evohr.org

Thursday, December 21, 2000

Red skies at morning, sailors take warning.

  

Unretouched pictures from our back yard at 7:15 this morning, before the clouds rolled in and the showers started.
3:03:00 PM

Tuesday, December 19, 2000

You never know what thrills a baby. For example, consider the following two pictures taken last Friday afternoon:



Bryn honey, if you're trying to beat Maya at the nap-chasing game, you've outdone yourself.



Maya darling, it's a swing, not a roller coaster. Yikes!
5:33:00 PM

Technical note. Once again, we've found time to expand the site a bit more.

A little over a week ago, we went tidepooling at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve and took a ton of pictures. Rather than bog down this page with all those images, you can now go to a separate slide show for that trip.

Paul's been promising that the next slide show will be much more timely, thanks to all the behind-the-scenes Python hacking he's been doing. Of course, he's also been muttering about writing "just one more" program to really speed up the process, so nobody's holding their breath just yet.
4:19:00 PM

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

Also yesterday, the kids found time to snuggle up with their favorite lumberjack for some two-on-one bonding time. My, how they've grown since those first pictures back in mid-July!

  

Some of the tall tales generated mixed reactions:



But most of the time we enjoyed ourselves.



Thoroughly. :-)
3:32:00 AM

Getting a Paul Bunyan workout. They're not blue oxen, but trucking these growing Babes around by hand -- one in each car seat -- can have a similar effect. When we first started hauling them around in public, it sounded like a great theory ... strength training via "progressive resistance".

Well, reality hit with a vengeance yesterday on the way to the pediatrician's office. It's only been a month, but the difference was, shall we say, palpable. (We've really gotta get out more.)

At last month's visit, we learned that, according to the almighty growth curves, the twins were doing very well on height (75th and 50th percentiles), but falling behind on the all-important accumulation of baby fat. So, we upped their daily intake substantially, and boy did that pay off!

• Maya: 14 lb 4 oz, 26 3/4 in
• Bryn: 15 lb 13 oz, 25 3/4 in

Neither has cracked the 50th percentile on weight yet, but suffice it to say that the pediatrician was very pleased with their progress.
3:31:00 AM

Twinkletoes. The latest fad running rampant through our household is an epidemic of toe-grabbing. For the moment, Bryn seems to be content with a one-handed approach.



Is this an early cue that she's going to be right-handed? Hmmm. Ambidextrous Maya certainly isn't giving anything away just yet:



One thing's for sure, though -- so much for the era of dry feet. Sigh.
1:49:00 AM

Monday, December 11, 2000

Kathy's been nursing the twins, which requires its own set of highly-specialized gear. Thus, here are some shameless plugs for products she's found invaluable:

• Nursing tops -- Motherwear (request a catalog)
• Nursing pads -- Healthy Horizons (800-394-MILK)

When combined with the MaxiMom carriers (a.k.a. paratooper outfits) mentioned earlier, we can take the kids just about anywhere and not have to worry about feeding them discreetly.
5:11:00 PM

Thursday, December 07, 2000

Trapped, part 2. And what has Maya been up to in the mean time? Taking full advantage of the momentary lapse of attention, of course.



Just imagine the flexibility it takes to slither under there like that, without making a peep.



Pure talent, huh?
9:31:00 PM

Trapped. As mentioned previously, the kids now spend a bunch of time in their play yard. At first, this may seem confining, but at least the play yard has all sorts of toys strung up on the walls, and a reasonable amount of room to roam.



By contrast, consider the alternative. The open floor also has plenty of room to roam, and as we discovered this morning, Bryn doesn't mind rolling on carpet any more:

Hey Bryn, what're you doing?

  

Looking for my toy. I know I left it around here somewhere!

  

Thanks for the rescue. That was fun! Can we do it again?
9:26:00 PM

Happy together. For obvious reasons, twins are likely to develop social skills at an earlier age than other babies, and we've really been enjoying this. To date, we haven't managed to catch most of this growing interaction on "film", but this morning we got lucky.



Not only were the girls very interested in what each other was doing, they also seemed to be taking turns showing off the features of their respective Exersaucers:

  

Hey, are you taking our pictures, Daddy?



And now back to our regularly scheduled playing ... already in progress.
9:09:00 PM

Tuesday, December 05, 2000

Reach. The weird thing about developmental milestones is that sometimes they just pop up on you without warning. One day, something's impossible, the kids haven't ever tried it, and nobody notices. The next day, they're instant experts.

For example, sometime in the past few days, Bryn and Maya each started reaching for everything. They're particularly fascinated with faces, which seem to require detailed manual exploration. If any part of your face is nearby, out come the hands, grabbing and stroking whatever they can.

Call us parents, but for the moment we really enjoy having little fingers poking and grabbing at lips, teeth, noses, cheeks, eyebrows, glasses, etc. ...

... and you know that eyeballs are only a matter of time now. ;-)
7:13:00 PM

Saturday, December 02, 2000

Costales visit. We also had a visit yesterday from Mr. and Mrs. Costales, long-time friends of Kathy's family. Mrs. Costales (who's also a twin) made the blankets shown earlier this week.

Given how long it's been since the two families have gotten together, it would've been nice if we could have done even more to make the house look spiffy. Oh well. Given how much attention the babies got, it probably wouldn't have made much difference.
3:44:00 AM

Moving on the same day your twins are born is not an ideal coincidence. Among other things, it means that settling in can be a fairly long and drawn-out process.

Take unpacking for example. Even with heroic contributions from every visiting family member, it still took several months to get through the process of finding time between feedings and naps to gradually unpack each of the many many boxes.

Or, for another example, witness the following milestone from yesterday -- after being awakened for a 5 am feeding, Kathy used the extra time to unpack and hang our Jacob Lawrence print over the fireplace in the living room. It looks great there.

Most other walls in the house have yet to be so lucky. ;-)
3:35:00 AM

© 2000-10, the evohrs