Call me biased, but my girls are beautiful... and I'm a proud Dad. Fortunately for me, they're only 2 and not stressing me out with teenage emotions and/or thoughts about boys. Unfortunately, the boys their age are already putting the moves on them. They're all kids, so usually it's cute and we just laugh or take a picture. However, I had to scare a little Casanova off of Naomi the other day.
We were at the park, and the girls were playing on the play structure. Naomi started having fun with this one boy and he tried to show her around. She followed him around for a bit, and then he went down the slide. It was a spiral slide and Naomi couldn't see that he was just sitting at the bottom, waiting for her to come down. The slide wasn't very fast, so when she got to the bottom she was able to stop before bumping into the boy. Then, he crawled up the slide and started to crawl on her. Naomi leaned back as he advanced and he put his forearms down on either side of her head. He looked like he was trying to suck face with her. That was too much for me. "Hey!... that's enough" I said as I walked towards them and the boy ran away.
Maybe I should start posting pictures of myself on this blog so I can document the progressive greying and loss of hair from worrying about my beautiful little girls. :)
It's been so long since we last did a post. So much has changed. One awesome new feature is having the twins' Auntie Tennille living here, so now we can go out whenever we want. In fact, we're about to go see World War Z after we write this post, so I'm just gonna blast it out.
What's new? (In no particular order)
Visits
We've had a few visits. The girls' Auntie Kristy and cousin Amber came to visit in April. The girls had a great time with her and even taught her the joy of wearing no pants.
Right after that, their Grandma came to visit for 2 weeks. The girls were spoiled with great meals and extra gifts. One of which turned out to be a t-shirt that Naomi never wants to take off... more on that later.
We even had a visit from their Uncle Aaron in a pleasant surprise visit he paid us after a work trip he had on this side of the country!
Potty training
In April we started potty training. We did not try any potty training prior to this, so we weren't sure how it would go. The first day was strangely successful. Perhaps it was the Cadbury mini egg reward for going in the potty. Since then, there have been many accidents: mostly when they're so entranced by their iPad that they don't even realize they're sitting in a pool of urine. But, we're getting better. In fact, today was the first day that we have left the house without diapers. We went to the mall without any accidents, and Keira even asked to use the potty when we were there.
Daycare
Our nanny, Gladys, went back to the Philippines for 6 weeks starting April 1st. We had some visitors here during that time, so we took some vacation to stay with the twins, but we also had to sign them up for daycare.
At first, we got them really excited to go. They had always loved school buses and we told them that they were going to go to school. The first day they went for only a couple of hours, and they didn't even miss us. We thought everything was going to go well.... but, every day after that, they would wake up in the morning and first thing they would say was "not go to daycare today?". And, when I dropped them off, I would have to carry to crying kids into the daycare and pry them off of me before going to work.
But, they liked it there. I would drive slowly past their window as I was leaving in the morning and I could see them playing and happy. And when I picked them up at the end of the day, they were happy and playing.
However, we're definitely glad that Gladys is back. It's much easier to just leave the kids at home in the morning and have her feed them, and if we have to work late, no problem... she can always stay late on short notice. Plus, the twins were happy to see her when she got back. They missed their Auntie Gladys.
Misc
Other things worth documenting for our memories:
- The twins randomly break out into micro rap sessions from time-to-time. They always have the same rhymes. Keira says "K for Keira... come on, come on, come on... kuh kuh kuh" and Naomi follows with "N for Nomi.... nah nah nah nah nah"
- They love cars and Cars (the Disney movie). When we let them pick out shoes, they picked Lightning McQueen (the main character in Cars). When we picked out toys, they choose monster trucks. When they pick out a story for bedtime, they often pick a book that I have on Lamborghini. They have stuffed toys for sleeping with, but they also always sleep with their little die cast Lighting McQueen toys. And, Naomi's favorite shirt is her Thomas the Train shirt (a.k.a. Choo Choo Train Shirt). She usually wears it until it's too gross and needs to be washed, and then she asks for it every day until it's washed.
Anyway... gotta rush to the movies. So, here's a couple vids of the girls.
