Speaking of the Twins...

From first day of school 09 1

I tried so hard to get a cute picture of the two of them....do you KNOW how hard it is to get two 2 year old boys to smile (facing the same direction) at the same time??

Why do I torture myself? I think I just need to take a bunch and then get my dear mother to photshop them for me!!! The first picture is where I'm saying 'smile!' and they are saying 'NO'. Not off to a good start.

From first day of school 09 1

The second picture: notice the mischevious look on Ps face... throwing leaves and being the ham he always is.

From first day of school 09 1

The thrid picture is to trick you... did you notice they switched places? This is because they ran away chasing leaves and I had to threaten them with going home if they didn't sit down and smile. Now JP is throwing leaves.

From first day of school 09 1

In the fourth picture they were actually both smiling, but just as I pressed the button, P burped (their latest skill they are proud of). sigh.... but the final picture was the best one of all....

I decided to play the game their way. Instead of telling them to smile, or say 'cheese' I resorted to telling them to say 'Poop!' and I finally got some smiles.... well sort of. Maybe next year we'll get some better 1st day pictures.

From first day of school 09 1

One of the things I love about the twins

Is how when they want to come inside after being in the backyard for awhile, instead of yelling at me, calling for me, or just plain banging on the door, they stand there side-by-side sweetly pretending to be doorbells, going 'Ding Dong! Ding Dong! Ding Dong!'.

They truly do love sound effects. I think 90% of their language is made up of sound effects. For such a long time, everything they said was an immitation of our intonation. No words, just 'uhhhh' with the correct ups and downs in their voice, so we knew what they were talking about.

We knew they were saying such things like: 'my turn' (me me), '*I'm* being good', 'I didn't do it -HE did it!'....

And the sound effects: a Big anything is 'Hooowaaaah!'. A little anything is a 'baby' (like hooowah tree, baby tree). Trains are 'dootch dootch', cars are 'beep beeps', cats are 'meow', horses are 'neighs', cows are 'moos', etc...

First Day of School

Blogging has been sparse, I know. I had a really hard spring where I was feeling overwhelmed all the time, very very tired and super-antisocial. I took the first two months of summer to relax, rest and remember the joy that I can find in the midst of daily life with my crazy little family.

I'm feeling much better now, remembering to live one day at a time.

I can hardly believe it, but I'm 31 weeks pregnant already, and we've started school again for the next year. I plan to take a few weeks off when the baby comes, so we started early.

Yesterday was the first day.

Grade 4 for Elizabeth, Grade 1 for Z, and my own preschool class of 3 monkeys.

Here are a few pictures. We had fun at the park, soaking in the sunshine, and I tried in vain to get all 5 kids looking at me and smiling at the same time:

From first day of school 09 1

From first day of school 09 1

From first day of school 09 1