The babies have been doing really well lately. Well, they have been doing well other than the crazy week where they were getting new teeth. They have the four on top and 4 on bottom in front and most or all of their first set of molars. Teething has always been miserable, but now they are getting the sharp ones in front-ish.
This is the first time they have had a fever and been so angry through the entire process. It was a rough week. Once the teeth started to escape, the babies started feeling a lot better. They each have almost 14 teeth now. I haven't done a final tally because I'm too smart to stick my finger in to a baby's razor sharp mouth. I'll have to wait until I get a picture of a wide open mouth belly laugh then I'll try to count from the picture.
Alex was riding on his truck and Ben decided to hop on for a ride. They laughed for the amount of time it took to get 3 pictures, then they both started screaming because they were too close. (Ben short hair)
Mother's Day. Cody hooked the boys up on their outside toys and rode around the back yard.
He offered them some water when they came in. The boys wanted the water, but not to drink! They found a dirty Dairy Queen blizzard spoon from the day before on the deck and started stirring Cody's water. Yum!
Now Ben is digging for ice cubes
Both playing in the cup. Needless to say, Cody didn't drink any more after this.
The boys watched Cody rotate the car tires once a couple of months ago. Now every time they see a tire, they check the lug nuts. Alex found an unrelated nut on the ground one day, and walked it over to a car tire and tried to screw it on.
Cody was putting together the swing for the back yard a couple weeks ago and he put down the ratchet to find the next set of screws. Ben picked up the ratchet and walked it to the lawn mower tires. Then he did this. He had never seen us do that. His little brain made all the leaps between tool, nut, tire, etc. It was really funny.
On the opposite end of the smart spectrum, here is a baby stuck under a table. I swear our babies are part ant. We had an ant colony outside next to the house trying to establish a home in here. We noticed early, so we just stuck a few ant traps around in places the babies couldn't get. Well, it turns out our babies can sniff out ant bait traps like nobody's business. (They were the child resistant traps, so at least they weren't in danger like some of the other poison traps.) I had one under the tv table area in a place they couldn't even see if they looked.
This is what I found one day. He managed to crawl all the way under and get his legs stuck on either side of the leg of the table. There was no way he could back out. He was not pleased. Between the indoor ant bait stations, and Cody doing the powder stuff directly on their colony outside, our ant problem was short lived luckily.
Here is the babies eating in a disgusting way portion of this blog entry.
The boys are learning how to use open cups. They are doing pretty well. If they are thirsty, and not too distracted, I can give them a cup with a small amount of water and they will drink it with minimal spills. The more tired, distracted, happy, hungry, playful, etc., they are, the more of a disaster cup drinking can be.
Here is a lovely picture of Ben with his cup. Until you look in the cup. He created a nice pasta stew in his water. Yum! Once they get full, a lot of food ends up in the cup.
He doesn't understand how wrong this is.
Alex with a sippy cup
Drinking with cups. Please excuse the mess. The towel on the floor is there to wipe up what they spill.
You see them drink, gargle, laugh, and spit water. At the end, Ben brings his cup over and says, "Muh" That is their way of asking for more.
The boys drinking out of their cups gracefully. (It's not all bad!)
Ben
You thought that was one of the not gross pictures, right? Wrong! If you look closer, you will see his cup of milk is actually full of peas.
Moving on... We have also been working on utensils. I gave them each a cup of applesauce to practice. To their credit, they did figure out a way to eat the applesauce. Unfortunately, it was not neatly with a spoon. Alex stabbing his.
Ben with a spoon in one hand and the other hand deeply plunged in to his applesauce. He chose to just scoop it up bare handed.
As you can see on Alex's hand, he tried the bare hand scoop. Apparently that was not good enough, because he just picked up his cup and drank the applesauce. He got pretty frustrated at the end when gravity was no longer enough to bring the applesauce to him.
Now we will move on to babies standing on things.
After hours (and hours... and hours...) of forcing me to hold them while they turn a light switch on and off, I set up a few standing boxes for them near light switches. Here is Ben turning the lights on and off.
Alex joining him.
