26
March
2007
Playing Games
A few weeks ago Drew would say “Ahm” (his word for Amen) at the end of our prayers before dinner. He doesn’t do it anymore, but now he and Brandon hold hands. We never encouraged this, but Mike and I hold hands, so I guess they decided they should too! This led to a bright idea…I was looking for something to do with them the other day, so since they’ve been holding hands I decided to see if they would play “Ring Around the Rosy…” And they did it great! We all held hands and at the end fell to the floor. Drew kept asking to play more and more. After awhile I had them play by themselves while I sang the song for them. They kept it up and were having lots of fun! It’s always a good day when I find something new to do that doesn’t lead to fighting over something! 
The boys have been learning the game “duck duck goose.” Only their version goes something like this…Drew walks around tapping (read: hitting) everyone on the head saying duck, duck, duck… In the mean time, Bran is tapping his own head saying duck, duck, duck. And then Drew yells Duck! and runs away, Brandon follows after and we have to chase them both. When it’s our turn, when we get to goose, instead of chasing us, they both run away so we can chase them again!
It’s apparent, though, that I spend too much time on my knees, playing, and mostly cleaning up, because our rousing games of “Ring around the Rosy” ripped the knee right out of my jeans. I’m terribly annoyed because I only have two pair of jeans and I spent extra money on these ones because I was hoping they would last longer. 
Words
My friend Theresa was writing about her girls learning to read and asking lots of questions about how you pronounce words and what they mean. We’ve recently hit the stage of “what’s this?” I actually don’t mind it and enjoy helping them learn. (It’s a whole lot better than yelling at them for getting into trouble, again). But I’ve discovered that my vocabulary has dwindled over the past two years and I forget what some of the words are for the things they are asking. And it’s stupid things like a traffic light verses a street light, or what’s that thing that water comes out of in the bath tub, oh yeah, a faucet. When was the last time I had to use the word faucet! The worst thing is trying to remember what I called that thing earlier in the day so I say the same thing again!
Drew says “bless you” when he sneezes!
Bran has started saying “mine” when he’s playing with his toys.
Getting In Trouble
I’ve been starting to introduce a few things back into the living room at their height. The most recent was a vase of flowers. The first time they did great. The second time they seemed to be doing good so I went on with my vacuuming. When I turned around I saw them splashing in water on the end table. The table was covered in water as was the floor. The vase, which was completely empty of water, and the flowers were exactly where I had left them…I really wish I could have seen what had happened and the looks on their faces as they tried to put everything back.
Yesterday, Bran tackled Drew and stole a pretzel out of his mouth.
The Zoo
We took the boys to the zoo yesterday and they really enjoyed it. We took the stroller, but they walked most of it. They were so excited to finally see a real elephant (their favorite animal). We also got a good close up of a tiger which was both awesome and frightening even to Mike and I (the fear was mostly caused by the fact that the tiger liked to swipe the glass with his paws!). They even hooted with the owls. The funniest part of the day was the little indoor petting zoo they had set up (it is still cold here). They had rabbits, a ferret, a rat, some chickens, a tiny armadillo that was super cool and super fast, and some baby chickens in a cage. They boys squeeled with delight chasing the armadillo and Drew thought it was really fun to put his fingers in the chick cage and get a little peck from them!
Posted: Drew & Bran
19
March
2007
Reading
The boys have some new favorite books. The first is a Boynton board book, called “Doggies”. Mike has been reading it to them in their room each night. It’s a counting book (counting the dogs) and each dog makes a different dog sound, like “Woof”, “Yap Yap”, etc. Drew has the book almost memorized so that when Mike says “one dog…” Drew follows up with the corresponding “woof.” At 6, it’s “six quiet dogs” and both boys put their finger to their mouth and say “shhh.”
The other morning when I went in to get them they were both sitting between their beds reading books. Drew had the doggie book and was saying “Woof” and “Yap Yap” and Bran was reading the Brown Bear book looking at the yellow duck saying “quack quack.”
Two other favorite books are picture books on colors and first words. Every day the boys want you to sit down with them and look at the pictures. Very quickly we stopped them from pointing to all of the pictures and asking “what’s this?” by asking the boys, “where’s the… boots? firetruck? balloon?” Now we’re also asking them, “what’s this?” Sometimes they can answer. Over the weekend Mike was asking them where something was that wasn’t on that exact page and they would look through the book to find it. They know what it is if you tell them to look for it, but getting the actual word out is still a bit difficult at times. They’re pretty good with truck, car, tree, banana, apple…for animals, they like to give the sound instead of the name. It’s amazing how much they love these books! Just wait Grandmas, they’ll be coming home with us!
