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!!!

Testing, testing...

I have finally gotten a new fancy phone in honour of starting work in a few weeks so this is a test post of the new onboard camera and of the blogger app. We bought a new collapsible high chair in my ongoing quest to regain floor space, it's the red one!

Home At Last

Well, it is true. Sane people should probably not try to camp for 10 days with 1 year old twins (and a 5 year old and a rather large dog). People who have long ago (say a year...) lost their sanity should go ahead and do it, since they have nothing to lose! It was wonderfully exciting to hit the road and see new terrain these last 10 days, and it was a very special trip of firsts for Brendan. Among the highlights were the sort of memories that great nostalgic movies are made out of like learning to ride your bike without the training wheels (he's a very quick learner!), first rescue pet (Brendan found an injured dragon fly and "nursed it back to health" - it "flew away" on the third day after Brendan found it) and those first tastes of freedom (there was a swing set within sight of our first campsite that we let him go to if he returned at a specified time on his watch - he did beautifully, very law abiding, this kid). We roasted marshmallows on the fire, and weiners, played on the beach for hours (we were lucky enough to have been able to reserve campsites 100 feet from the beach at both campgrounds), read bedtime stories beside the campfire and stayed up late. Doesn't it sound so idyllic?!

Our only real downer of the trip was the constantly impending rain. For essentially the entire trip the weather was in a state of "will it or wont it". As a result we were constantly setting up outside for lunch; high chairs, cooler, food, water and then deciding two hours later that it was about to start raining so we'd put it all away again. After repetition number 100, that got old, but it was very, er, cramped in the trailer so trying to all cram in there was hardly a better option. We found some creative solutions to our space issue; instead of the bulky double stroller, we turned our side by side bike trailer into a multipurpose stroller, bike trailer, place to lie down and have a bottle, luggage carrier combo. We tried a variety of sleeping arrangements and eventually slept with Blaze tucked under the main bed (the folded down sofa), Brendan in the upper bunk, one baby in a playpen and one baby under the kitchen table with a gate across the two benches to enclose that area. Trying to attend to that crying baby in the middle of the night required some fairly advanced gymnastics, but believe it or not it was preferable to the gymnastics required to squeeze around the second playpen when it was set up. It also meant you could open the door to the bathroom. Yay for portapotties! Outside we set up two tents; one for Brendan to play in with his toys and another for the babies to play in. The baby tent essentially worked as a giant mosquito proof playpen and worked amazingly. We did occasionally let the babies out to explore on their own, but they got so filthy so quickly, and ingested so many pine cones that it hardly seemed worth it.

Harrison grew his first top tooth a few days into the trip and finally had the second top tooth poke through this morning. That makes four teeth for each of them now! Heidi is sporting quite a gap, which just adds to her not-so intellectual look. (:

The twins had some not bad nights of sleep and a some fairly horrible nights, thanks I think in large part to those teeth (Heidi is working on the upper tooth, left of the middle pair). Naps were rough too... but enough complaining!