Keira and Naomi are best friends... until a harmless seagull attacks, then it's "save yourself!"
One of the games the twins like to play is tag. Naomi will chase Keira down to one side of the house until there's nowhere left to run, then she'll gently tag her and say "puuuush!", and then run away. Keira chases after her until they reach the other end of the house. Tag... "Puuuush!"... Repeat until thirsty (this is often after many, many laps of the house). It's super cute watching them play tag at age 2 and a bit.
The other night, they were playing tag, but half way through the game, the "puuuush" turned to "hug!" and they would hug and giggle and then chase after each other.
Other cute things the girls are continually doing:
- Sleeping together to calm the other twin but this happens rarely, its too squishy in a single bed
- Sharing toys and iphone games. For example, they take turns passing the iphone to each other to play a game
- Calling for each other when they wake up, and yapping away
- Posing for the camera 'Smile!'
- Saying 'Thank you sir'
- Saying "Wintah" with a British accent instead of "Winter"
- Pretending to be a spider, froggy, chicken, with each other and always playing the same pretend game
As for recent accomplishments:
- Eating at the table like a family with out booster seats
- Farting on purpose and laughing about it
- Knowing the alphabet and starting to recognize words/reading
The girls are waay smarter than Rick and I. They learn so much watching an episode of cartoons everyday and playing interactive games on the iPad. Just recently, they learned to recognize letters and numbers. They even recognize some words....its AMAZING.
Technology is making kids waaay smarter than ever before and having each other to talk too and interact is soo special.
Enough writing, here are some videos and pictures!
Naomi was happy at the New Year's party we went to. She just doesn't look it here, because we took here away from the toys to try and get her to eat some food.
Happy New Year! Ok... it's a bit late. But I know people who haven't taken down their Christmas tree, yet, so I'm still good by comparison. Since our last posting we've gone through Christmas, New Year's, and the most important day of them all... Daddy's Birthday! However, somehow the latter passed without much recorded evidence.
Starting to building their first snowman
And the resulting snow(man?)
We had quite a bit of snow in the last couple of months. On the morning after the first big dump of snow, both girls were standing by the window and jumping up and down, saying "know! know! know!" (translation: snow! snow! snow!). They seemed to enjoyed going out and building their first snowman/snowthing, being pulled in the sled, and even taking a few sled rides with their mom and dad.
The Popsicle Family on a brisk -20 degree day
But, the love for the snow has worn off for now. It's a battle to get their snow pants on, and now when we do go out the door, they head straight for the car... none of this messing around in the cold. My love for the snow has worn off, too. Lucky for me, I had some help shoveling it over the Christmas holidays. On Christmas Eve, when the girls went to sleep, we promised that a jolly old man would be here in the morning to greet them. On Christmas morning, there he was... Grandpa McCourt (a.k.a. Papa). The twins were excited to see him, and even a month after he went back home, they remind us every time they see the letter P, that "P is for Papa!"
Papa and his little chefs
Christmas was really fun with the girls this year because they loved opening all their presents. And, they have some pretty generous family members, so there were plenty of gifts to open. After opening each gift, they get so excited and go play with it until we can convince them to open another.
Opening gifts Christmas morning
"Say cheese!"
Below is a video of the girls making a meal for their Papa in their new kitchen with their chef hats on. For a while, they kept saying "thank you, sir" while serving pretend food to us. It took us a while to figure out where they got that from, but it seems to be from Toopy and Binoo.
October, 2012: The girls had a super fun strawberry shortcake party. Why strawberry shortcake, only because I loved strawberry shortcake cartoons when I was a kid, when she was short, soft and round, not like how she looks right now, like some skinny tall gorgeous barbie. If I had asked the girls what they wanted for a birthday party, it would be a heavy equipment party, full of bulldozers, cranes, tow trucks etc. They are obsessed with moving vehicles:)
The party was full of twins, three sets of twins including the girls! They danced, jumped and played well with the other kids and were very good in sharing their toys.
The girls received tons of presents from family and friends. Their favorite so far has been their trampoline.
