Jingle Cats, Jingle Cats

Yeah. Lefty bolted out the front door on me Thursday afternoon (it was really windy and stuff was blowing all around). She got about halfway down the sidewalk, then headed back for the house. As I opened the door for her to come back in, Dusty started out. They're both safe and sound now, but Greg made them wear collars for the rest of the night. They guilted him into taking them off before bed.

Julie is working on clapping. She gets 2 hands together, but hasn't got an authentic clapping noise down. And I swear I hear things when she talks. I don't know if she is just making a bigger range of sounds, but I hear things (at appropriate times) like "hi dad" and "i do it" and "head" and "bad". She just laughs at you if you try to get her to repeat anything.

Did I mention that Julie eats anything? Because I think she's eating a tissue here.



Her early interventionist recommended letting her tear pages out of old magazines. Problem is, she eats them. And I'm afraid she's not going to realize the difference between "old magazines" and "books that we spent good money on."


Julie with Santa's early delivery. See the tiny little book her right hand is on? It's a switch that switches between 2 modes: a music mode and a learning mode. THIS THING IS ALL OF THEIR FAVORITE TOY ON THE WHOLE THING. It lights up and talks when you switch between modes. 90% of what we hear coming from this thing is "Musical Playground. Learning Playground. Musical Playground. Learning. Musical. Learning. Musical Playground.


Julie looking awfully big.


Becca grinds her teeth. Oh, it pains me to listen to. I don't know how to get her to stop.

She still really likes to eat/lick hair, too.


Becca has started pulling up. The first thing I saw her pull up on was this LeapFrog table that Santa had to drop off early. Then I saw her pull up on the Great Wall tonight for the first time.


Showing off her new reindeer bib.


I got the Baby Einstein "Baby's First Signs" DVD from the library, and am glad I didn't spend money on it. The girls just won't watch tv. They'd watch for a few seconds, but toys were much more entertaining. I guess I should be happy that they don't like tv. Just thought sign language would help them feel a little less frustrated. We'll try again in another month or two.

We took the girls out to dinner on Saturday night. It gets a little easier every time, and I actually had fun. We took them to McAllister's Deli for dinner, and fed them first. They did well - were intensely interested in EVERYTHING, but they ate. We tried to give them some toys to distract them while we ate, but those ended up on the floor in, literally, about 20 seconds. So we went with cheap default toys - - straws. And only had to pick up ~ 6 off the floor when we left. Of course, Emma's last 3 straws all went down within about 5 seconds of each other. That's when we had to call it quits on the straws.

Some pictures from our night on the town:






"Where's that straw I just dropped?"



Mmmm, table. There's nothing that doesn't go in my mouth!



When we got home, everyone was out. This is how we define a successful evening.


Becca and Julie were sharing a blanket.



Emma has totally transitioned to the Infant Room (she graduated from the Newborn Room) at daycare. On Wednesday, when she was still transitioning, we picked her up in the afternoon and the teacher in the Infant Room said, "Oh, and they wanted to know if you could send her in with shoes tomorrow. She keeps losing her footing when she's trying to climb." I probably turned bright red because the first thing that went through my head was, "Uh, my kids don't have shoes." That's right. Because we're so lazy, they always just wear socks. They don't walk outside, and I try to get the socks with the traction stuff on the bottom. But then their socks don't stay on... Anyhow, we did manage to find a couple of pairs that I had forgotten about.

Emma's new kicks:


So, Emma has gotten lazy with the holding-her-own bottle thing, and has adopted what we like to call the Homer Simpson hold, where she rests it on her belly.


Who said baby proofing had to taste bad?



Playing with tupperware.


"Oh, hi! We're not doing anything!"


Greg and I took Thursday off from work to do some shopping after our conference call with Santa. (Since the girls can't write letters yet, we promised to make a call on their behalf.) We bought A LOT of baby shoes while we were out enjoying the cold weather.

This is my favorite pic from our day off, at Starbucks at the end of the day, regrouping before going to pick up the girls.


This past weekend was a bit of a blur, really. We got a couple of ornaments on the tree, and that's really about it. Didn't get to update my December Daily album like I was hoping to, but I did get some baking done (all to be given away).

My baking helpers:


Greg decorated the tree with Becca and Emma....


...while Dusty, Julie, and I slept on the couch.


My sinuses have been driving me crazy for over a month now. I went through a while where I just could not breathe through my nose. I'm just congested and my ears clog and I've got lots of sinus pressure. It's not really in my chest (no, that's the asthma) - all in my head. I also think I had an infected cyst in my sinuses (trust me, you don't want to know why I think that). I have got a doctor's appointment tomorrow, but I'm not sure if there's much they can do for me. I was going to break down and go today, but I felt a little better, got to work late this morning, forgot to drive separately, and had this appointment scheduled for Tuesday for a while.

And then daycare calls this afternoon. "Emma's got a 100.8 fever." "Probably just teething. We'll keep an eye on her." So we pick her up at the end of the day, get home, eat dinner, and everything seems fine, Up until ~7:30 when she suddenly gets really whiny and doesn't want to do anything. Yeah, 103.0 Sigh. So she'll most likely be home tomorrow. And I'll most likely miss my dr appointment (Greg's already taking the morning off to take Becca to the eye dr for a follow up). And this sinus mess will drag on...