Busy week

Work has been crazy this week, as I'm deep in a big project. That's going to continue for at least the next couple of weeks, maybe more. It's fun, but a lot of work. It makes the day go by fast!

I got a kick out of a story from my cousin who said her daughters, ages 2 and 4, play baby dolls all the time and their latest thing is that they've decided two of them are twins named Ben and Maddie. Isn't that just so cute?!

Maddie is looking like she could start crawling at almost any time. She's rocking back and forth and kicking her legs a lot, then pulling her knee up a bit.

Ben is just plain moving. Jamey left him on the floor while he went to the bathroom the other day and Ben managed to roll about 5 feet to where Jamey had left a bucket of tools that he had been using. Ben tipped over the bucket and pulled out something called a "crimper" (I think it's used for electrical wires or something) and he had it in his hands when Jamey came back out. Luckily nothing happened! But it sure freaked Jamey out.

This weekend we're off to the cabin for the first time in a month. I think this is going to be only our fifth trip to the cabin all summer -- including a long stint in May. I'm sure the grass is way high and the yard a disaster. It was hardly worth putting the pontoon and dock in this summer. We thought we'd get there more, but with the rental property still needing work, Jamey and I have been exhausted pulling double duty all the time.

We don't have any big plans for the weekend. I'm sure we'll lay low and just enjoy the babies.

Ben and Maddie are 8 months old!

Hard to believe that it's already been 8 months. But here we are with two wonderful babies who smile, laugh and entertain us non-stop.

I got this picture of Ben this morning, showing off his new teeth coming in (top front two). They've both had the bottom two teeth for about two months. Can't tell if Maddie's are coming too, just yet, but she's drooling a lot and chewing on everything so I think something must be coming in.

From Aug09

Yesterday we tried out sippy cups, but it didn't work quite yet. Mostly Maddie liked watching the juice swirl around in there:

From Aug09

Boy in the mirror

I got a matching picture of Ben like the one I took recently of Maddie and the mirror...

From Aug09

And here's a new one of Maddie -- you can see her two teeth!

From Aug09

More teeth!

Today we discovered that Ben has his top two front teeth starting to poke through -- yes, two of them at the same time! The best part is that he hasn't been fussy at all in the last few days, so they must not be bothering him.

And then there's this kind of funny thing....for lunch today Jamey fed them a combination of whole wheat cereal, zucchini and peach yogurt. He said they loved it! He tried it and said it mostly tasted like the yogurt and he thought it was pretty good too.

2009_08_23

I got some more great pictures of Ben and Maddie today, including a few when they were playing on the floor and Maddie was pinning Ben down! There are a couple of them playing with a new toy that we finally pulled out the box (a gift when they were born) and the last two are from Ben taking a nap this afternoon. He's started doing the butt-in-the-air thing! And look at the size of those feet!

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Who's that beautiful girl in the mirror?

Check out this cool picture I took of Maddie today...

From Aug09

And here's one of ever-adorable Ben....

From Aug09

2009_08_16

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Some pictures from this weekend. Somebody gave us these "walkers" so I hauled them out of the basement and cleaned them up. I don't want to use them as walkers, but they work great as activity centers right now. After I took this picture, I took them out on the front patio and they played outside. Maddie seemed to love the wind on her face every time a gust blew up.

Back on the front page!

I've got the most popular story of the day on TwinCities.com, with this little piece in the saga of Denny Hecker.

And it's the second day in a row that my byline has been on the front page. Yesterday I had a co-byline on the day's main story about school adequate yearly progress reports. You can find that here.

And last week I had a co-byline on the front page with another Denny Hecker story. On that one, my byline comes first cause I actually did the writing.

The beach

We took Ben and Maddie to a beach at Lake Johanna near our house this afternoon. There were lots of kids playing and splashing, boats going by and waves crashing into shore. It was clearly a lot of stimulation for the babies! Not long after we sat down in the water along the shore, a wave came in a little too hard and scared Ben. He clung to me like he's never done before. It took him awhile (even without waves) to feel comfortable again. But neither one of them ever really acted like they were having fun. Once we got them out of their swimsuits and let them roll around on a blanket, with toys to chew on, then they seemed more in their element.

Needless to say they were exhausted. We fed them and gave them a bath and they were off to sleep by 6:30 -- almost an hour earlier than usual. It'll be interesting to see how long they sleep tonight.

They've woken up the last few nights to eat in the middle of the night, so I'm expecting it'll happen again tonight. I bet they're on a growth spurt. Ben, especially seems like his legs have grown several inches in just a matter of days!

Sorry, no pictures from the beach. It's kinda hard to hold babies and take pictures at the same time. :-)

July 9th

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We took pictures today just before Ben and Maddie went down for their afternoon nap. As you can see, when they are on the floor together, it's pretty common to find them entangled in each other (like the picture of Maddie with her legs draped over Ben's head. Funny part is that Ben didn't even cry!). There's a picture of Ben sucking on my finger and you can see his two little teeth! Maddie's look about the same.

Everyone's doing well here. Still waiting for them to sit up on their own without tipping over easily, but I think that is coming soon. And each day they seem closer to the point of starting to crawl.