Blast forward to November 2012, the girls are now talking in full sentences, growing on their same growth curves, getting leaner, and taller. They love their weekly gymnastics, already surpassing their older peers in their classes with their fearless climbing, rolling, jumping, and hanging! Its becoming clear why they jumped out of their cribs at 17 months old, because they have flying monkey skills.
To keep up with their energy levels, I've also registered them in swimming classes and more gymnastic classes.
I keep thinking of how fun they are and how easy it is to take care of them. Although pregnancy was hard on my body, breastfeeding two little babies was super exhausting, and being on maternity leave was not my cup of tea..if I had a choice to have twins as my first pregnancy, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat!
The girls are best friends now and play so well together, I feel so lucky to have Keira and Naomi.
It's great taking the girls for hikes and actually geting somewhere, as opposed to just chasing them around like wild animals. However, if you heard us coming down the trail, you may thing we have a couple of disobedient pets that we're taking on a walk. We're constantly calling "Come on, Keira.... Let's go, Naomi... oooo, look, a stick!"
Nevertheless, it is fun exploring with them. Everything is so fascinating. They see a tree and say "wow!.... momma tree!" Which means 'big tree' in their language. Not because mommas are big. They're just bigger than the 'baby tree' they saw a few minutes earlier.
Another thing they like to do is copy Daddy when he's fixing stuff around the house. However, they're tool of choice is always a hammer. They say "fix!... ham-ber... bang! bang!" and proceed to beat down whatever Daddy is fixing with whatever is in their hand.
So, while on our last hike, they saw a broken tree that needs fixing:
And just as a final note, to record some of 'twin speak' we've noticed so far. Some of them are easy to figure out. Other words seem to mean something to the two of them, but we haven't quite figured it out.
Dodo = Sister
Fundee = ??
Rocket-da-copter = helicopter
Aaaaaaaaple = Airplane
Apple = Apple
Na na = milk (supposed to be nai nai, i.e. Cantonese)
Na na (with monkey noise) = banana
The girls had a full week of vomiting just before their doctor's checkup and lost almost a pound each...HOWEVER, despite the slight loss, Keira is still 50th percentile in weight, 75th percentile in height (approx. 26.5 lbs, 34.3 inches). Naomi is 75th percentile in weight and around 75th percentile in height (over 28lbs, 34 inches). Needless to say, they are not typical skinny and small asian babies.
Next blog will be their two year old birthday party weekend...
Keira and Naomi are high energy toddlers! I feel like I can't keep up with them no matter how hard I try. I literally exercise them like dancing, or running with them around the house or outside for hours before they are tired enough to go to sleep. I sometimes wish their was a toddler treadmill.
Our favorite family activity is to go on walks and hikes with them. It's so much fun seeing them explore every grass, tree, bug, squirrel, and rock during their walks.
Part of their daily routine involves dancing too, here's a preview of their dancing moves (including Breakdancing):
The girls are showing affection towards each other. Its super adorable seeing them hug, kiss and dance together. Here's a video of them as 'Best Friends':
Keira and Naomi also love the mirror and kissing, see for yourself!
As for being big kids, well this video explains it all. They were fairly young to start climbing out of their crib (18 months old) and of course, accelerated to climbing on and out of everything possible, see for yourself! There is no fear in these girls!
The girls are super independent now, they play well by themselves at play gyms or at home. Naomi has absolutely no fear when it comes to running off by herself at a jungle gym, scaling up and down mega slides. Keira is still a little hesitant but feels confident when Naomi is around.
Rick and I have been helping out another friend of ours with new born twins as well as providing mental support to other friends with twins. I keep telling everyone that raising twins is super crazy during the first year, but after every milestone (sitting up, crawling, walking, talking) your life becomes easier. I feel like I'm reaping the rewards now, they are so easy to take care of, they keep each other company and make my life easy, I feel very lucky.
Rick and I have been very busy with work, working a lot of overtime, working well into the early mornings and travelling as well as doing kitchen renovations and building our real estate portfolio. Despite our workaholic lives, we managed to find time to travel to Kingston, leaving the girls with our nanny for one night!
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