Rose shares her knowledge

Her knowledge of getting into the cabinets in the kitchen, that is.
August is a quick study and gets to work emptying out the plastic containers...
...and finding a new drawer to unload. Hmmm, napkins!
With a little teamwork the whole kitchen can be trashed in no time!

Chow

The twins' apetites for solid foods has increased a lot in the last couple of weeks. They're now far more focused on getting food into their mouths than struggling for control of the spoons. There are some conditions involved, however, in gaining their cooperation. First, in order to get them to eat spoon-fed food, their high chair trays have to have finger foods on them. Secondly, the finger foods have to be cut into matchstick pieces. The babies will put up with scrambled egg yolk pieces and cottage cheese curds, but they prefer the long pieces of grated cheese and peach pieces like in the photo above. Mmm...Augie shows how it's done.

Happy Birthday, Daddy (Rob)!

Saturday was Rob's birthday. So on Friday August and Rose had their first try at scribbling with crayons to make him some birthday pictures. Their verdict: "Crayons taste great!" Needless to say, it took a little Mommy-Rosie and Mommy-Augie collaboration to produce their artwork. Here are the drawings posted on our back door to surprise Rob arriving home from work.
A closeup of August's drawing.
A closeup of Rose's drawing.

Busy Rosie

No explanation needed here...

MLK day

Yesterday August and Rose attended their first political event, the Martin Luther King Day march in Seattle. It's a pretty low-key march as marches go - and no chants! - so it seemed like a good way to introduce some activism. We were glad to run into Julie (in the red sweater above) who know through mutual friends in the Tacoma crowd and had fun catching up with her.
Though we were enthused to introduce Rose and August to democracy in action, we're pretty sure they were thinking, "Why do our parents insist on putting all this clothing on us?"
On Sunday, eager for some outdoorsy action despite the cold, we took the kids to Country Village in Bothell. It's a collection of quirky/kitschy shops with an outdoor courtyard that's inhabited by lots of ducks and a few chickens. It was the perfect break for us - watch some ducks, run into a shop to warm up, do it all over again. The above photo is Becky and August by the duck pond.

Cruisin'

The twins are really into standing and cruising around the furniture these days. It looks like they're both just about ready to set off walking and this new mobility has given them a whole new set of favorite activities. Most involve clearing off shelves or emptying out drawers.

Rose busy unloading a box of toys. She likes doing this so much that we keep this box around and fill it up over and over for her.

Caught in the act! Rose has made her way to the linen shelves and is about to start clearing off washcloths.

August is as or more busy than his sister (ask his mom about the cup of herbed olive oil he dumped on his head and in his stroller) but didn't make it into this set of photos. More on him soon.

Pennsylvania cousins

We've had a busy time since returning from our trip to PA so we're still in the process of posting Christmas photos. Rose and August had a great time meeting their cousins - first, second and removed - on the trip. Here are some pictures of them with some, though not all of their cousins. Rose meeting mommy's cousin Beth Seyfert.
August had a great time tussling with Beth's sons Ben and Luke Seyfert. He was thrilled to be included in playing with the big boys.
Here's Rosie giggling with Mike Collins.
Rose and Logan Keaton taking a rest at Chocolate World.
A lineup of boys and Rose - Mason Hagen, Jared Keaton, Jory Hagen, August, Logan Keaton and Rose.

More from Christmas

Our time in Penn. was packed with holiday events and get-togethers. The twins did really well with it all, almost always seeming to have a good time no matter what was going on. They love hustle and bustle and crowds of people.


Here's August helping Grandma Gloria with her coffee on Christmas morning.

Rose takes a break from opening presents with her cousins Jared and Logan.

They both sit patiently eating snack puffs while waiting for everyone else to get to the table for a holiday feast.

Here Rosie is wearing a dress originally made by Grandma for Aunt Beth. Both Beth and Becky wore it for Christmases long ago. (We won't go into how many years ago that was!) Naturally, she's more interested in some tissue paper she's holding than in her presents.

Back Home Again!

Phew! Sorry about the long lapse in posting, but the family has been in Pennsylvania for the last couple of weeks. Becky and the twins (and Grandma Gloria) flew to Penn. on December 14th to Grandma's house and the land of Becky's extended family. Rob followed on the 24th, and we all flew home on New Year's Eve.
It was a really good trip, and the twins had a great time meeting all their maternal relatives and amassing new toys.
They got a crash course in gift-unwrapping. They did pretty well, but wanted to play with/eat the wrapping paper, mostly.

It seems that big, crosscountry trips correspond with developmental leaps forward for the little ones. Last time (in August) they came home and began sitting up and playing by themselves. This time they both enthusiastically took to standing and "cruising" while holding onto furniture. They REALLY seem to be ready to walk--and still neither one of them shows any interest in crawling! Auggie, in particular, can now pull himself up to standing and is constantly trying to pull himself up on anything he can get a hold of--including Rose (which never ends well).

Here they are cruising around the inside of a playpen that Grandma Gloria set up for them in her living room. They loved it! But we had to keep separating them to save Rosie's hair which August would pull at every opportunity.

We'll post lots more photos from the trip soon...