Tourists for a morning

Today we went on a Ferry Ride. I'd done it before with Parker but never with the girls. Jenna came with us, thank god as I would have been insane to do it alone. Everyone enjoyed the ride over the bay and under the bridge.







I gave the kids a new snack today: celery and cream cheese. I loved it as a kid, but they just liked licking the cream cheese out and smearing it around.





We decided to hit the aquarium first. I've never been and since girls were free, it wasn't that pricey. It was a nice aquarium with a very cool underwater tunnel.


Parker kept saying, I see a 100 fish!







There were some big ass fish in this tunnel. Here Parker kept saying, I see a million fish! Elizabeth just shrieked: Shaaaak, Shaaakkkk



Miranda liked the jelly fish.








Then we went to the touch exhibit where the kids got to feel tiger sharks and starfish. It was a little too big for the girls, but we helped them out.





As we walked along we saw this jumpy thing. Since the only thing Parker likes more than math is jumping, I let him do it even though it was wayyyy overpriced. He loved it. Video below.








Then we made our way to the overpriced merry go round.



And finally the Sea Lions. They are always a hit and the kids were mesmerized.





After a quick stop for some cotton candy, we went back to the ferry. While there, the girls molested Jenna. They just love her.






We were essentially alone on the way home except for the slightly creepy guy that offered the kids cookies. So I let them run around a bit and even go outside.





I think the most fun they had all day was hiding under the table on the ferry.



It was a good outing.

Time for bed!

As we generally do each evening after the girls have gone upstairs, we ask Parker to tell us what time he is going to go to bed. He is always more conservative than us and he likes this little game, so we do it. Today, naps were late so bedtime is a bit later. He normally gets going with the bedtime routine at 7. So today, our conversation went like this:

"Come look at the clock and tell me what time you are going to bed." The clock said 7:14

"Uh-oh, I have only negative 14 minutes left!"

I told him that he could stay up a bit longer and he picked 7:25.

Night. Night.

Ewww, gross!

After swim class today, we went to a park in Alameda. We got settled on a blanket in the shade for some snacks and Parker ran off to play. Then a big Alameda city truck came and completely blocked my view of Parker. I asked the worker if he would be a while and explained that I couldn't see my kid. He said no he was just dumping in some new sad. He got to work dumping, but since he was limping, it took a good long while. Luckily the girls wanted to play too, so off we went. We spent some time on the swing (where Parker is getting good at pumping himself) and by then the truck was gone and left was a giant pile of fresh sand. Or so we thought.

The kids (and one other boy that was playing with us) went over to check it out and they all fell on it happily. They did this several times before we noticed some small brown sand covered pieces in it. Upon closer inspection, we determined it was cat poop. Some damn cat had found the sand lot at the city of Alameda and gone to town. It was disgusting and we quickly got the kids playing with something else.

Super Dad

For the last two nights, Michael has got the kids down to sleep without crazy hysterics. And before 8pm. Two nights ago, I had a bad day with the kids and escaped to a movie I had already seen. Michael did the bedtime routine alone and all were asleep by 8pm in one room. Last night, he dealt with the girls while I read to Parker. When I went to fold laundry, he added Parker to the mix. And they were all asleep by 7:30. They woke up just after 6, which we can't complain about and played upstairs together until 6:30 when apparently Elizabeth tried to take Miranda's baby and Miranda wasn't having any of it. The screaming started so Michael went up to break it up and they all came into bed with us for another 15 minutes.

Not bad.

Good morning, would you like a headache?

The girls want to sit on mommy's lap, this morning at around 7am.

Michael 347, Rachel 1

Parker said on the way home:

I don't care what you say anymore, it's my life.


(billy joel 1970-something My Life) Greatest Hits Album

Morning lull

After an hour of baby stealing, whining about nothing, crying about not being able to sit on mommies lap, the kids fell quiet this morning. Here is where I found them.

A rare moment.

Despite what most twin parents say, I've never found having twins to be a blessing. Most of the time, it's just a plain pain in the butt. But then, every so often, they do something terribly cute and sweet. Something that could only be done by people the same age. Playing peek a boo on this chair qualified. Elizabeth was strapped in (of her own doing) and Miranda thought that was just fine.

Hats

The kids have outgrown most of their hats, so they had to make do with oversized ones on this outing.