We left at 4 am, in a desperate attempt to find a way to make driving to Northern Ontario more manageable. We stopped once for an hour to feed the babies breakfast in the camper around 7 am near Port Perry and then didn`t have to stop again until we arrived at Marten River Provincial Park (45 minutes north of North Bay) about 11:30. Northern Ontario before noon! We may leave at 4 am everywhere we go! Martin River is on the southern border of the Temagami area; very pretty, with lots of Eastern White Pine, and very reminiscent of Algonquin or Killarney. We did a great hike on our third day here through the forest to a 300 year old pine. I had bought a new camera (yeah for Shoppers Optimum Points) with a fancy panorama feature that I made good use of with all these tall, tall trees, and wide forest vistas. We stayed here for 4 nights and then headed onto Ivanhoe Lake Provincial Park for another 4 nights. This was a full days drive north through Timmins through all sorts of places I've always heard of like New Liskeard, Kirkland Lake (where Rob's grandfather lived for a while) and Matheson (where my grandfather worked for a while) so that was very cool. The scenery was nothing like what we expected. Around New Liskeard it was positively prarie-like, and the pictureasque Canadian Shield abruptly ended north of Temagami and didn't start again until we were driving home. All the areas north were full of white Silver Birch forests, and Ivanhoe Lake itself was full of sand dunes, moss and lichen. So, we've had to adjust our mental picture of Northern Ontario... isn't that what travel is all about! Sadly, we weren't able to connect with our cousins in Timmins, they had a wedding to attend, but we kept ourselves busy with bike rides, hikes and more trips to the beach. We even did made bannock on the fire (see picture) in a ranger led program. Finally, it was time to head home. We'd had some hope that we might be able to cover the distance in one day, but realized that was both unrealistic and inhumane to the poor kids in the backseat (especially Blaze), so we stopped at an awesome KOA in Parry Sound, that as you can judge from the previous post almost had us excited to stay on the road an extra day. Sadly, amusement parks are less amusing in the rain, so we drove over to Huntsville to ride their Steam Train instead for the twins birthday, and then hit the highway for home. I have to say, it was a wonderful trip, but by the home stretch I don't think a single one of the 6 of us wanted to be in that truck one minute more.

Fianlly about 10 oclock last night we made it Home Sweet Home. Hallelujah.

Change of plans

Change of plans- rough night and heavy rain threatening, I think we'll make it home tonight. This #&%$ rain has been a defining feature of this trip. The new plan is to take the babies on their first steam train ride for their birthday.

Happy birthday!

Very quick update - we're not home yet... We made it to Parry Sound tonight on our way home from Timmins and are settled in at a very nice KOA (with free wifi no less! ). However, instead of making the twins sit in the truck for 5 hours to celebrate their birthday we've decided to stay another day and take them to Santa's Village tomorrow. Brendan may also enjoy himself. (: Rob says he always wanted to go and I feel guilty that we didn't buy the twins any presents, so we'll be home soon (we think) and again (its midnight now ) Happy Birthday to my Happy Babies!

Happy Olympics!

In honour of the 30th Olympiad, the twins went to bed last night dressed in their most appropriate Olympic PJs (thanks Aunti Ali, we hope you're surviving the traffic over there!). They were clearly inspirational. Heidi started the Olympics off with a bang, sprouting her top two teeth yesterday! How's that for higher, faster, stronger?!

Home, for a little while...

We made it home from our week following Alison around on Sunday night. Sadly, she was supposed to fly home late, but her flight was cancelled and rerouted through Glasgow. We got a message from her on Monday morning saying she was hoping to get on a flight to London soon. Argh, the joys of air travel. Speaking of air travel; we've booked our first family vacation; we'll be going to DisneyWorld in Florida in late October/early November. I've been in planning heaven for months now, and will be up until the moment we leave I'm sure. It's just the kind of place that lends itself to that! I couldn't help myself (I'm a bit of a Disney geek) yesterday morning; Brendan was looking quizically at my Figment hologram cup in the bathroom and finally asked "how does it keep changing?". I'm usually a little obsessive with giving him factual, scientific answers, but this time I said "It's from DisneyWorld; it's magic".

The twins and Brendan all seemed happy enough to be home. Small changes have happened since we were home last though. Harrison is tall enough now to be able to reach almost everything on our black coffee table and the couch. This has created quite a problem for Brendan, as this was the final refuge for his toys in the living room. We've now had to put up a baby gate across the end of the hall so he can play with his toys in the hall outside the bedrooms while the babies wander around in the living room. The only problem with this set up is that he needs a stool on either side to step over. Heidi keeps stealing the stool on the living room side and wandering off with it (she pushes it along the hardwood like a walker), thus stranding Brendan in the hall. Poor guy. He really has been very patient with these little siblings of his.

