Harrison Takes His First Steps!!

Harrison took his first steps on Friday morning, and is sooo proud! I don't think I've ever seen him grin quite as wide as he does when he's walking. He took his first single step for me on Thursday night, and I felt awful that Rob was at firefighting and didn't see it. In a show of beautiful symmetry however, he took his first series of steps the next morning for Rob while I was upstairs sleeping. He's repeated the performance several times, and manages about 5 or 6 steps each time. Heidi, previously totally uninterested in any sort of walking activity is now trying as hard as she can to replicate her twin brother and will likely take her steps any day now. She is trying to walk on tip toe though, so that could be a little more challenging. Her obsession is sitting. She moves around the house going from one seat to another. When she arrives she sits for a moment, looks around, smiles, and then pushes on to the next seat. Her favourite seat these days is a Tow Mater push car that Harrison likes to hold on to and walk. When he's done, she crawls over, climbs up onto the seat side saddle and swings her feet happily.

It's been a week/3 days full of milestones! Moments before I sat down to write this Harrison said his first word! No. Same as Brendan's first word, apparently I raise instictively oppositional children. He's been repeating it (in very situationally appropriate ways) as I attempt to write this blog entry. I told Rob just now when he came in and Rob said "oh yeah, he's been saying that a lot lately". In a similar anticlimactic presentation, I suppose this is a good time to declare Heidi's first word; Dadadad. She has been saying it for about a month now in a wide variety of situations; when Rob comes home, when she sees Blaze, when she's playing with her Cheerios, so we'd been reluctant to call it a clear first word. However, she has begun to become a little more specific lately, and Rob always gets Dadad, and Blaze always gets Dad, which sounds an awful lot like Dog when she says it to Blaze. The Cheerios still get Dadad too, but lets not be too picky!

On Friday, the twins also had their 1 year checkup. Heidi is 18 pounds, 11 ounces and Harrison is a whopping 22 pounds 8 ounces. Despite eating better than her brother at every meal, Heidi continues to skip along at the 6th percentile for weight. She's only just barely on the growth charts but absolutely consistant. As the doctor so eloquently put it "I think she's just going to be small". Wee Heidi. Her head, however, continues to be above average. For the third checkup in a row, her noggin is at the 75th percentile for size. She must be brilliant. If Heidi's head is big Harrsions's is massive. At his last checkup his cranium was tipping the scales at levels the put him just over the 95th percentile. That's the top of the graph! This time it's even farther above the curve leading this proud mama to declare he has the largest head, of any child, ever. And that's supported with statistics. For reference Brendan's head was also freakishly large - 90th percentile. Since he was 10 months old, Brendan's baseball cap has fit me. Snugly, but fit me. So I guess that means my genetic code for males selects for both giant heads and stubborn personalities. Harrison's length is right at the 50th percentile, and his weight is right around the 40th, so he's not extreme in all ways! Just because I'm on a role comparing numbers, Brendan was 19 pounds 3 ounces at his first birthday - right between the two twins. Interesting!

It's felt like a big week; we hosted the twins first birthday party yesterday with friends and neighbours. It was a fairly low key event - the standard Lock backyard pool party we do regularly with extra helium balloons and extravagant murals by Brendan on the windows. We did have a bouncy castle and some "TwinOlympic" events and lots of kids running around. How life has changed! 5 years ago Brendan was the only baby around and yesterday we had baby neighbours Micheal, Jeff, Sean, and little friends Reid, Colton, Callum, Owen and Will. Forget physiotherapy, Rob and I need to open a day care!

Another huge change this week is going to seem very anticlimactic to everyone but me. After hours of research (not an exageration) I discovered that it is possible to fit 3 car seats across in a Corolla. I thought I had exhausted this topic before the babies were born, and again when Brendan grew big enough for a backless booster (about 6 months ago), but after buying 3 different boosters and having to return them because they didn't fit I gave up. Well, if at first you don't succeed... I spare you, mercifully, the full details, but long story short we can now stuff all three kids stuffed into the Corolla when we need to. I'm thrilled to not have to bring the gigantic truck everywhere we go. Rob not so much. Blaze also not so much, since he hasn't a snowballs chance in... uh, Arizona, of fitting in the backseat with the rest of the brood. We also could never fit a weekends worth of stuff for all of us in the trunk, especially now that we've gotten used to the luxury of entire truck bed worth of gear. But at least we now have a choice of vehicles when we drive into town for errands or Kingston for appointments and I'm not stranded at home if Rob has taken the truck to a fire call.

We had a wonderful neighbourhood birthday party for Rob last weekend. Our crazy neighbour Roslyn had planned a Hillbilly Marathon, complete with costumes and Mr. Clean lemon punch in a wash bucket. Everyone dutifully attempted to run the 5 kilometer loop around Lonsdale. Attempted is the operative word however, as it was a very hot day, and there are several obscenely large hills on the route. Several of the neighbours took it quite seriously however, stopping only once for beer and a swim at our place and were quite demoralized to be beat by an 11 year old who joined us on a whim for the run. Aging sucks.

The fun continues this week; we're off for two nights camping with my brother and his family; Brendan is over the moon - he absolutely adores "Widgee" and Rowan. We'll be at Silent Lake, near Bancroft, a new park for us, so we're excited. That marks the beginning of the end however, as it's the last camping trip we have planned for the year. We're home on Wednesday, and then on Saturday I leave for a vacation to Las Vegas. Almost 7 days of childless time (I'm going with 3 other neighbourhood girls), I may do nothing but sleep. Rob is totally unfazed by his week of non-stop parenting though - I don't know how he does it - father of the year. After that, the party is over; Brendan starts school the Wednesday following and Rob and I start work the same day. The end of an era. It may also be the end of the blog, I can't imagine how we're going to have time to do anything; we'll see though. In the meantime, enjoy the sunshine and wish Rob luck next week!!!