A Weekend Home and Other Tidbits

Last weekend was our first with all of us home together both days in quite some time. We played and had a relaxed day on Saturday. We read books, colored, and played with the alphabet.

Sunday, we headed to our friends’ home for fencing practice and some play time. Dom and Alex had a great time playing with their friend Alex in his lovely sandbox and exploring the huge yard–especially running down the hill and climbing on some hay bales. We went out for carnitas with our friends afterward, and Alex and Dom enjoyed the restaurant. Afterward, we stopped at a store nearby and picked up a book about robots and another by the same author about aliens for the boys. They have decided that both are about robots for now, and they really enjoy reading them right now. The books have holes for the eyes of the robots/aliens, and you can look through them–kind of like masks.

By the time we got home (2 hours after the boys’ normal nap time), they were quick to fall asleep and slept until after 5 when we woke them. Surprisingly, they were tired again by the time we put them to bed around 8. Puck and I enjoyed the weekend naptimes to watch some episodes of “Justified” and play a little on the XBox.

Outdoor Fun

On Monday, we headed to the park behind the Fort Natomas park, and Alex and Dom had a great time climbing up all sorts of ladders and climbing walls to go down the slides. They climbed up one metal ladder that went straight up for the first time, and they kept going back to go up it again. The only problem was that they weren’t very patient with their brother going up ahead of them. In fact, Dom tried to help Alex go up faster, but he was pushing his feet off the rungs instead of helping him up. I had the role of ladder traffic cop and fortunately prevented any major accidents.

We spent the afternoon in the backyard, and I took lots of photos (a little over 260). Dom and Alex ate their quesadilla snack at the table at first but then carried sliced around with them as they played on their climbing structure/slide. They climbed, slid, and chalked. Then I turned the water hose on, and they played with the hose together–mostly swinging it in the air to watch the water. Even though both boys usually have their hands on the hose, Dom has a knack for splashing his brother in the face while avoiding having the same done to him. Poor Alex! Fortunately, he recovers quickly. Alex and Dom were excited when their dad came out to join us after work.

Indoor Fun and a Date

The last couple of days we’ve mostly stayed indoors, as I’ve been a bit tired. The mornings and evenings have been pleasantly cool, and I enjoy hearing my windchime that is just outside the back door. Yesterday, Alex found one of my headbands and started wearing it on his head. He looked like an adorable hippy in Spiderman PJs, and Dom wanted to steal the coveted headband for himself. To keep the peace, I fetched another headband, and for awhile, I had two little hippies. Then, Alex got ahold of both headbands and created his own style.

In the evening, I had a super-special dinner date with my three guys. We went out for Mongolian BBQ, and the weather turned cool enough that we decided to eat outdoors. Dom and Alex did a great job staying in their big-people chairs, and they ate really well. Alex even likes their egg rolls fairly well. After dinner, we headed home to put the little guys to bed, and then we had a private showing of “The Avengers.” I enjoyed the movie and was surprised at what a great job they did balancing so many different personalities. All-in-all, a very enjoyable date night.

Haircuts, Laundry, and Cushions

This morning I pulled all the cushions off the couches and made a stack in the middle of the living room with cushions and pillows around it. Alex and Dom had lots of fun climbing all over the new terrain, and later, we made a tunnel between a couch and stack of cushions and then slides they could role down from the couches into the cushion below. Puck popped in for coffee and even got to tease the boys a bit as they climbed through their cushion tunnel (that they also enjoyed climbing on top of to collapse the structure).

In the late morning, I set us up for Dom’s haircut. He didn’t really want me brushing his hair again, but when he had a comb of his own to hold, he at least let me start brushing and cutting. He wasn’t the happy camper he used to be, but we did manage to get through the haircut without too much drama. They both enjoyed watching “Cars” while eating snacks and coloring a picture of a car–though Dom started eating a purple crayon when I was paying too much attention to the back of his hair.

After their nap, I had the laundry sorted and arranged so that the boys could help with it. First, Alex and Dom carried the towels form the dryer to the couch. Then, they helped push the washed clothes into the dryer, and finally, they put all the clothes in the basket into the washer–a more difficult job because they have to go on their tippy-toes to push the clothes over the edge into washing machine. They did a great job!