Counting
The boys like to count. They will count to three and then run from one end of the house to the other or one side of the yard to the other. It usually sounds like, blah, two, two! They’re starting to say three now sometimes but they never say one.
Mike has been playing hide and seek with them. We’ve set up a huge process for their counting or there would be no time to hide. They have to sit on the floor in the hallway with their feet touching the spare bedroom door. They have to count to five which sounds something like this, “one, two, blah, blah, BLAH!” and then they come running out. Usually unless someone is helping them to count, they’re walking down the hallway as they count, which makes it hard to hide in time. But they’re getting better. Bran is really good at finding. Mike has played this game with Noah (without the counting)… and they boys are already much better seekers.
Bath Time
Bran has started floating in the bathtub, with his ears all the way under. He loves it! The only problem is that he gets so excited that he starts kicking, and Drewie being on the other end of the kicks isn’t too happy. It’s made washing his hair a breeze. Drew doesn’t want any part of floating though. He just wants to stay in the tub as long as possible. When Bran’s done, he’s done and will ask to get out. Drew on the hand could probably stay in the tub all night. So now we’ve been pulling the plug and he can stay in until the water empties out of the tub. He seems content with that.
Sharing
I’ve been emptying out the spare bedroom for the boys to use as a play room. One of the first things I did was bring down two chairs for them, one is a stuffed tiger and one is a bouncer seat turned toddler rocker. I thought they would fight over sitting in the tiger chair. Nope, it’s the rocker they both want. Yesterday I heard them screaming so I went in and found Bran climbing up the back of the rocker with his pants halfway down his legs. Drew was on the other end trying to pull him and his pants off of the rocker. It was really hard not to laugh at them. It’s just another opportunity to learn about sharing, right?!
Posted: Drew & Bran
6
March
2007
So last night’s episode didn’t surpass last week’s, but it was pretty good. I guess I was wrong on a few things. Simone didn’t really come back to life, Suresh isn’t quite as much of an idiot as I thought, or is he? Is it worse not to recognize Sylar, or to recognize him and try to contain him yourself? I was also wrong about the identity of Linderman, but Mike and I guessed that the other person in Claire’s life had to be Nathan’s mom. Mr. Bennet’s new “partner” turned out to have crazy powers! I wonder who will help him out in the end? And what… will Peter do to escape Sylar? Any ideas about the significance of that building they are always on top of?
Unfortunately we have to wait until April 23rd to find out more! I can’t believe that when the show first aired I wasn’t interested. I told Mike it could be his show, I wasn’t watching. Ha! At least I have a vacation to plan in the meantime…
Posted: Miscellaneous
5
March
2007
I’m anxiously awaiting tonight’s airing of Heroes. Last week was so awesome! Hero’s dad, what!? Besides Hero, I think my other favorite character is the Haitian. And who is this other person in Claire’s life the Haitain said he was answering to? Based on previews it seems that tonight’s show is going to be equally as intense. Will we really find out who Linderman is? I have an idea who he is, so I’m curious to find out if I’m right. I called Nathan as being Claire’s dad, so maybe I’ll get this one right too. The storyline with Sylar and Suresh is really creeping me out though. I find myself wanting to yell at Suresh and tell him what an idiot he is.
Unfortunately I do know that Simone lives. I knew that she had some power because when Peter has his dreams about blowing up, the only other people in the scene are other Heroes. But I don’t really like her so I was kind of hoping after last week that would be the end of her. Maybe my opinion will change as the show goes on.
If you don’t know about the graphic novels, NBC puts out an online graphic novel that gives back story between the episodes and it’s been really interesting. We always “catch up” before we watch on Monday night. If you’re a Heroes fan, I highly recommend it. NOTE: Some aren’t as good as others depending on who’s writing and drawing them.
Here’s the link: http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/
Happy Watching!