Heidi and Harrison are holding strong at two teeth each, although they are each literally leaving a trail of drool wherever they go, so they may sprout the top ones soon. Harrison has switched from commando crawling to crawling on all fours, and is much quicker now. I didn't think "quicker" was possible with these two, and yet, they keep surprising me!

We tried to have a lovely family moment in the backyard yesterday. I felt gearing up all the kids to drive to the playground was too much work, so I set up our littlesplash pool in the back yard instead. This was not as quick a task as I had imagined. Instead of just running the hose for a few minutes there were a few obstacles; the pool had to be cleaned out of the sand that had been deposited in it (blame the 5 year old whos sand box is beside it (: ), splash had to be played with the water obsessed Border Collie, 3 buckets of warm water had to be brought out once I remembered the daughter is sensitive to cold water etc. Then we were ready. We changed 3 children into bathing suits, lathered 3 children in sunblock, carried Heidi and Harrison outside, placed them in the pool with a pile of toys, cracked a cold beer and commenced relaxing... Within 3 minutes Harrison was splashing so much that both Brendan and Heidi had had enough and bailed. A rearrangement of twins (so that Harrison's feet were facing away from Heidi) solved the problem for a full 6 minutes. It was a lovely 6 minutes. Then Heidi and Harrison both turned and crawled out of the pool (I didn't know they could do that?!). In opposite directions. Heidi headed straight for the garage. While I was retrieving her, Harrison headed for the sand box and ate a leaf. While I was attempting to extract it, Heidi succeeded in making it into the garage and we called the whole thing off.

I had an epiphany though. I had begun to feel crazy for camping/cottaging/visiting so much. What I realized though, is that life on the road is chaos, yes, but it's the same chaos as it is at home, only with prettier scenery. (:

On that note, we head off next Tuesday for a 10 day camping trip to Temagami and Timmins (Northern Ontario). Should be fun!! Hahaha. We'll be arriving home on the twins first birthday (the 9th) and I should have some stories to fill out their first year!

A quick update...

Just taking advantage of a quiet moment in Ripley to update things.

Shockingly we have had no major milestones this week. In fact, Harrison has apparently decided that trying to stand without holding on was a little risky, even for him and has generally stopped. He bumped his head a few hundred times (it seemed) in that first week that he was trying to let go, so he may have decided to master standing holding on before moving on to the next stage. Practical boy.

Heidi did sprout a second tooth, so she and her brother now each have their two bottom chompers. She has had a ball at Mimi and Papa's place pacing from one end of the house to the other. At their much larger house this takes considerably longer than the circuit at home in Lonsdale and is therefore much more interesting. There are also lots more people to stop and grin at, which also makes it much more interesting.

We were a little overwhelmed at the prospect of babyproofing Mimi and Papa's substantial sized house initially (closing interior doors is not an option when its 150 degrees Celsius outside) what with all the new "fun" cords, outlets, treasured momentos and fine silverware within reach. As it turns out, the twins have actually been very good, and tend to leave everything alone (choosing instead just to wander around in the vast acreage) with one small exception. Well, one large, heavy exception, technically. I'm a little fuzzy on the details since I was still upstairs sleeping but supposedly Harrison got into a bit of a donnybrook with the coffee table; words were exchanged, things got physical and the coffeetable jumped on top of Harrison and gave him a bloody nose! Harrison shook it off bravely and the coffee table has been placed on probation in the hall ever since. Otherwise, everything's gone well.

We're having a lovely visit with Alison, who came home to meet the twins and our niece Ellie and introduce us to her boyfriend Adam. We're all very starstruck, since he's a specialist cameraman for our favourite TV show Top Gear and regularly tells casual stories about Tom Cruise and filming in the Amazon and the like. He's actually a very nice, very low key guy and has fit in beautifully with the whole family. And when I say the whole family, I mean it. They spent a few days in Lonsdale/Kingston meeting everyone Ali's ever known there, then spent 3 days at the cottage sharing living quarters with 6 other adults, 3 babies and two dogs. Talk about getting up close and personal. We had a great time celebrating Tara's 25th birthday with fancy champagne from the UK and a custom made "Queen Tara" crown cake. Then it was on to Ripley for 4 days to meet most of the aunts, uncles, cousins and friends here. They're off now for 2 very well deserved days of relaxation in Niagara on the Lake. We've spent the entire week in the water; either at the pool, at the dock or at the beach and are feeling very, very summery.