They also have standing boxes under a few windows so they can look out.
One day I accidentally left the cabinet open that has bowls and cookie pans. Ben pulled out the bowl and carried/slid it over to the stove. Then he stood on the bowl to grab things off the stove (nothing was hot. I was prepping raw food for the grill). I can see this is going to be an issue. Learning how to push something to where they want to stand is a really dangerous skill!
Sleepy baby. Alex after a long day.
Want to see why it is so difficult to clean while the boys are around? Here you go. They found a bag of rubber bands. You can see what happened. Cody was trying to get them to pick up the rubber bands and put them in the bucket. They did that... sometimes.
Here is my Dr. Mama story.
I had my first opportunity to play Dr. Mama on a baby lovey. The boys were each given one of these dogs from their wonderful Aunt K (my sister) and soon to be Uncle E (her kind and patient fiance who is willing to get married in any, ANY, nerd theme K wants... as long as they get married.) that they bought when they were on a trip to New York. (This is especially nice because few people dislike babies in general more than Aunt K. She is very sweet to pick them up something soft and furry whenever she goes on a trip. So thoughtful! ;) ) (Lots of parenthesis in this paragraph!)
Anyway, the boys have had these dogs for a while now. They always sleep with them. Sometimes they use one of their standing boxes for a light switch near Alex's crib to try to crawl in the crib to get the dog. They call it, "Da!" One of the "Da"s started to lose his head. Literally.
It was time for Mama to break out her fancy 3rd grade Girl Scouts sewing skills to make sure "Da"'s head didn't fall all the way off. My sewing skills are a lot like my knife skills, sloppy, disorganized, and often bloody. I gave it my all and secured the dog's head to his body.
When I was finished I was checking out my handy work.
Problem number 1, I managed to sew his shirt to his neck in a few places. In a way that makes it nearly impossible to fix without breaking my stitches.
Problem 2, I may have made the stitches a bit too tight. Now the dog has a permanent cocked head because one side of his neck is a bit tighter than the other side. You can't really see it in this pic, but it is pretty funny.
All in all, I did a fine job. His head probably won't fall off. It is still functional, and the babies don't know any better.
Ben attacked Alex with a marker. They have figured out how to get the lids off of markers. Ben went after Alex in a way that was straight out of the fine film, "Psycho." They weren't fighting or anything. One minute they were playing quietly, the next Ben is stabbing Alex with a marker. He had the marker in his fist and he was bringing the marker down from over his head. Nobody was injured. Alex wasn't even angry. He just went about his day like this.
We are having a bit of a bird problem. When our house was on the market, some birds built glorious nests on the light in the front and back of the house. Every year they come back. They are able to put a nest together nearly every day. One day we tossed out 3 nearly finished nests on one light alone.
This year, Cody made these wood blocks with nails sticking out of it to make it too uncomfortable to build a nest. It worked fine in the front, but the birds in the back would just build a nest around and over the nails. The nail blocks made it easier to pick up the nests, but it was still annoying and dirty.
I decided to create this bird blocker using straws. Cody kept telling me I was wasting time and it would never hold up. He thought I was planning to use the straws to poke the birds. Instead, I used the straws to block them from landing between the light and the soffitt.
It worked great! I can see this light from the living room. The day after I built it, I saw the birds fly to the light 5-6 times per hour trying to land. At the end of the day, no nest! It has been a little more than a week. There is still no nest. I see a bird fly to check it out a few times a day, but a lot less often. Hopefully they will find a new place to build. Hopefully not in our soffitt.
Alex. Again, please excuse the mess. They decided it would be fun to throw the clean laundry on the floor as I folded it and set it down. Yes.. Fun!
Kissy Face
The boys have started doing a kissy face. There are many things wrong with this video. Yes, the living room is mess. Yes, Alex is wearing the harness to a baby leash setup indoors. Yes, Ben is on the recliner making weird noises and rocking hard.
Alex giving kisses.
I dedicate this video to Aunt K. She absolutely LOVES when people and babies make the loud MMMMM sound before a kiss.
MMMMMMUAH, Aunt K.
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