Beach Days

The weather has continued to be quite hot here in the mountains and we've been trying to take advantage of it while it lasts (which can't be much longer since it's almost October). So, we had picnics on the beach at a lake with friends on Friday evening and this evening. Kate and Maya even crawled around in the water and were pretty happy about it despite the kind of chilly water temps. The girls had a great time "playing" with their friends and stealing everyone's food. I wish we had done more of the beach thing this summer, but it was too hot and sunny during the day and the girls were going to bed too early for us to do anything in the cool of the evening. We've successfully pushed their bedtime to 8 PM, so we actually have time to do stuff in the evenings now.

Here's Maya trying out her new teeth.


Close up of Kate


All four of us with the lake in the background

Cuteness

The girls are doing all sorts of cute new things these days.

-Kate likes putting things on her head and then giving me a goofy grin that seems to mean "look at me, I'm so silly". I know she's copying me because sometimes I'll put something goofy on my head like a book or a sock and pretend to be preening and say "how do you like my beautiful hat".

-Kate loves books these days and is frequently found deep in concentration trying to open the book to look at the page. She has the right technique - using both thumbs to open the book, but still isn't quite coordinated enough to get it right all the time. But, when she does, she's in heaven.

-Yesterday we were playing on a jungle gym in a local park and I was sitting on one side of a play tunnel and Josh was on the other side with Maya and Kate. Maya was looking down the tunnel and was kind of apprehensive about venturing into it until she looked up and saw me. She let out a loud "MAMA!" and crawled at full speed into my arms. Very sweet!

Maya breaking the rules by standing in the tub...


Kate and Josh reading a book


Three babies in a restaurant. We left a big mess and a big tip.

M is for Maya and Molars!

Our babies are quite possibly the most precocious teethers ever - Maya's first two molars broke through today at the ripe young age of not quite 11 months - and an adjusted age that is 9.5 months. It doesn't even seem possible that my baby is now the proud owner of 10 brand new teeth. She's been doing a lot of exploring of her newfound chompers and can frequently be found with her finger in her mouth pressing on the molars. I don't blame her, it must be confusing and exciting to wake up one morning and discover two new and giant teeth sprouted overnight. This means that Kate should have molars by her first birthday as she seems about a month behind Maya in the teething department.

The girls have been doing so well on the eating and napping front. I am sometimes flabbergasted at how much the girls will eat if I give them something they are really into. I made a beef stew yesterday and Maya was literally shovelling the food in double fisted while making growling sounds. Between the four of us we ate 2 pounds of stewing beef, 1 pound of potatoes and several carrots and celery sticks in two meals. And, a lot of that was consumed by our ravenous babies...

Video, take II

I decided to post the vidoe on Vimeo instead of Youtube because the Youtube security settings are just too annoying. So, here it is.

Here's a new video of Maya talking. I'm posting it on Youtube because the resolution is so much better than when I upload it to the blog directly.

Let me know if you can't view the video for any reason - I'm new to Youtube and am still playing around with the privacy settings.

Click here to view video...

The Swine Flu has left the building

Thank goodness I think Josh has finally sucessfully fought off the flu and is on the mend. And, based on conversations with other moms in our area whoses babies had the flu (it's been going around Truckee), I think that Kate and Maya actually had it last weekend, too. I guess the babies who have had it haven't gotten as sick as the adults are getting. That's a good thing.

Not only have we vanquished the swine flu, I also found both my camera battery charger and our lost video camera. So, we're back in business.

After noticing that Maya's been trying to pick up the dog water bowl and drink the water, I thought it was time for her to practice with a real, non-sippy cup. She thinks it's the coolest thing ever - even if it brings the levels of dinner-time messiness to record heights.

And, both Kate and Maya love pulling our CDs out of the shelf. It's one of the first things they do every morning.

Finally a video...

And we don't even eat pork...

Josh has gotten knocked out by the "nothing to worry about, it's just a mild flu" swine flu with high fevers, chills, body aches and all the other typical flu symptoms. He's been sick for five days already and is still running a high fever and still feeling like crap.

I'm not actually sick with the flu (knock on wood), but I've been sick with worry over whether Kate and Maya are going to come down with the version of the flu that Josh has. It's not clear because it's possible that they already had the flu over last weekend when they had a fever, runny noses and trouble sleeping. But, what they had was so mild compared to what Josh has that it's hard to believe it's the same virus. So, we're basically quarantined to the house and waiting and watching to see if the girls or I come down with the flu.

Well, that's been our life for the past week or so. Sorry I don't have any cute pictures. My lame excuse is that my camera batteries are dead and I can't find the charger.

Morning fun