I want my extra hour of sleep

Day three of Pacific Standard Time and I'm sitting here with Parker at 5:30 in the morning, chatting with Ted and Lion while Parker puts pennies and "nickoes" into his bank. I'm glad he's not screaming, and I'm glad the girls are still asleep, but that extra hour of sleep sure would be nice....

By the way, he can't tell the difference between a penny and a nickoe, but he enjoys saying the words as he picks them up and puts them in the bank. It's one of those things that is so cute you just want to puke.

Pictures

Miranda practices her head-lifting, while Elizabeth practices relaxing.


Parker's latest game is clipping the belts on the bouncy chairs. He can't unclip them, so it's a game that requires parental participation every round.


He also likes putting coins in a piggy bank. This one was given him to by his aunties Kathleen and Kay when he was born, and we're pretty confident he's going to smash it within the week.


When we went to Lake Merritt this weekend to feed the ducks we spotted this chicken as we were parking the car.


Here's an easy one: name that twin!


Parker loves books.


Elizabeth, enjoying her fish and looking pretty.

Do blonds have more fun?

From the time I was a little girl to about when I turned 33, I was blond. Very blond in fact. It started to go dark a few years ago and now I can honestly say I have brown hair.

My sister, who was always blond as well, is still blond. And her kids are blond.

We thought Parker would be blond for sure. But he has light brown hair very similar to mine at this point.

So, we thought our little girls would be brunnettes too. And when they showed up, sure enough, there it was...the brown hair.

But, a couple days ago, their hair started to disappear. They both started to go bald. It didn't all fall out. In fact, the pattern looks very much like male pattern baldness. And where it is already growing back...it looks very blond.

I guess time will still tell what color hair they will list on their drivers licenses, but for now, they just look bald.

Miranda


Elizabeth

Damn farmers

Ending daylight savings time and enjoying the perks of "falling back" were completely missed at the Long Family. Parker was up at 5:30 and the gals were up at 6 (after beeing asleep just 2 hours).

So, Michael and I not only didn't gain an hour of sleep, we lost about 3.

And I thought I had it rough...

Pretty much every time I go anywhere, I am stopped by well wishers who want to oogle at the gals. They ask the same questions: how old, are they identical, are they both boys, what are there names, etc. It has gotten pretty old already, but other twin moms tell me it lasts until they are out of the snap and go stroller. So I have about 5 months left politely answering these questions.

Today, when I was at Target, and some lady looked over at my cart (which was holding one baby...I was holding the other one in a bjorn), "I said Yup there are two," before she could say anything. And then she surprised me. She said, "I've got triplets. And a toddler."

We chatted for a bit about the challenges of shopping and where the best carts can be found and then went on separate ways.

I love running into triplet moms. It makes me feel so normal.

Pumpkins

Sunday we went to look at pumpkins, at a patch down in Fremont. The most important aspect of this particular pumpkin patch was the pyramid of hay bales, good for climbing.



This pyramid of hay bales had been in place for at least a couple of weeks, and it was showing its age. There were collapsed areas all over it that your foot would sink in to, and the wires were at the surface and loose, providing perfect opportunities to trip. None of this bothered Parker, of course.



Fatherhood and the utter fearlessness of my 22 month-old son caused me to view this pyramid with great apprehension and disapproval, tailing Parker in panicked circles around the top two levels. The thing was every kids dream, a wild climb and a splendid romp, and kids were having the time of their lives on it while we were there. But I saw nothing but fun and games turning to tragedy. Sure, everyone loves the hay pyramid until some poor kid trips on baling wire and knocks the next one to his probable broken neck four or five bales of hay down. This was a very bad pyramid of hay bales.

But Parker had a blast, enjoying one of his new favorite activities: jumping.





But we were there to see pumpkins, and see pumpkins we did!






Some pumpkins are also good for the jumping game.




Also, we saw dirt clods.



And tried to eat them.



There was also a hay bale maze, which was another big hit with the kids, but had the added dad-friendly bonus of not being an instrument of probable injury and death.




We also walked over to adjacent Ardenwood historic farm. Our East Bay Regional Parks membership got us in for free instead of the 12 bucks it would have cost. And I must say, for 12 bucks I'd have felt a little underwhelmed by Ardenwood, but for free it was great.



Along the way, we met up with Rachel's friend Amity, and her son Mac, who is just absurdly cute, and sweet and good tempered.




And that was enough fun for one day.

wah wah wah

I can't believe it has taken as long as it has, but tonight I finally experience all three kids screaming at once. I was trying to get the girls to sleep after their dinner, and Rachel was giving Parker a bath (and washing his hair), and the whole lot of them was having none of that. What shall we do with the boo hoo babies?

It all worked out in the end, but it was pretty noisy there for a while.

Five things about Parker

In no particular order:

1. He spent about 20-30 minutes tonight doing this:
   
   
   
2. He banged his head up pretty good today at the park with Farm. He was doing his favorite thing at that particular park - running across the suspension bridge - with fairly predictable results.
   
