Princes

We met up with J and C at the playground this weekend, and C shared her birthday crown with the boys. :)

"Hurricane" Saturday

We had clouds and some wind throughout the day, but nothing too threatening from the hurricane. So we were a bit surprised when we went to the grocery store and the power was out there! (They had a generator powering the cash registers, so we were able to pick up James's prescription -- yay!)

We met up with friends for lunch, and then took the boys to play at the mall play area. (We didn't want to take a chance on falling branches at the usual playground!) It was crowded, but the boys had fun, and they also enjoyed riding the escalators (though fortunately they are not as obsessed with them as their cousin Daniel used to be).

At the park we usually go to, there's a sign that says, "Restrooms", and we've told the boys that that's where the potties are.  At the restaurant today, James looked up at the sign that said "restrooms" and said, "Potty!" Wow!  It seems like he might have recognized the word -- go, James!

James is also into counting two things these days: "Car!  Two cars!"  So far, though, he only goes up to two even when there are more than two of whatever he's counting.  (When he's just counting with numbers, though, he can do more than that!)

P.S.  You won't find Mattie or James in the last picture -- they were with us, looking down from the level above. 

Gym Routine

The little guys had fun again at the gym last night, and were well-behaved for pizza afterwards!

Everyone was preparing for Hurricane Irene, but so far all we've gotten is a bit of rain and some wind. I think they don't expect much to happen this far inland, but with all the trees around here, there's always the chance of a power outage.

Crimson

The little guys finally got to wear the t-shirts Mommy brought home from Har-vahd. :)

(And yes, Mattie's vacuum obsession continues unabated. The other night when he was talking about visiting Daniel's house, he mentioned the "little tiny vacuum, the floor cleaner, and Nora's vacuum."  Clearly Cousin Daniel is living the high life with all those vacuums in the house.)

Feel the Earth Move

Both boys slept through their first earthquake yesterday. It only lasted about 30 seconds. (I was at work when it happened, and didn't know what it was until it was over! The floor of my office was vibrating, and I was trying to figure out if they were doing construction below me. Then I went out in the hallway, and heard my colleagues asking each other if the building was shaking!)

From the Raleigh News & Observer:

"North Carolinians were rattled Tuesday afternoon by a Virginia-centered earthquake that shook the entire East Coast.

Some buildings in downtown Raleigh were evacuated when the temblor set off alarms a few minutes before 2 p.m. No serious injury or damage was reported, but emergency centers were swamped by 911 callers who wanted to know what the heck just happened.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it was a 5.8-magnitude earthquake centered 36 miles northwest of Richmond, Va. - equaling the biggest quake ever recorded in Virginia, in 1897. The epicenter was about 150 miles northeast of Raleigh, and tremors were felt from Georgia to Massachusetts."

Now and Then

Mattie takes up a little more room in Grandma's arms these days! (After not napping on Sunday, he fell asleep at the dinner table, so Grandma held him while we were getting ready to go. The bottom photo is from August 2009.)

Bubbles

Auntie Nora entertained James and Daniel with bubbles while we packed the car. :)

Future Astronauts

One of Daniel's favorite birthday gifts was a "stomp rocket" from Grandma and Grandpa.  (Grandma tells us that it was Grandpa's idea to get this one from the wish list!) Matthew and James really liked it, too, although we couldn't convince James that he shouldn't stand on the stomping part before the rocket was put on the other end! (The stomping part is filled with air, and pushing the air out through the tube by stomping on it launches the very light rockets.)

Daniel's Party

Nora and Adrian had an "end of summer" party on Saturday for Daniel's birthday.  It was a lot of fun, with tons of kids running around (and most of them young enough that they were all doing their own thing). We were outdoors at first, and then Mike discovered wasps by the slide, so we moved inside while he got rid of them.  All the kids were happy playing inside, so the party didn't move outside again until later (when Mattie got to play with the hose and fortunately did not water any of the other party-goers, and Jamesie camped out in the sandbox and had a great time pouring sand from one container into another). 