Posted: Miscellaneous
28
February
2007
I took the boys to the mall today, to get out of the house and to look for a book for the book club I’m in. It went reasonably smoothly. The boys got to look at fish in the aquariums next to Tim Hortons. They got a kick out of the lionfish. Then we saw flamingoes and sealions. After stopping at the bookstore and getting a Caramel Apple Cider the boys got to steer some ships wheels, the kind you pay money to steer a boat around the water. We didn’t pay any money, they couldn’t see over the glass into the water anyway! So, we were having a good morning. Then we stopped for lunch. Drew LOVES cucumber rolls (a type of sushi made with cucumbers wrapped in rice with seaweed on the outside), so I got those and a teriyaki chicken bowl with rice and carrots and cucumber. Drew sat in his high chair and ate really well. Unfortunately Bran didn’t do so well. He refused to sit in the high chair so I put him back in the stroller. I tried twice more and eventually gave in and held him on my lap which is what he wanted, I didn’t want to give in but didn’t think everyone else appreciated eating next to a crying child! The whole time he was sitting on my lap he kept flailiing around and acting like there was something wrong with him (to another’s person’s eyes, to mine he was just being bad). Toward the end of this exciting meal, Drew decided to keep climbing out of his seat (the belt didn’t fit) and then dump the rest of his food all over the table and then push it onto the floor. I got Bran back into his stroller seat with a great deal of trouble and crying and then went for Drew. While I was cleaning our mess off of the table and putting it back onto the tray and packing away bibs, Drew decided to start screaming (a very bad habit of his that I’m at a loss as to how to correct–any ideas? Please let me know). I finally got us all out of the eating area, whew! (usually we make it through a meal pretty well so this was unusual). Then as I’m pushing them back toward our entrance they start yelling “go” over and over “go” “go” “go”. Which I can actually deal with, that is until we stroll up behind a more elderly woman who, rather than noticing the frazzled mamma behind the wheel, takes this as an affront that she is walking too slowly! As she huffs away to the side, I just want to melt into the stroller. I quickly duck into Please Mum where it’s okay for kids to be a little bit loud, it is a clothing store for kids after all. An outfit each for the boys and I’m feeling much better. There’s just something about spending money…
I bribe the boys with a video (one of those times I thank God for a van with a DVD player) to get their coats on and we’re out the door. We get home, quick diaper change, and they’re happily sleeping upstairs. If I only had another Caramel Apple Cider…
Posted: Drew & Bran
15
February
2007
We’ve been having a little bit of trouble with our insurance company. Now let me first start out by saying we have excellent care and more than I could ever imagine is covered without me having to think about it. The trouble we’re having is with our supplemental insurance. My complaint is not with what they cover (although I would really rather they forego the acupuncture and pay for massage therapy), but that, well, they (or their computers) are just stupid. This past October Bran was in the ER with pneumonia. We left the hospital at 4am and tried to get his prescription filled, the pharmacy couldn’t get it to go through and at 4am there was no one to call. The next day, in a state of exhaustion, I went to our local pharmacy. They couldn’t get it covered, either, so I just paid for it. I think it was a whole $16. Amoxicillin has been around for so long, you’d think it would be even cheaper than that. Anyway, I talked to the “people” at the University to get it fixed and they apparently did.
However, we ran into problems again last week. The boys had their first ear infections and were not happy wandering through the grocery store for an hour, simply for the pharmacy to tell me that Bran’s could not be covered again. Arghhh! (maybe I do say that alot) The pharmacist was nice enough to have the pharmacy eat the cost since, well, in his own words, ‘amoxicillin is so cheap.’ I called our insurance company to find out what was wrong. Because they are twins we now have to include their middle initial when filling a prescription (We used to have to give them separate birthdates… Drew was born a month earlier according to their computers… So, I guess it’s an improvement). The pharmacist put a period after the “N” and that, my friends, was the big mistake. Apparently it screwed up the whole system such that even after a phone call, they couldn’t verify Bran as the correct child and fill his prescription.
A period…
Now why couldn’t the person on the other end figure this out? Maybe it’s not just the computers… I’ll give them one more break since we’re not your “normal” family, though I may dread the next time I have to get a prescription filled for Brandon.
Posted: My Mon/Fayette Expressways
8
February
2007
Andrew is getting really good at communicating and sometimes he even helps Bran. Today I was trying to get Bran to tell me what he wanted. I knew that he wanted more of his cheerios, but wanted him to say more or cheerios or something other than nah, nah. Drew looked at Bran and made the sign for more to him. Bran made a sound of acknowledgement and signed more. Later that day I was asking the boys to touch their heads, Drew touched his and when I asked Bran to do it he wouldn’t, so Drew touched his head for him!