   
3. He digs the zoo. We've always taken him to the zoo, but he never really saw or cared about the animals, until very recently. Today, for example, he told me all about the animals he saw on his trip to the zoo yesterday. (For the record, he saw elephants, giraffes, and zebras.) When I asked him whether monkeys lived at the zoo he gave me a quite intentional look of incredulity, which was pretty funny. I'm looking forward to standing him in front of the monkey house next time we go to the zoo and watching his lid just flip. A monkey says ooh ooh ah ah.
   
   
4. The other night he decided it would be fun and funny to put a blanket over his head and walk around the house. And he was right. It cracked all of us up, except the girls, who were sleeping. He kept this up for about ten or fifteen minutes.
   
   
   
   
5. He doesn't mind his sisters at all anymore. We're all one big happy family.

Sticking it to the Man

I was driving back from Berkeley today after spending some quality time with the gals down on 4th street and I realized something that I had not considered before.

Whenever me and the girls go anywhere together, I can take the carpool lane. So there I was cursing the 80 traffic when it hit me. I zoomed over to the far lane and was home in minutes.

I knew there were some other benefits to having twins. I'm just glad it only took me four weeks to figure it out.

Fork for you?

Parker no longer has to use baby silverware or eat special food. He eats what we are eating using utensils that we use. We do, however have different sizes of forks and spoons, a concept Michael hasn't quite mastered yet.

So last night, while Parker was trying to eat porkchops and apple sauce with a giant fork, I went to get him another one that was bit smaller. I gave it to him and he then had two forks and looked confused. He handed me the bigger fork and said, "Fork for you?"

Which sounded exactly like F*&! you.

We giggled.

No shortage of cuteness

Zzzzzz

Here's how I found Rachel, Miranda, and Elizabeth when I came home tonight. I'm not sure if I should wake them for dinner.

Andy, Randi, Mira and Uncle Fester

We don't care what you call her. We think she is pretty cool regardless...

Parker's World

For the first couple of weeks that Elizabeth and Miranda lived with us, Parker didn't acknowledge their existence. This takes impressive concentration when both parents are holding a crying baby, but he persevered. On top of that, he was much fussier than usual. Much fussier. Parker can throw a tantrum as well as the next guy, but he is generally a pretty amiable, happy kid. When his sisters showed up, however, he settled into constant whining with a vengeance, punctuated by complete freakouts multiple times a day. So far, this has been the most challenging part of having twins for me. He's just been a bear to live with.

But the ratio of bad to good has been moving steadily in the right direction over the past few weeks, and he's more or less back to his good old self. He remains a bit edgy when people visit, but other than that he's done very well. Rachel and I have also been teaching to ask for things politely rather than whining for them, and he's done pretty well with that. Today, for example, he didn't whine at all, and only needed to be reminded to say please at the end of each request. That's a good kid.

But while his mood improved over the past few weeks, he continued to act as if the girls simply weren't there. I respect his prerogative to ignore his little sisters, a tactic I'm sure he'll employ for years to come. But I've been waiting for him to come around.

Well, today Rachel was at a dog conference for several hours in the morning and the evening and I was at home with all three kids. Parker was perfectly charming the entire time, playing well on his own when I was taking care of the babies, and asking nicely when he wanted something, eating a pretty good lunch, and basically being as sweet a young man as you could hope for. And then once when I had both girls swaddled and sleeping in the same bassinet, Parker came over as I was checking on them and said, baby sleeping, with a sort of delighted grin on his face. At other times during the day, he'd come over to check them out, see what was happening with the babies. And then this evening when he saw a baby on the television and he said, miranda?, almost to himself, and it was about the sweetest thing ever. So I think we've reached detente, at last.

Starting to get 'it'

Parker and I were at the park today. One way I can get him to leave without a freak out session is to ask him if he wants to go home and see daddy. (Which he always does.)

So today after I asked this question and I asked who else was at home that we would see.

He typically says Zeke, Noe, Farm (the nanny), Ted, Lion or even sometimes "milk".

Today he said, Miranda.

And then, Elizabeth.

PROGRESS!!!!!

Three minutes of Parker

In this episode, Parker counts to 20 with the help of his abacus, sprints across the house several times, and sticks out his tongue. You can tell he's going to be a good mathematician because he so meticulously counts 6-7-8 twice, just to make sure he got them. Also, in our house we have a tradition of celebrating whenever we reach the highest number we know, so the last number isn't twenty, it's twentyyeah!

Little Amy, Little Julia

My little sister had her baby last night. Julia Rose Marcus joined the world at 10:40pm at a whopping 6 pounds 9 ounces. (I had to rub it in that ONE of my babies was bigger than that.)

Amy and Julia are both doing well.

We are going to go visit in a couple weeks.

It will be fun to see the little girl cousins grow up together.

**Update: they've uploaded some photos. We'll post a link to their blog when it goes live.

I can name that twin in three notes...

Name that twin!

Manners

We have been trying to teach Parker to say please and thank you, and so far the only progress we've made is that when Parker wants to hand you something - usually some half-chewed food he's just removed from his mouth - he says thank you. But today after I sneezed Parker very matter of factly said zoontite. No idea where he learned that.

And Speaking of Parker, here he is, drinking juice and looking cute.