Taming Twins: A Break from Tech

I’ve made lots of tech posts lately, so now its back to the boys.

• They are the cutest mannerless children around. They both walk around as if they have every right to get into every item in their environment. Look interesting? Sure, just walk up to it and take it. They randomly open doors, look inside boxes, dump things out, and grab things and take them places. They have no concept of being polite or whether something belongs to someone. To them, everything belongs to Adam and Zach. But you can’t be mad at them – they’re just so cute when they do it.
• Adam randomly gallops from place to place. Sometimes it is across the living room. Sometimes it is through the house. Sometimes it’s outside. Sometimes it’s Zachary.
• The Raffi infatuation has moved to the next level. Raffi is the first thing Zach asks for when he wakes up, when he gets home, and randomly throughout the day. He carries the empty Raffi DVD case around with him wherever he goes, even to breakfast and the bath. He chews on it like a dog. The only time he is not with his DVD case is when we leave the house. We say “Zachary, can you put Raffi down?” and he throws him to the floor like a piece of trash.
• Adam had a brief infatuation with “bubble”, which was how he referred to a bubble bath mat that he got for Christmas. The idea is that you put the bath mat in the tub and attach it to a hand pump. When you press on the pump, fun bubbles come up from the mat and turn the bath tub into a baby spa. The reality is that the pump sounds like a duck and scares Adam so much that he won’t go near the bath tub when the mat is in it. Outside of the tub, he was completely obsessed with it for about a week. He liked to roll out the mat and sit on it. He liked to push on the pump and listen to the sounds. He liked to drag the pump hose around the house. As long as it was out of the tub “bubble” was a lot of fun.
• They have really good memories and associate words very quickly. They know that the Mac Museum is in the basement and will point to the basement door when I mention it. They know that we have chips and cookies down there and demand a snack when we go to the basement. They know the cat box area is “icky”, “yucky”, “gross”. They know when we are a couple of minutes away from GiGi’s house just by where we are driving.
• Zach doesn’t like when Adam cries. It makes him cry.
• Words like “water”, “milk”, and “please” are getting more clear. Zach can even pronounce “Calliou” better than my father.
• We’ve made it into simple sentences such as “I see you”, “I’ll get you”, “I love [you|Raffi|Mama|Daddy|GiGi|Grapes]”, and “bit him”.
• They repeat and mimc everything. I dropped a bunch of stuff and hollered out “Oh Dear” (which was not what I was going to yell) and Adam immediately copied me and said “Oh Dear” as well. I also like to make noises during the car ride home and listen to the boys repeat them. Sometimes its more interesting than music.
• Speaking of music, the boys still love to dance. Their teachers at school told us that sometimes they are the only ones dancing to music but they always do regardless. We also taught Adam how to cross his hands and do the cowboy move from Gangnam Style. I caught Zach mimicking a Michael Jackson video yesterday too.
• Zachary loves to use exclamations. We often hear him exclaim “WOW!” or “Ooohhhhhh!” or “Woooooaaaaahhhh!”. The look on his face is pure unadulterated delight.
• They play hide and seek in the shower curtain. It’s really funny to watch. They also like to wrestle on the couch and tickle each other on the floor. We always have to watch them to make sure it doesn’t turn into a brawl (which is most times) but until then it’s adorable.
• They trade books at night when we go to bed.
• They share and trade food, just like they are at a lunch table.
• Sometimes they look at each other from across the room and burst out into laughter.

The boys are quickly growing up into their own little people with their own interests, habits, and desires. They plod around from place to place doing what they want to do and stopping to observe and investigate the things that interest them. Sometimes I like to sit and watch in enjoyment at our boys interacting with the world. These are just some of the rewards of being a parent.