Chatterboxes

A couple of weeks ago the boys said their first decipherable word. Was it ma-ma or da-da? One would think since we have been repeating those words to them for months now. But no, we are not that important apparently. Instead they started enthusiastically saying "DIT-tee!" while pointing at our cats. Sometimes Colin even gets the K sound right and says "kih-te." But more often than not its "dit-tee." And it doesn't matter if they see an elephant, monkey, or dog on the tv. They are dit-tees too. The boys have long said "ma-ma" and "da-da" but its always just been while babbling and never when pointing at us. So we are still trying to get them to specifically refer to us as momma and daddy. The other thing they like to do these days is experiment with the volume of their voice. They shriek and yell at the top of their lungs in Farsi or Mandarin or some other language that we cannot understand. And they very much enjoy doing that judging by the mischievous grins on their faces in between their banshee screaming. In addition to saying dit-tee and screaming the boys also like to terrorize our cat Charlie. He is our lovable, lazy cat, unlike our other cat Chester who never lets the boys get within 6 inches of him. When the boys see Charlie they turn into mouth breathing zombies, arms outstretched, slowly toddling towards him, drooling and mumbling. But rather than try to eat him they just put the death grip on him, twisting his fur and pulling his tail. We usually have to shoo Charlie away for his own good.

In other news, we recently took them out of daycare and now have a babysitter come to our house to watch them every day. Her name is Melia and the boys seem to like her a lot. She has got them back on 2 good naps a day (something that daycare royally screwed up) and she is working with them to teach them some sign language as well as how to use utensils. And I must say that mornings and evenings have been far less stressful now that I don't have to rush around getting the boys ready and dropped off at daycare, and now that Bill doesn't have to drive around for 45+ minutes every evening so that they would get in a 30 minute cat nap in order to avoid complete meltdowns due to being over tired. And its been nice rarely having to empty the dishwasher or do baby laundry as well!

Now it is picture time. These next 2 pictures were taken when we visited Bill's family in Waynesboro a couple of weeks ago. Audrey is holding Brandon on the left and Gwynne is holding Colin on the right:



Today was game day so we did what any self-respecting Hokie parent would do, which is deck the boys out in Hokie gear:




Then we went outside and played in the driveway, and I put their new "monkey harnesses" on them so that they would get used to them. Laugh if you want to but if you had to take two 17-month olds (that don't yet know how to listen or hold your hand) to a park by yourself you would do the same thing! :-p The monkey backpacks have a "tail" that clips on them (so I can keep them from running away):