We're due home on Sunday sometime, and we'll have a whole week at home (gasp!) to catch up on laundry and messages, download photos and meet our newest neighbour. Our next door neighbours Pat and Kristin had a baby boy a few days ago, so Heidi and Harrison will have a new playmate!! Lots of fun!

11 Month Photo

As promised this morning here is the babies 11 month photo.

Another change we have noticed is that suddenly the twins have begun to play together. Heidi no longer cries the moment Harrison comes close, in fact, she tolerates him leaning on her fairly stoically lately! It's lovely to see them play together!

Home From The Cottage

Well, we are home from a beautiful week at the cottage with another pile of milestones to report on. Now that each of the twins have discovered this "moving" thing, they've really just been going crazy trying to master new things. Early in the week Heidi figured out how to sit up on her own. This was huge, as it meant that she could now go from crawling around the house to sitting still. This meant she didn't have to just continue to crawl, fussing quietly if she got tired. Which is not to say it was a relaxing first few days at the cottage. Oh no. Baby proofing the cottage was something we had completely forgotten about and our twins found every nook and cranny of trouble they could. Heidi figured out how to bust through the screen door by bashing her head against it repeatedly, Harrison found the power cords behind the TV, Heidi figured out how to wedge herself under tables, between the fridge and cupboards, Harrison found every sharp corner he could to bang his head on. It was a gong show.

Harrison spent the week mastering pull to stand. He now stands almost all the time. He will attempt to pull up on anything, including his sister, and has now switched places with Heidi as the fussypants in the family if he can't find somewhere to stand up. Once he could stand he immediately has started to work on cruising along in standing. He can still only manage a couple of steps along the couch, but it won't be long...

Oh wait. In further news, on Sunday Harrison learned to stand without holding on. His personal best is still only a few seconds, but he spends his every waking moment practicing, so first steps are not far away. Rob's sister comes home from England to meet the twins this week so maybe he will save them for her visit!

Not to be outdone, Heidi has also been trying to pull to stand. She is much less steady, but I did get her caught on film yesterday as we were trying to unpack the car. She is obsessed with barriers. In a bad way. She has the run of the upstairs except for two closed doors (our bedroom and the bathroom - she wedged behind the toilet once, which with an aim-challenged 5 year old boy in the house is just gross) and a gate at the top of the stairs. So she spends most of her time reaching through the gate, trying desperately to get to the other side, or banging her little hand on the closed doors. Nobody says No to this girl, she figures.

In other milestone news (see I told you it's a pile of milestones), Heidi got her first tooth this weekend, and Harrison sprouted his second!

Thank goodness for this blog (which I've been told, and I am counting heavily on, that you can turn easily into a book) because it's the only way I can keep up with recording all these big moments.

In terms of our actual week at the cottage, the weather was mostly beautiful with only a few little bits of rain. The lake is 80 degrees, and Brendan lived in it. He really is a daredevil and a stunt man. He has a great time making up "tricks", and his favourite one this week was "watch me pretend to walk off the dock" (where he literally pretends to be chatting and looking the other way while he walks off the end of the dock - with his floatie on and then swims back around to the ladder and starts again). Rob pulled the surfboard out and it was resting up on a stump at the beach. At one point I was sitting with the babies, who were splashing in the shallows and I suddenly noticed that Brendan had pulled the surfboard out by himself, paddled it out a little, hopped up, knelt on top (excellent surfing form - where has he seen this??) and was paddling off down the lake. Ahhh! Now I know where grey hair comes from!