Right vs Wrong

Parker is starting to be able to tell right from wrong. And demand right. A few examples:

As a way to try to get the girls to go to sleep and stay asleep, we busted out the "special cereal" (something that worked great with Parker) and promised bowlfuls if they went to bed easy and stayed in bed. It hasn't worked at all and they seem not to care. Parker on the other hand has been a real trooper about the whole sleeping thing so he is generally getting a small bowl every morning. The other day after once again sleeping all night long, Michael offered him so special cereal (aka fruit loops). He said, "No, I can't have any because I was talking to the girls last night."

Before naps yesterday I told Parker we could read three books. He picked out three, but when we finally got to the end of two, I told him we had to stop and go to sleep now. He looked at me and said, I wanna read this book. I told him again we ran out of time and had to stop. He again whined that he wanted to read another book. I repeated myself again and promised to read it later. Then he said, "Mommy, you said we could read THREE books?!?!" So we read the damn book.

Miranda was hysterical the other day about getting in the car. She wouldn't let us buckle her in without using a good amount of force and she kept screaming in her miranda/parker high pitched way. I wasn't about to start a nice family outing with that so I took her out of the seat and put her on the path to the house and said, "Ok, you can stay here." Then I got back into the car. Now, you know and I know I wouldn't have left her there, but Parker did not know that and became quite upset. He said, "I want Miranda to come with us!" I got out of the car, went around to her, asked her if she was ready to stop screaming and come with us and she said, "Yesh." Parker was relieved.

Sentences

The girls are finally saying their first sentences and or phrases. As Michael says, they sort of talk like Yoda. Favorites include:

Daddy's Car!
Me No Peepee
Mo Mik Peees
didi Yaya Happy (which means sing Happy Birthday to the cat.)


Speaking of words, Parker said to me today while standing in a long line to use the ATM at a local street festival..."Eran's name has a U in it." He was wrong of course, but you gotta wonder what he was thinking about that led him to that.

Are the marbles with the socks?

We seem to lose marbles in this house very fast. We have four marble runs here that all came with marbles, yet we can't find more than a few at any given time. And if we do find one, it fits in one run, but not another. The upstairs run has small light- weight marbles. The new run downstairs has small regular-weight marbles. The one on the fridge uses normal marbles. It's all very complex and frustrating to poor Parker. I think when we move or our fridge breaks we are going to find thousands of marbles.

Drastic times

After the bedtime misadventures of recent days, we really wanted things to go smoothly tonight. In order to improve the chances of that happening, we didn't let any of the kids nap. And it was an action-packed day, with a 10am birthday party in Diamond park attended by a bunch of twin families, followed by an 11am-2pm party at Temescal for Twins By The Bay attended by what must have been 30 twin families.

The kids were beautifully behaved all day, a real pleasure to be around. At one point they were running shirtless (the girls) across the grass, the three of them chasing each-other, laughing and tramping through this gorgeous summer day, and the whole thing was just intensely perfect, exactly the way you'd want life to be. It was lovely, as a parent, to sit and watch them, reclined on the shady grass.

They played in the pool when we came home in the afternoon, and the girls had early baths, and by dinnertime those kids were dog tired. Elizabeth seemed to get a third wind at bedtime, but it didn't have any steam in it, and a couple minutes of patting had her out. Miranda, for once, was asleep before her sister. Parker was good, as he's been throught this process.

We had all kids asleep by 7:10.

J-r-o-p spells drop

According to Parker this afternoon.

Action Packed Day

Yesterday Parker and I had an action packed day. First we went to swim class where the teacher had to literally hold him back from jumping in the pool and swimming across every 5 minutes. Then a quick stop at playplace so I could read the paper and he could run around. Then we checked out a new place called Cull Canyon. It's a lagoon of sorts in Castro Valley with filtered water and sandy beaches. It was quite nice. Parker seemed to be having fun, but after an hour or so said, "I'm ready to go." Since we couldn't go home yet (the girls were napping), I tried to think of other stuff we could go do. I came up with a movie. He, of course, had no idea what a movie was, but was game. We were about 10 minutes late for Wall-E, but I couldn't imagine it would matter. We sneaked in and he was mesmerized. He sat quietly watching Wall-E have adventures for about 20 minutes. Then he told me he was ready to go. It was right after a big explosion sequence, so I think he was either bored (as I was) or scared. I told him to watch for a few more minutes, but after 5 more, he was done and we left. 30 minutes of movie for 14 dollars. What a deal. Then we stopped at Target before we headed home.

You'd think he would have passed out around 6:30, but with the slumber party and screaming going on upstairs until 9:30, no such luck.