False Start:

This morning we headed to the soccer fields behind the Fort Natomas park with Dom and Alex each clutching a “rocket” as they road in their wagon. (Technically, one is just a cool red airplane, but it has been transformed into a rocket to balance our need for two rockets to have two happy boys.) We arrived shortly before the 8:30 AM expected time for Endeavor’s flight over Sacramento with two little boys who really wanted to get out and run around, and we eventually discovered (thanks to Puck looking up information on his phone) that Endeavor would probably be arriving an hour later than initially expected.

Dom and Alex flying their rockets into the horizon. (Sept. 21, 2012)

The Park:

Puck headed home to do a little work, and the boys and I went to the park. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the park with the boys, and I could tell that they have grown. It’s easier for them to play the xylophone there, and they almost don’t need my help to get to the rings they like to hang from. When they dropped to the ground from the rings, it seemed like barely any distance at all. They had a good time swinging with their rockets, playing with another little boy who arrived at the park, and just doing typical park things like running, jumping, crawling, climbing, and having fun.

A Successful Mission:

When Puck returned, we headed back out to the fields and found a little bit of shade while we waited and hoped that Endeavor would pass close enough for us to catch a glimpse. We were pleasantly surprised to see it flying toward us from the south, and Dom and Alex called out “rocket, rocket” as it neared and flew directly over our heads. It was amazing to get to share that little moment of history with our boys but also sad because it is the end of a space-faring era. Dreams of being astronauts will be transformed in the coming years as space travel moves from NASA to the private sector, but today our boys had a chance to hold their rockets in the air and point to the skies with excitement.

Alex and Dom wave goodbye to Endeavor with their rockets. (Sept. 21, 2012)

Adventures in Grocery Shopping:

It’s crazy how much I usually enjoy shopping with my boys. Of course, we have moments when one of them is upset or when we’re in a hurry, but typically we have a pleasant time hunting and gathering together. We started off our trip to CostCo today with a pass through the toy section and especially admired some of the Tonka diggers, dump trucks, and firetrucks. Then, we stopped by books and looked through three really cute books about tall and long machines, animals, and dinosaurs. We checked out the firefighter Halloween costumes too, and Alex and Dom were sad to leave them behind (I think they really wanted the hats. What can I say? Our guys are really into hats!). Dom and Alex also got to try lots of different foods–tuna salad sandwiches, sausage, hummus, spinach dip, cheese with ham, etc, and they loved it all. We played our game where they make me let go of the handle, and we pretend the cart is getting away from me. They giggle when I say, “Oh no! Oh no!” as I reach for the cart handle that is only inches from fingers. In general, Alex and Dom smiled, laughed, and chatted with people we saw (especially those with the food). They sure know how to charm those around them–even me.

Well, it’s been awhile since I posted on the twin blog–almost a year. During that time I started getting more sleep at night which allowed me to reclaim my brain that had been in hiding for awhile, and I finally finished my dissertation with the assistance of my mom who came out to stay with us for several months while I worked on the final chapters. I’ve been keeping family and friends updated on the boys through long Facebook posts–my lazy blog away from my blog. Now, with my dissertation done, I plan to resuscitate the blog and to transition many of those posts back to the blog.

State of our Dynamic Duo:

Alex and Dom are two delightful two-year-olds right now–full of curiosity and learning more every day. In the last few days, they’ve been really focusing on the concepts of a light being on or off–not just turning it on and off which they’ve done for awhile but relishing their command of the words that go with the actions, and they’ve also started to grasp and use “dark” and “bright.” They continue to love the alphabet and their numbers, and they often ask to play with the foam alphabet (“babet”) we have. They’ve really started paying attention to and testing binaries recently: up-down, forward-backward, big-little, etc. They are also working on the concepts of happy and sad, and they not only identify happy and sad people and objects (like jack o’lanterns) but also pretend to be happy and sad. Dom particularly likes making a sad face and sound, and shortly after I playfully ask, “Oh, are you sad?” he shifts to happy. They love teasing about their age too. They know they are supposed to say that they are “two” when asked, but they enjoy saying every other number from 3-10 and hearing us tell them, “Noooo, you’re not x!” We’ve started doing that with other things as well. I’ll ask them if the car one of them is holding is a variety of colors, and they enjoy shaking their head and telling me “no” until either they tell me the color or I finally say the right one.