On Thursday our gang of high school friends arrived and we had a fabulous weekend full of kids, laughs and a few cold beverages. It was pefect. It takes really, really good friends to enjoy 6 adults and 6 kids together in one tiny cottage but we had a ball and even managed to fit in a few quiet moments on the dock. Mmmm.

The twins turned 11 months yesterday, and I will get their Paddington picture taken and posted as soon as I can. Heidi is napping and Harrison is out getting groceries with Dad. We tend to divide and conquer for all errands, although it always seems strange to be out with one baby. Who knew we'd get to a time when it would be strange to only tote one infant around?! I'm pretty sure the rest of the world thinks that's normal behaviour. Ah well, I've never been very good at normal behaviour... (:

Summer Vacation

Well, it's on! Summer vacation! Brendan finished school with much fanfare from us, but relatively little from him. We thought "Oh good, he must just really like school" but it turned out the idea of "school's out" is just a bit early for a kindergartener since we woke up bright and early after the last day of school, and asked "is this a school day?". He and Dad had a very cute celebration after the last night of school sleeping out in a tent in the back yard. I think it was the best night's sleep Rob has had in a while. He's campaigning to do it again soon!

The twins have not dissapointed this week in their rapid progression of milestones. Harrison has learned how to pull to stand (!) and Bob and Gail (who were down babysitting this weekend while we went 4 wheeling for Canada Day) said Heidi even pulled to stand once. Harrison is pulling to stand on a few select items, not everything yet. The couch seems to be just the right size, as is the 18 inch high piece of plywood that we had put across Brendan's door. It's amazing how different babyproofing is this time around now that there is a slightly possessive 5 year old and his plethora of toys to consider. Brendan and I face off regularly in what I like to call the "Lego Wars". Lego is currently banned from the main floor, but mysteriously keeps appearing in his room anyways. The final item that is just the right size for Harrison to pull to stand on is, unfortunately, his sister. She doesn't like this. At all.

Keeping up with these twins moving in oppposite directions is every bit the nightmare I had imagined. I have no doubt that we will survive, but I also have no doubt my gray hair is accumulating at record speed. The other day we found Harrison stuck halfway across the plywood barrier, dangling, after he had pulled to stand on it, leaned forward in his desperate desire to get in at all those fun new toys and pitched over it like a too short teeter totter. I don't think I'm doing the mental image justice. Rob also found Heidi recently wedged behind the toilet, so now the bathroom door has to stay closed at all costs. Sigh.

No teeth yet for Heidi, still just the one for Harrison, but man is it sharp!

The milestone I would very much like Heidi to master is sitting up on her own. We finally discovered the reason she has been crawling from room to room to room quietly fussing for the last two weeks is that she doesn't know how to stop crawling and sit to rest. She can roll onto her back but that's not the position she would most like. So now she crawls for a while, but when she starts to fuss we sit her up and she's happy as a clam. We're just happy to have figured that mystery out!

So, we're in summer vacation mode now, and heading up to the cottage for a week of R & R. Well, sort of. We're taking the kids. So it probably won't involve much R or R... But it will be lovely scenery! Ha ha, we'll check in when we get back, Happy Canada Day everyone!

Nancy

We Survived Camping!

Well, we're back from our first camping trip of the season and I can happily report that all the children and all the adults survived! It was not what one would call a relaxing getaway, but it was lots of fun, and we spent some quality time with our friends Matt, Melissa and BLL (Bud Light Lime) so what more can you ask?!

We tackled the problem of mobile twins by erecting a small tent with a mostly mesh roof as soon as we arrived at our site, tossing a rubbermaid full of baby toys into it and then planting the babies in there. It sort of worked. Heidi doesn't like it when Harrison touches her so there was a decent amount of fussing, but that is still better than chasing her from trying to crawl under the truck (which is what happened in the 2 and half minutes between when we took down the tent and left at the end of the weekend). She is very, very mobile. Next time we may have to set up two tents.

