Sunday, September 26, 2010

Cate is 2 Months Old!

Cate is already 2 months old!  She’s such a happy baby and rarely gets upset.  She started smiling a couple of weeks ago when you talk to her.  She’s very alert and if she’s in her bouncer while I’m cooking or cleaning, she turns her head to watch and see what I’m doing or the twins are doing.  She loves to be in the middle of all the action.  Her hair still seems to be blonde, not as blonde as Matthew’s but it’s not too dark either, we’ll see what it is in a few months.  Her eyes are definitely going to be blue. 
Cate really enjoys her bathtime.  She likes to sit in her little bath tub and look around at everything.  She’s even starting to kick her feet a little in the water, too.  She continues to be a good eater, so we’ll see how much she weighs at her 2 month well-baby visit in a couple days. 
She’s been sleeping in her “big girl crib” since a few days after we came home.  She does really well at night if I swaddle her.  She still gets up to eat 2 to 3 times, but she usually goes back to bed pretty quickly.  Hopefully, since she’s already sleeping in her crib, I will have an easier time sleep training her than I did with the twins.  The only time she gets remotely fussy is at night around 8 to 10 and I think it’s because she’s tired from all day by that point. 
She’s starting to coo a lot and grab things, so I’m sure this month and next month she will really start to become more active!








Thursday, September 23, 2010

Even the Deer Has Twins!

It seems like everywhere we've been lately we have run into other people with twins, so I wasn't too surprised when our neighborhood deer paraded by with her very own set of twins!  (I'm not sure if it's unusual for deer to have twins or not, maybe someone can enlighten me?)