Mattie woke up really early, before 6 AM, and normally at our house he'd go back to sleep if he were up that early.  But the new surroundings were too much of a distraction, so he was awake.  I was a bit worried about what this might mean for his party behavior, but he was great, as was James (and really, all the other kids, too, although Daniel resisted getting his clothes on before his guests arrived!)

Mattie and James thought it was a fabulous party because they could eat all the cheese puffs they wanted, and Mattie had his first juice box, too, which he thoroughly enjoyed (and yes, squeezed at first).  Mattie also liked the cupcakes, and of course Daniel did too.

End of Summer Trip

We are enjoying a weekend with Cousin Daniel and Grandma before school starts!

Missing Data

The boys had their two-year visit for the Twin Study they're participating in.  The morning part was a developmental assessment, and the afternoon was the MRI (brain scan).  (In between we went to the playground and had a fun lunch with N and her daughter S.)  The boys did pretty well with the developmental testing, which is basically a series of games, but despite our best efforts, we could not get them to stay asleep at the MRI place, so they weren't able to do the scanning.  We managed to get both of them to fall asleep, but for the MRI to happen they have to stay asleep while you 1) put them on the platform for the machine, 2) put headphones on them, and 3) actually move them into the machine for the scan.  They claim that they're able to successfully do this with 80% of the two-year olds in the study, which we find amazing. 

It was interesting to see what the boys did and didn't do during the developmental testing session.  James did really well on most of the stuff, though he didn't do the "two step command" (following two instructions at once; in this case, "give me the ball and close the book."  Mattie did it perfectly and the tester said that most kids don't get that one.)  Matthew was very cooperative with the first part of the testing, and then wanted to go find James or play with different toys, so the last part was tricky trying to keep his attention.  In fairness to him, the tests involve switching between a lot of different little toys doing different things (e.g., first they have to pick out which toy is the car; then they have to build something with blocks; then they have to sort shapes; etc.), so it's hard if they take a liking to one because then it gets snatched away from them.  Mattie didn't do any of the sorting tasks right (e.g., putting a triangle with the other triangles, putting the blocks in one side of a box and the spoons in another), which I was really surprised about because I'm pretty sure he can do that kind of thing.  He might not have understood the point of the game.  James, on the other hand, got all of those perfectly. 

The tester commented that he hadn't heard another two year old talking as well as Matthew.  Go, Mattie!  (Of course, the tester was a research assistant and I'm not sure how long he'd been doing this job, but still, it was nice to hear.)  Once we got him to cooperate, he did really well on all the verbal stuff.  In one part,  he was supposed to name various pictures, and one was a comb.  Mattie said, "Haircut!"  I don't know if they counted that one, but I think they should have.  :)

We won't get any formal results from these tests, but just from our un-expert observations, it seems like the boys are pretty well on track.  :)

James's hearing therapist came yesterday after a month off, and she was very pleased with all the sounds he was saying and how he was doing in general.  She said he was doing all the developmentally appropriate things.   Yay, James!

More from Mattie

Mattie remembers what we tell him.  This little seat he's standing on is part of the playground, and he and James both love to sit on it and call it a "potty."  I explained to Mattie that it wasn't, so now he says, "looks like a potty but actually a chair!"  He also says, pointing to the web, "This a spider!  This [pointing to the fly in the center] a spider's dinner!"

There was some purple marker on the playground equipment the other day, and he said that it would, "Come off in the bath" and then, "Mommy wash it with a washcloth."

Our smoke detector was beeping the other morning because the batteries were low, and when I was trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, Matthew helpfully suggested, "Stanley push a button."  (No, kiddo, I don't think that was it.)  Since then, one of his favorite questions has become, "What's that noise?"

Bye, Alligator

When I left for work the other day, Mattie said, "Bye, alligator! [aggada]" -- he was shortening "see you later, alligator." Very funny.

Then the other night I was telling him a short version of Rapunzel as a bedtime story, and on the second time around, he said, "Rapunzel knock tower down. Matthew build another one." I can see where a story about someone being locked up in a tower would be pretty confusing if "tower" usually refers to toy building blocks!