Dom and Alex are very excited about fire trucks, dump trucks, rockets, dinosaurs, and robots right now. Alex declared one of their tow trucks a “robot” recently, and not only has this decision stuck but they have converted a few more of their toys into pretend robots. We also encouraged them to make one of their red airplanes an honorary rocket so that both boys could play with a rocket at the same time. They love watching videos of Curiosity (Like “7 Minutes of Terror“), and I believe the tow truck-robot is meant to be a Curiosity-type robot.

We are getting back into our reading groove too, and both Dom and Alex really like one of our new books “Dumpy the Dump Truck.” It’s longer than a lot of their books that we read right now, but they stay engaged through the whole book. We’ve been pointing at the words in books while we read to them, and they are now starting to point along with us and pay more attention to the words.

The Last Few Days:

Last Saturday I was feeling pretty sick (I later figured out that I had my first experience with mastitis), and I had the boys to myself most of the day. Since it wasn’t a good nap day for them, we had a very lazy afternoon snuggled up together on the couch to watch “Puss in Boots” and “Shrek.” I absolutely love the times when we have a little puppy pile. Of course, Alex and Dom also played through some of the movies, and fortunately, they were in very good and pretty cooperative moods. Shortly before bed, they played peek-a-boo using the flaps of their big box–at first hiding inside the box. Then, they hid on either side of the box behind a flap and would jump up with huge grins on their faces to surprise me.

I felt quite a bit better by Sunday, and as the week continued, exhaustion was the main symptom I had left. (That’s two illnesses since I finished the dissertation at the end of last month. I’m ready to be healthy for awhile now!) We’ve had a pretty lazy week–with lots of time spent at home playing with our big box, coloring, reading books, building with megabloks, and pulling cushions off the couches to jump and climb on them. I’ve started helping them write short words (like their names) occasionally when we’re coloring (using whatever hand they have a crayon in), and they seem to really enjoy that.

On Tuesday, Alex accidentally got stuck in his drum, and he called out, “stuck, stuck.” Of course, I had to get a few photos before helping him out, and he was surprisingly okay with waiting. Dom thought it looked like fun–and a good way to get a little attention–so he tried to get “stuck” too.

Alex has also tried to communicate a longer phrase to us during dinner a couple of times, but each time neither Puck nor I could figure out what he was trying so hard to tell us. One of the boys’ new recent phrases is “upsy-daisy,” and the other night at bedtime Dom sang almost all of the words to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” with Puck. Puck sang each word and paused for Dom to have time to repeat it, and Mr. D even anticipated the next word a few times. Alex chimed in a bit too, though not as consistently as his brother. They are sponges for language right now and can pick up words very quickly when they catch their interest.

One of the presents our boys got for their birthday was a pirate ship. Yesterday afternoon, they had fun playing with it together. What you might not be able to see in the video is that there is a string connected to the front of the ship to allow children to pull it around.

Grandma Myrtle arrived Sunday to help me with the boys while the Twin-Daddy is off teaching Spanish fencing for a week in Australia and then at a workshop near Chicago. He’ll only have around a day and a half at home in between trips. He’ll be tired. My sister Linda drove out the last 2 legs of the trip with Grandma and got to visit a little before flying out on Monday just before the Twin-Daddy.

Dom and Alex were a little shy getting to know Grandma and Aunt Linda again, but they soon warmed up to flirt and chat. They loved all the attention! Yesterday evening our boys played together really well and giggled a ton as they played with their pirate ship, their Playzone wall spinners, their tunnel, and so many other things. It was wonderful to hear so much joy.

Here’s another video from early August of the boys playing with the belt of their daddy’s robe:

Our boys share their own baby jokes and laughs.

Here’s a YouTube playlist of our boys laughing these past few months! (Yes, the first video is the one above.)