Friday, September 17, 2010

21 Months Old!

Here’s a little bit about what Matthew & Claire are up to at 21 months old.  This is sort of a long update since I’m way behind on blogging since Baby Cate was born and haven’t had a chance to write down a lot of the things everyone’s been up to in the last few months.
Matthew & Claire seem to enjoy having their Baby Sister around most of the time.  They’re very patient when I’m feeding her or changing her.  Since we’ve started doing tummy time with Cate, Matthew & Claire will get down on the floor near her to see what’s going on.  They really want to play with her, so we have to explain that she’s not old enough yet, and they need to be careful J
A lot of things the twins do they seem to pick up from each other.  When I think back and try to remember new milestones, it’s sometimes hard to remember who did what first.  It seems like as soon as one twin learns something new, the other sees them or hears them and they start doing it, too.  I really think that being a twin has helped their vocabulary; they’ve picked up so many words from each other.  It seems that they learn words associated with what they’re interested in and this sort of carries over to the other one.  Matthew likes mechanical things, so Claire has learned words like “wheel, car and tractor” from him.  Claire likes to be a little helper, so Matthew has learned words like “empty, wash-wash and flower” from her.  Matthew & Claire are learning their body parts, they can point to and say hair, mouth, teeth, ear, eyes, nose, belly button, toes and quite a few others.
Matthew
Matthew continues his love for anything and everything mechanical.  Right now, he’s particularly fond of tractors.  He can say “tractor” and points out all the different parts either on the real tractor, his toy tractor or in his tractor book.  He makes sure to point out its “wheel” and says “vroom” when he pushes his toy.  He loves watching Jeremy mow the lawn on the tractor and climbs up on it when it’s parked in the garage every chance he gets.  Jeremy took him for a ride around the yard, he was VERY serious about steering the tractor and was in no hurry to get off and let Claire have a turn.
We’ve been learning all the animals and their noises.  Matthew can say “pig”, “goat”, “cow” and a few others and make the correct noises to go with them.  His favorite by far is the pig.  He loves to listen to “E-I-E-I-O” (Old McDonald) when we get in the car and is now starting to sing along with the CD. 
Over the last month, Matthew has really taken an interest in learning his letters.  To him “H” means letters and he will bring you a piece of chalk or his magna doodle and ask you to write an “H”.  Once he’s satisfied with the way you’ve written H, he’ll ask for other letters.  “K, P, and O” are some of his favorites.  He can identify almost all the letters if you write them out or point to them.  I was most impressed that he knew “W”.  Matthew’s just starting to take an interest in learning to identify numbers; he can tell you what 2 and 5 look like. 
 Matthew says a ton of words, some of the harder ones that I can think of are bubbles, bug, waffle, tractor, wheel, car, empty, apple, up, juice, cheese, please, thank you, and doggie.  He can say Claire but it sounds more like care, which is pretty cute.  He’s been able to put two words together for a few months and continues to add more every day.  Now, he’s starting to tell us when he needs something.  If he wants more juice, he’ll hold up his cup and say “juice”.  Recently, he’s started tell us when his cup is “empty”.
He’s able to do new activities, too.  He can jump (with his feet off the ground) and just taught himself how to do a summersault, which I’m still trying to get on video.   He can put shapes in the correct holes of the shape sorter and enjoys drawing on his magna doodle or the sidewalk with chalk.  Much to his delight, he is now tall enough to turn the light switches on and off.  He also loves to point out anything with a “fan”, which to him is pretty much anything with a whirring noise or anything that goes around.  He says “round and round”!
Claire
Claire is our little helper and our little parrot.  She loves to help when we’re doing chores and will try and repeat just about any word that you say.  If I’m washing the floor, she’ll get down on the floor next to me and say “wash-wash” while moving her hands over the floor.  She loves to “help” when I’m cooking or baking.  I usually give her a measuring cup or spoon and pot to pretend to stir.  She loves when I make muffins (“muffies” she calls them) because I let her put the muffin paper into the baking tins.
Claire loves all animals!  She can say almost any animal’s name that you ask her, can identify most animals by their picture and make quite a few animal noises.  My favorite is horse; she clicks her tongue to sound like a horse’s hooves when she sees a horse in a book or on TV.  She can say “elephant”, “monkey”, “doggie”, and many others (too many to count).  She is the first one to ask for “E-I-E-I-O” when we get in the car and can sing along to most of the song.
Claire likes to sing the ABC song, she can say a lot of the letters and we’re working on recognizing them when they’re written out.  She can count to ten and likes to count things as she puts them into a bucket or a box.  Claire really likes to do puzzles and is pretty good at doing the wooden puzzles all by herself.  She continues to love to buckle anything and everything that has buckles or snaps.  She’s recently discovered zippers and likes to zip and unzip things. 
Claire says way too many words to count.  Some of the harder ones she says are Gramma, elephant, monkey, empty, ladybug, buckle, flower, waffle, please, thank you, phone, stairs, Ranger, and all set.  She can say Matthew, it sounds like “Maffoo”.  If she’s mad about something he’s done like take her juice cup, she’ll come over and say “Maffoo, juice” and tell you a big story about it.  Claire can put two and three words together.  She loves to talk all the time and tell us all about her toys or things she sees outside.
Claire has been trying to jump like Matthew and is getting pretty close to being able to get both feet off the ground.  She loves to dance around and is getting pretty good at doing the “Hokey Pokey” if you do it along with her.  Claire is good at puzzles and the shape sorter and loves to draw on the sidewalk with chalk.

I can’t believe they’ll be two in just a few months.  It seems like they learn something new every day and really are enjoying each other more and more.  They play nice together most of the time, although, recently we have had to start timeouts.  They’re such good kids that I thought we were going to make it until they were two before these started, but not quite.  They rarely have earned themselves a timeout and seem to understand when they do something that’s not ok.  (On a side note, we have reserved the timeouts for things we consider to be dangerous to them or their siblings such as playing with the TV/DVD player or biting each other.)
They pretty much stick together when we’re out playing different places.  I have noticed that they also stand up for each other when we’re at the park or playing somewhere with other kids.  We went to Urban Toddler and another little boy took a toy away from Matthew, Claire seemed to come from out of nowhere and took it back from the little boy and gave it back to Matthew.  All this happened within a matter of seconds before I could intervene and I couldn’t believe it; I think the little boy was even more surprised than I was.  Matthew will notice when Claire gets her Cozy Coupe stuck in the grass and go over to her and push Claire and the car back onto the driveway!  Jeremy jokes about me having “twin ESP” when it comes to knowing where they are, but I think they seem to have twin ESP for each other.
Here are a few photos at 21 months old!