We got to go to the beach (also tricky, thank goodness Brendan had Peyton (age 4) to play with and build roads since we were all hands on deck trying to keep two babies from eating sand, rocks and everything else they could find in the shallows), go on two hikes (one pushing the twins in the bike trailer, stroller style and one with each of us carrying one in a front carrier) and go to the nature centre where I had to try to explain the concept of taxidermy to Peyton and Brendan. All in all a great weekend. It took 5 full days of packing to prepare, but I'd do it again!

Saturday, Harrison continued his epic week of milestones.

After 10 and a half long months... ladies and gentlemen... we have a tooth!!!

One might think that after this long (they've been clearly teething since 4 months old) that the twins would wake up one morning with a full mouth of teeth, but no, Saturday morning, while I was literally in the middle of telling Melissa that they still had no teeth, I looked, and lo and behold there was the tiny jagged top of a bottom tooth. Talk about making Mom look like an idiot (although, if that's all it takes, I will go on record that they don't sleep through the night and hope they do their best to prove me wrong tonight(: ).

Day 4 crawling

Day 4 crawling and already the gates need to go up. Yesterday Heidi could crawl 5 to 10 feet. Today we put her down in the living room and she crawled into the dining room, then kitchen then to the top of the stairs. Oi!

Holy Milestones, Batman!!

Wow, I don't know what Rob's been putting in the twins cereal this week, but today is another day of milestones. Apparently learning to crawl is not enough for one week.

At 4 am, Harrison woke up with a blood curdling scream, even louder than his usual "I've just woken up a bit peckish, mother" scream. I ran in and discovered him in his crib sitting up, looking particularly disoriented. I don't think he knew how he got there, or how to lie down. Rob says he's done it several times again this morning. I'm not surprised he learned to sit up first; he's been working on his ab crunches for months and months. He's also very good at holding his head up when he falls backwards, so now he's really got some mobility and freedom!

Heidi, not to be outdone by Harrison fitting two firsts into one week, started this morning to make driving noises when she drives her little yellow car and Brendan's new car carrier truck. I thought she was just blowing raspberries (this she's been practicing at each meal time for a few weeks), but it sounds slightly different and she only does it when she pushes the vehicle and stops when she drops it. It seems she's been watching her brother!

She's also watching Blaze with adoration and fascination. She's been babbling dada and mama for ages but not at us specifically (she also seems to say blah blah blah a lot when I'm around, but I tell myself I'm imagining that). But I think her first word is going to be dog (or some babyfied version thereof). She is absolutely transfixed when he walks into the room and tries very hard to say something when she sees him, but nothing is coming out consistantly yet. First word watch is on...

They've also started to pay much more attention to each other the last few weeks. As I write Harrison is chewing on the bow on the back of Heidi's dress. They crawl towards each other, they watch each other a lot and making one laugh makes them both laugh. That's my favourite twin thing so far (: They do a maddeningly large amount of handing food back and forth at meal time, we're going to have to start seperating them. I should qualify that, since you're probably thinking "why seperate them, that's so cute!!". The problem is that Heidi hands everything to Harrison and then cries when he takes it, and that Harrison throws everything he is handed very purposefully over the side of the tray. The only one who wins is Blaze, who now gets called in after every meal for "clean up". His aged canine eyesight struggles a little to find all the cheerios on our new kitchen floor, whose colour we specifically chose to hide dirt. Oops. Sorry, Blaze!

Happy birthday Brendan

A wonderful birthday for Brendan. The kids had a great time (but hot) at their bike ride, bouncy castle, t shirt decorating station and hot dog lunch. After it was all done I asked Brendan what his favorite part was - "the presents"! Sigh.

The twins worked hard on a special present and both finally figured out how to... crawl!! On the same day! Very weird. It's been a tiring day chasing Harrison off of electrical cords ( his new favorite toy) and listening to the sound of machine gun fire from Brendans new favourite toy (an army tank).