Memorial Day at the Beach!

This past weekend we enjoyed our annual Memorial Day weekend tradition of getting together with our college buddies in Virginia Beach. We enjoyed a lovely visit in the comfort of the Hubbards' generous hospitality. While we were there we took the boys to the beach and they absolutely LOVED it! They played in the sand, ran along the shoreline, splashed in the water, and didn't even cry when they got knocked over by a few waves. They really were quite brave. I'm really hoping we can take them back to the beach one more time before the Summer's over.

Blowing kisses & our CSA

Halmoni has taught the boys how to blow kisses when it's time to say bye-bye. It's very cute. Oh, and now they can now walk up and down the front steps without sitting, kneeling, or holding onto anything. They are growing up so fast!

In other news, thanks to the kick-off of our CSA farm share summer season last week, the boys have been eating an interesting assortment of veggies. We got two kinds of lettuce, raddichio, radishes, turnips, parsley, baby bok choy, spring onions, and a dozen fresh eggs. And it's all organic! While these aren't all things we normally keep around the house, I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to fit all these different veggies into our diet so that nothing goes to waste. I've been a sneaky mommy and have taken the oddball greens that I can't figure out what else to do with and mixed them into the boys' daily spaghetti. Yes, I feed them spaghetti every day since it does a marvelous job of disguising the healthy veggies to which they'd otherwise turn up their cute little button noses.

Crackers, carrots, climbing, & car doors

I'm convinced that the boys would subsist solely on Earth's Best Organic Cheddar crackers if I let them. At $2 per 5-oz. box (they can eat one box a day), their addiction can get a little pricey, not to mention that it's not a very well-rounded diet. Well, I'm proud to say that we've been cracker-free for almost a week! Their last cracker was on Monday, and now it's Saturday morning. Instead, I baked some carrot bread and they love it! It took a whole bag of baby carrots, and I added some ground up flax seed and used honey instead of sugar for extra healthiness. They've been eating so much carrot bread that the presents they've been leaving us in their diapers have been bright orange .

This week the boys have started climbing onto the dining table, then doing such wonderful things as shredding napkins and scattering them everywhere. I tell them "no!" and make them get down, but they are very persistent. Also, Caleb's started a new thing where if you call his name or tell him "no" he will lower his head, divert his eyes, and smile slyly while he turns his head and runs away . He will either react this way, or he will feel really bad for what he's done and break out into tears. There's no middle ground with this passionate boy!

By the way, chasing after twin toddlers (who still don't let you sleep through the night) can be very tiring and cause you to do things you ordinarily wouldn't. Like leave car doors wide open in mall parking lots . Yup. The other day the boys and I went to the mall with Megan and while we were in Lord & Taylor, I heard our car's license plate # being announced over the intercom. So I ran out to the parking lot and the rear driver's side door was wide open. Thankfully no one helped themselves to either of our $300 carseats   Now, I have always been extremely vigilant about locking car and house doors, etc., so I was quite devasted and in my shame almost didn't tell Joe what I had done... but I did, and he then admitted to me that he was guilty of doing the same thing in the Wal-Mart parking lot a couple months ago! So that, ladies and gentlemen, is what having twins will do to you! But needless to say, it is SO worth it

One and a half years old!

Words the boys can both say and understand the meaning of: Flower, bye-bye, dog, hat, eye, ball, baby, airplane, book, shower, juice, shell, dad.

Words/phrases the boys understand: Hand, foot, nose, ear, cracker, cookie, milk, horse, Grandpa, Uncle Chris, brother, Caleb, Joshua, Do you love ____?.

Words the boys pretend not to understand: No! Don't go into the street! Come back here!

Words the boys still seem not to understand: Halmoni, Mommy :(

The boys' favorite thing to do nowadays is show that they love something or someone by hugging them or, if it's something difficult to hug (such as an azalea plant) leaning into it and cocking their heads sideways and smiling sweetly. We customarily prompt or respond to such actions by asking them, "Do you love the flowers?" and they will bend even farther over into the flower bush. It's like the farther they bend sideways, the more loudly they proclaim their love. I have no idea where they learned to do this, but they both do it and it's just about the cutest thing I've ever seen! When we ask Joshua "Do you love your brother?" he will rub Caleb's head, then wrap both arms around it and squeeze tightly. We know that Joshua means well, but Caleb is not so fond of this display of affection!

Joshua and Caleb love to play outside. They crave it. One of the first things they do when they wake up in the morning is ask to go "bye-bye". Now that the weather is warmer, we usually go outside twice a day, for a walk either riding in or pushing the wagon, or to play in our yard or Halmoni and Grandpa's yard, or to play with their little friends who live around the corner, or at one of the nearby playgrounds. Even though we have a huge beautiful backyard, their favorite place to hang out is of course the front yard, along the curb. They love watching cars zoom by, people walking their dogs (they always point and say "DOG!"), and planes and helicopters flying overhead.

We're pretty amazed at how the boys are able to associate things that are related but not quite the same. For example, in the boys' minds, any furry animal is a "dog". Any plant is a "flower". The other day, they were very intrigued by an illustration of a baby at the bottom of their yogurt bowl, so I told them it was a "baby". Then later on that afternoon we bumped into a neighborhood friend who was carrying her 6-month-old baby girl. The boys pointed to her and said "baby!" I was surprised that they were able to associate an illustration on a bowl with a real life baby. Their baby brains must be processing a lot more than we usually give them credit for!