December Madness

It's crazy busy around here, what with visiting friends last weekend, holiday shopping and festivities, temps below 12 degrees (yowza!), the kids' day care closing due to a busted water main, and me getting a cold. I actually can't believe I'm blogging. But I just can't let more than two weeks go by and not update you all at least a little bit.

So above are some recent pics, including a really cute one of cousin Jocelyn and her mom Alicia from Thanksgiving. We had a blast in Portland last weekend, but forgot to take the camera! Since that is the only thing we forgot, it was quite successful. We visited the fabulous Jen, Zero, and Molly (who is 2), which entailed reading lots of books, playing with baby dolls, and much attention to eating and peeing, slept all together in the living room, then got up and walked to a delicious breakfast and a great local toy store in St. John's. Highly recommended. On the way out, we stopped at OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, which was really cool!

Yes, one's curly and one's straight

The most common comment about Paige and Skylar is, hands-down, "oh. One has curly hair and one has straight." Yep. "I can tell them apart easily that way," I respond. The follow up question is almost always "do twins run in your family?" and sometimes "did you know you were going to have twins?" To which I mumble vaguely dissatisfying answers like "I have second cousins who are twins..." and "I found out really early in the pregnancy." Because people just don't need to know the details, you know?

Yesterday morning, Skylar wanted piggy tails in her hair, and her favorite bear, who she carries around swaddled in a blanket, patting night-night, has little ears that perfectly accommodate two ponytail holders. Sky was elated that she and bear could share orange-bedecked piggytails. The experience combined two of that girl's very favorite things - bear, and the color orange. It was pretty darn adorable.

This morning, Paige filled her backpack with her little doggy wrapped in her flowered blanket, grabbed her jacket and announced, "I'm going on the bus, mom. See you later. Have a good day!" All right. Pretend play is really fun. Yesterday when we brought a couple of balloons home from the store, Paige held hers behind her back and said, "balloon is my backpack. And here is my tail."

Today we got to go to our friend Nora's third birthday party. There were a couple of other three-year-olds there, some older kids and a one-year-old. Paige and Skylar did just awesome with the three-year-olds, doing things that were new to them - they played pin the legs on the spider (blindfolded!), tossed rings to win toys and candy that their rings landed on, and whacked a pinata. No complaining, no hesitating, just playing right along, watching and participating and having fun. It was awesome! Happy birthday Nora.