handles instead of knobs. (Curse you, universal design!) So, we have to keep the chain lock on the front door to make sure our little explorers don't set off on their own. (James made a break for it at the McDonald's playland this afternoon, but we caught him.)

The railings on the river walk are also a great temptation to our little climbers, but fortunately we have enough adults to double-team them. :) Matthew really wanted to "touch the water", but I told him he had to wait until tomorrow at the beach.

We had a delicious waterfront dinner at The George. Mike had been looking forward to coming back there for two years, because last time we were here they had an amazing she-crab soup that he loved. We were here for two days and ate there three times, just for the soup. I'm not kidding. And wouldn't you know it, the soup is no longer on the menu. Despite that crushing blow, it was a yummy meal, and the little guys were even well-behaved enough for us to enjoy it. James liked the crab dip, and Matthew liked the fish (although of course their "main course" was grilled cheese).