This weekend, Mattie had been misbehaving, and then he followed me into the bedroom. I said, "You should go in a different room. Mommy's angry at you right now." He went out into the hallway, and I heard: "One. Two. Three. All done time out!" It was so cute that I couldn't stay mad at him. :)

He just recently learned that another word for his bedside table is nightstand.  Suddenly he's much more enthusiastic about putting things on his "nighting stand."  :)  He also sometimes repeats phrases he's working on at night.  The other day it was, "What's happening?  Huh. I don't know!"  (He and James both have a very emphatic, thoughtful way of saying, "Huh."  It's really adorable.)  

P.S.  Happy birthday to Cousin Daniel!

Homesteading

Since we had planned an outdoor activity for this morning, of course we had our first rainy day for quite a while.  But we took our chances and went out anyhow to the Children's Festival at the Duke Homestead.

The festivities appeared to have been much reduced by the weather, but we had a good time anyhow.  We walked around the grounds, and the boys got to splash in a mud puddle.  We also took a ride in a mule-drawn wagon, which was fun when it was just us, and then slightly scary when a bunch of other passengers go on (the ground was soft, and the wagon occasionally tilted in an alarming way).  And we had some delicious homemade ice cream (but don't let the picture fool  you; James was happy to dip his spoon in but I don't think he actually consumed any), and then we got barbeque sandwiches for a picnic in the back of the van.

The homestead is kind of a weird place, actually; they have a ton of people dressed up in period costumes, but none of them actually appeared willing to interact with us -- Mike asked the man sitting on the porch what year the homestead was built, and his reply was that they had a brochure up in the information center with all the details.  And the guy picking tobacco in the top picture barely gave us a glance even when we were standing practically right next time him.  So, I don't think we'll be in any hurry to go back there!

Gym Again

Our much-anticipated second trip to the open gym didn't go quite as well as the first.  Jamesie had a great time, but Mattie decided that all he wanted to do was play with the water (the office-style water cooler with a big jug on top), which was not allowed.  So after he didn't listen to repeated "no"s and ran back over to the water after we moved him to alternative activities, he ended up spending about a third of our time there sitting in the car with one of us.  (Mike wanted to just leave, but I didn't think that would be fair to James, who was behaving just fine and having fun.)  Unfortunately for us, Mattie didn't care that he was in the car; he just sat in his car seat and chatted to himself, and if we mentioned the possibility of going back in if he could behave himself, he immediately said, "Play the water!"  Finally, I convinced him to play with the big circles (hula hoops), and he had fun with that and played a bit on the other equipment, too (with the occasional dash toward the water -- at that point we just corralled him back into the main area, since it was only ten minutes until closing time). 

Japanese Boys

Today the boys wore their cute new outfits that N brought them from Japan. Thanks so much, N! (We went to a Japanese restaurant tonight with N and her girls, and I was going to get a picture of the boys eating their Japanese noodles in their outfits, but of course as soon as the food arrived Mattie wanted to sit on my lap, and then after a few minutes he dumped his plate over. Oh well!)

Time out fail: I took Mattie into the back hallway of the restaurant for a time out after he dumped his food, and guess what was in there? Yup, a vacuum. So much for leaving the table being a punishment! After that, all he wanted to was go see the vacuum.

We took the boys to the playground after dinner, and they got to see their first (as far as I remember) real live frogs! They were little brown frogs, very well camouflaged with their surroundings.  I probably wouldn't have noticed them except Mattie scared them out of a tree stump. James wanted to hold one, so Daddy caught it for him and both boys got to hold the frog in their hand, and it hopped on their arm and then away. James wanted to catch it again and probably could have, but we didn't want the frog to get hurt in the process, so we didn't let him.

Mattie was looking for acorns in the wooded section of the park, and once James decided to go on the path, he just took off! He was booking it straight into the woods. He's such a little nature boy!

When we were on the trail, part of the high school cross country team came by -- after that, Mattie kept asking to see more "running peoples."

When we came back to the playground, James tried the climbing wall again, and did pretty well at it with some help from Daddy.