Drew really likes to recite the letters of the alphabet with me. But the past 2 days he’s been getting stuck on what appears to be his favorite letter, “F”. I say “A”, he says “F”, I say “B”, she says “F”, until we get to “G”, then he repeats the correct letters until about “S” and then he’s bored and won’t do it anymore.
Bran has only jumped in once or twice when I do the alphabet with Drew and then only with 3-4 letters, he doesn’t seem interested. Today he was off playing by the back door by himself and I heard him start the alphabet. He got to “C”, then went back to “B”, then “A”, then said them all in order all the way to “H”! I guess maybe he was paying more attention than I thought!
Bran’s favorite book right now is a counting book. Each page has pictures of a different number of animals related to the sea all the way to 12. He can find the animals I ask him to find and then actually does a good job of counting them, if it’s not higher than 3. After 3 he just keeps tapping the page, until I stop counting. We have to read the book several times a day. It’s also becoming Drew’s favorite so we have some disputes over who gets to turn the page! Bran always seems to be the one to have a favorite book, then Drew starts to like it too. First it was Snuggle Puppy, then I Love You Through and Through, then Brown Bear or Polar Bear, then The Christmas Tree book, and now the counting book. I think Goodnight Moon fits in there somewhere too. The last 5 are still on the best reads list. As much as we read to the boys from the very beginning, they’re not big readers.
Yesterday we heard Bran counting. He was looking at a book with numbers in it and said one, two, three, while he pointed to the one and the seven! The book was upside down, so you could argue as Mike did that that seven upside down looked similar to a two! We’re reaching but what to do you expect, we’re parents!
The boys are starting to say lots of words. Drew almost always says thank you when you give him something and is getting better at using his words to say please rather than his sign. They’re also starting to repeat our words more. The biggest thing is that while they know the words, can say them, and I think even know when to use them, they don’t. They have to be prodded, or you have to say it first and they’ll repeat. For example if they want Milk, they can repeat Milk if you ask them “Do you want milk?”. But they won’t actually ask for it, instead they put their hands up to the counter and say “nah, nah, nah.” Which I confess drives me absolutely crazy, especially by the end of the day.
Once when we were going over what certain animals say I asked them, “what does mama say?” the first time the response was “no”. Jen do you remember telling me that Kylie also said that? Well they only said that once, now their response is often “grrrrrr”. Apparently I growl too much, maybe I should go back to saying no more often.
Posted: Drew & Bran
8
February
2007
Last week our good friends Toby and Chloe came for a visit. It was so great to have them here with us! We took a trip to the Science Centre with the boys, ate at our favorite restaurants (Langano Skies-Ethiopian and Haweli’s-Indian), and I got lots of help around the house with laundry and watching the boys so I could run errands. If only I had that kind of help all the time…I would have to invest in Starbucks though! Part way through their visit we got to take a side trip with Mike’s department to Jasper. They did some skiing, I took the day off, did some hiking and took photos. Sunday we went on a 3-hour hike through Malligne Canyon. Every year I never cease to be amazed by how beautiful that walk on the ice is, and how beautiful the mountains are. We saw lots of long horn sheep this year, an elk, and even a wolf! So beautiful. The boys did really well on the hike and I was glad to share some of the outdoors with them. I was also super thankful for Yaki who carried Brandon for me!
In addition to enjoying the beauty of Alberta outdoors, our friends’ visit also gave us the chance to play lots of games! And you can never play too many games! Our favorites for the week were Power Grid, Fury of Dracula, and an old standby El Grande. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Toby didn’t get to make his freaky voice overs with Mississippi Queen. Maybe next time?
Mike and I had been playing some 2 player games of Power Grid before Toby and Chloe came and were really starting to get into it. The four player game is quite different though and I had trouble keeping up! It must be the cutthroat play of our friends! The premise of the game is to build power plants and power cities, whoever is powering the most cities by a certain point in the game wins. Toby brought up Fury of Dracula and we liked it so much we bought it from him. In this game there are four Hunters who are searching Europe for Dracula, one player is Dracula who secretly records each city he goes through. It’s a cooperative game from the standpoint of the Hunters. Our first game, we were just learning the rules, took about 5 hours and we just quit because it was so late! But we were able to get the second game down to 4 hours and the Hunters beat Dracula. I feel like I’m getting a better sense of the game and having been a hunter twice I’m anxious to try out the role of Dracula. Mike and I are thinking about playing a two player game after paper deadlines. El Grande is well…El Grande, an awesome game that we don’t get to play often enough, mostly because it takes over 2 hours to play and also because we have so many other ones to choose from.
