First Steps, More Words, Eating, Sleeping

Sorry for the disappearing act, we're still here and doing fine. Shortly after my last post, I started going back to the office full time, four days a week (and diving into some new projects that have me working at home on my "days off" too). and the next thing I knew, the entire month of February was gone.

We have been busy at the house as well as at the office. The kids' playroom and bedroom, which were our old living room and bedroom, have new carpet and paint (after some minor, but much-needed repair work on the walls). Since the kitchen is relatively new, compared to the rest of the house anyway, we decided to just give it a fresh coat of paint and leave the rest alone. It's amazing what a new color on the walls does for the place!

We've also had quite a bit of work done outdoors, fill dirt, grading, walkways, and patio. The kids now have an outdoor play area, which is now their favorite place to be. We moved the Kangaroo Climber out there, added a sand/water table (no water until it gets a little warmer, though!), a couple of Cozy Coupe cars, and some balls & toys, and they love it. Jimmy and Katie, with their rapidly expanding verbal skills, now ask for "outside?" several times a day. Fortunately we have the weather for it, even in the middle of winter!

The twins are both picking up new words every day, it seems, and learning how to put them together to tell us things and (more importantly) ask for what they want. When we decipher what Katie is trying to ask us, she grins and says "yessssssss!" Jimmy still tells us a lot of things in his own language, but he is quite serious about it. He often comes up to one of us and runs through what sounds like several very important sentences before walking away. I wish I knew what his words meant!

They both have quite a collection of animal sounds -- when we read Goodnight Moon they chime in with "grrrrrr" (for the bears sitting on chairs) and "meeeeeeeow" (for the kittens). They are finally learning to put names to people too -- Mama, Dada, Jimmy ("Jee-ee"), Katie ("Kay-ee"), Sarah ("Sawa"). Sometimes they fight like crazy over a toy, a seat, or nothing at all, other times their bond is very apparent. One of those times is at night... they started climbing the cribs (into them first, but we realized that this meant they were also able to climb OUT just as easily), so we took the sides off and put a cushion on the floor for the first few weeks. At nap time they both sleep in their beds, but at bed time they start out in bed but more often than not end up on the floor (with all of their blankies, stuffed animals, etc.), curled up together.

Sarah is learning all sorts of things from the twins, sometimes a little too much (like climbing up on the little picnic table). She started standing on her own and taking a step or two a couple of weeks ago, now she's up to five or six steps in a row and standing for nearly a minute at a time. She also finally took to the sippy cup (we never did get her to take a bottle more than once in a while), which is how I was finally able to leave her at home with our (wonderful!!!) nanny and get back to work. She's now holding her own cup, taking two naps a day and going to bed at the same time as the twins, eating everything in sight by the fistful, and has two (bottom) teeth, a third that just came in (on top), and a fourth ready to make an appearance any day now. She is babbling up a storm, starting to wave and say bye-bye ("bah bah bah"), and she loves giving kisses!

I did take some pictures while all that was going on, a few more back in January and a bunch in February. There is also a new video in our YouTube collection of all three laughing at knocking down stacks of blocks.