Thanks Chloe and Toby for the fun times, all the help with the boys, and giving us so many opportunities to play games! We really miss our times together and it’s fun to recreate them every so often. Love you guys, you’re the best!
Posted: Friends
8
February
2007
The night wakings have gotten worse, but that’s mostly because they have ear infections. So I have to give them some grace on this getting me up in the middle of the night nonsense. However, we’ve had another wrench thrown into our getting them to sleep wihout their cribs. Not only is the room an adventure in itself (they’ve taken to climbing in and up the dresser drawers), now they can open their bedroom door. We have a gate across the door so they can’t get out, but this means they do two things, first they throw all their toys out into the hallway, including soothers and then they play with the door. The biggest fun is waiting until the other brother is standing unawares between the door and the gate and then trying to close the door really hard on him. It creates many crying episodes and little sleeping. Ever since Bran got his finger pinched in the door in the living room, I get really freaked out when I hear them opening and then slamming their door. Unfortunately we’ve had a hard time stopping it. Which means no naps and late bedtimes.
Today I was finally able to get a device that locks the doorknob in place. The door has one of those pull down handles rather than a knob, so this device attaches to the handle so that it won’t pull down and open. Mike is right in the middle of paper deadlines, but graciously put it on for me tonight while I got the boys ready for bed. We smartly attached it to the outside of the door so that we could flip the switch and lock it in place from our side and then unflip it when we wanted to get in (we had a brief moment of insanity when we thought we should put it on the inside). We brought the boys up to bed and I closed the door to keep them in…unfortunately the knob was in the the locked position. So there we all were in the boys room with no way to get out. Toby…remember the time I rescued you from a room? It was pretty much just like that. I noticed that Connie’s car was next door, but couldn’t figure out how to get her attention from the back of our house into hers, it was afterall -16C and she was unlikey to have a window wide open. So Mike took on the role of MacGyver and after a LONG while of using an old door knob, and eventually that wooden lightsaber, as a hammer, he got the hinges off of the door and we got out! It was quite a little fiasco, and I’m still chuckling over it.
But I have to say after all that…it worked! The boys tried a few times to get the door open, couldn’t, and went to sleep! YAY!!! Hopefully naptime tomorrow will be as successful.
Posted: Drew & Bran
8
February
2007
It’s actually now Day 17, I wrote this at Day 14 and never put it up.
WOW! I really thought I would make this a more consistent post. Maybe for me this is consistent! Well, it’s been 14 days and a lot has happened. By day 4 the boys seemed to be getting things down. We realized that we had to put them down a little bit later (1/2 hour or so). Normally they might chat or play before they fell asleep, but with the whole room available to them, it was just too exciting to fall asleep. By the fourth day they fell asleep right away and slept the whole night through! Woo Hoo! That was a Thursday, Friday we left for a weekend in Jasper. The boys did well in the cribs there, except that Sunday morning I awoke to Drew tugging on my foot. He had crawled out of his crib, barely 3 feet from me and I didn’t even hear him! Unfortunately it was also 6:45 am. The boys came home from the weekend with colds and have been sick ever since, so that’s completely thrown off their sleeping. We’ve been going in to them at least 3 times a night, often more. I realized how used I had gotten to getting a full nights sleep! We’re tired! Hopefully as the boys get to feeling better, they’ll sleep better too. Although we do have some funny stories…
Their room doesn’t have a closet, so when we originally set it up Mike built a little add on between their dresser and the wall. It has a top shelf and a bottom shelf, and a rod right under the top shelf where we hang coats and sweaters, there is no door on it. One night they weren’t going to sleep so I went to check on them. Bran was hiding in the closet holding all the clothes still on their hangers while Drew was running around the room with a short, thick, wooden rod. It kind of looked like he was waving a light saber! It was both hilarious and scary, while I was laughing all I could think was “I thought we babyproofed this room!” Apparently not, a few mornings later Mike went in to get them and found another surprise. We have a wooden, giraffe shaped shelving unit in their room. It’s about their height and has two shelves with 3 cloth boxes on each shelf. The top has a small shelf for books, etc. We didn’t attach it to the wall because it’s not heavy and they’ve pulled it over without incident before. When Mike walked in, the shelf was about 2 feet from the wall and Drew was shaking it back and forth…and Bran was sitting on top of it! I think they could make a hazzard out of anything.
Posted: Drew & Bran
