Monthly Archives: May 2010

A Day At The Farm

Written on May 30, 2010 by in Beautiful World, Raising twins

Today we drove the girls about an hour away to Princeton NJ where there is a farm with U-Pick produce.  Terhune Orchards was a wonderful trip for all of us.  The girls had a blast!

www.terhuneorchards.com

In all, we picked about 3 pounds of strawberries – not the big supermarket ones with almost no taste, but the tiny sweet local NJ kind that you can’t find in a supermarket – ripened fully and bursting with sweetness!

Apparently the supermarket kinds are picked pink and even if they turn red and soft later, the flavor doesn’t change, according to Edible NJ, a freebie foodie magazine.

So we bent and picked, hunting out the hidden jewel-like gleaming red treasures and holding the stems out for Halle and Zanna to pluck the fruit off.  They were so happy doing that, that when their baskets were full, they didn’t want to give them up to get empty ones!

And then Zanna got away from us and started zipping across the strawberry fields, trampling a few plants and berries in her path before we caught up with her.  Halle had also abandoned strawberry picking in favor of playing with a rather nice looking stick she had picked up, so we weighed in, paid up and headed for the toddler tractors.

They have a small lot filled with toddler sized ride-on John Deere tractors for the kids to scoot around in, so Mike watched the girls do that while I bought some goodies in the farm’s store.

The doughnuts are to die for! Oh. My. God!  That must be what the doughnuts in Heaven taste like!  So light and fluffy, a dusting of cinnamon sugar on them, delicious!  And we sipped fresh apple cider along with the doughnuts.

After that, the girls scurried over to the fenced-in Canadian Geese and goats and Mike discovered that there were vending machines full of dried corn to feed the animals, so he got a few dimes and handed them to Zanna to give to me, but instead, she took off like lightening towards the geese – to feed them the dimes.

I couldn’t convince her to not feed the animals the money so after a countdown of 10, I had to pry the dimes out of her little fist and quickly get them into the vending machines and then give her the corn.  THEN she understood that the corn was for feeding (but I still wouldn’t trust her with any dimes :)    )

Both the girls had a great time flinging dried corn kernals to the critters and when we ran out of dimes, they hunted around the vending machines for kernals that others had dropped and made a quick beeline back to the critters for more feeding.

They also got to pet two very docile dogs who were so relaxed they were almost catatonic except for the wagging tails, and a couple of cats.

Then we disinfected their hands and arms and headed home while the girls wailed their displeasure.

After we arrived home and they woke up from their naps, the first thing Zanna said was “Where my farm? I want go farm, pick trawberries!”  (They still leave off the ‘s’ at the beginning of words.) and then she wept when she realized that we weren’t going back there again today.

In June there will be cherries and blueberries and a firefly festival there and we are definitely looking forward to going!

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Fish and markers and ducks…oh my!

Written on May 29, 2010 by in Raising twins

My girls are nearly three years old now, and thankfully I can see signs of maturing emotions (or as mature as a toddler can be.).

Halle has had her little loves, for awhile now.  First it was the matchbox car she wouldn’t go to sleep without clutching in her little fist, then it was the gruesome insect flashcards (how she could possibly sleep while snuggled up to a picture of a Periplaneta americana is beyond me), and then a fistful of crayons. 

Then she seemed able to do without her sleeptime snugglebuddies, but would wake up at the crack of dawn weeping for Diego or The Wiggles.

And then my husband let the girls play with the markers. 

Right before bedtime.

Oh. My. God.  The heartrending screams, sobs and wails that came from that child grieving the loss of her beloved sweeties was unbelievable!  The poor little mite cried herself to sleep that night.  We were cuddling her, of course, but she didn’t give a rat’s patootie about us, she was utterly bereft of what mattered most to her at that moment – her precious, her markers.

And at daybreak, she popped up like a jack-in-the-box shrieking for her markers.

Being a wise mama, I gave them to her.

Unfortunately, her sister Zanna liked putting the caps in her mouth, which was a definite no-no.

So off we went to the dollar store where I bought a 16-pack of Crayola pipsqueaks.  The caps were big enough to not be easily put in Zanna’s mouth, and there were enough for them to share.

Halle, remarkably, took responsibility for the care and well-being of the markers.  She carefully capped them after use (after I explained that uncapped ones would dry out and become fodder for the Garbage Fairy), and would tote them around in a little basket.  If any spilled out, she would lovingly place them back in their mobile transport.  When she wanted to play with something else, she would either carefully place the basket in a safe place, or announce that she was “Done Markers” and hand either myself or my husband the basket to be put away on a shelf.

We were shocked at how responsible she was.

Another acquisition from the dollar store was a tiny fishbowl with two teensy fish that would dance around in the water after the base was switched on.

Perhaps that was a mistake.

The girls clamored, whined and cried to get closer to the fish (I kept them in the kitchen within sight but out of reach). Eventually I caved and put the fishbowl on a table and warned the girls not to touch the fish, the bowl or the base, OR the water, or back into the kitchen the fishies would go.

They love those fish.  They can hardly restrain themselves from grabbing them, but so far they’re doing pretty good.  When they have enough, they tell me the fish are sleepy and I should put them back in the kitchen for their nap (the fishies’ nap, not the girls’.)

Another love that Zanna has is for ducks.

She has been Queen of the ducks since we lived in South Florida.  There were a huge mob of ducks that roamed the complex grounds and everytime they saw Zanna they would follow our stroller as she waved to her loyal subjects, vibrating with excitement and joy at the sight of all those ducks.

These days, up north in New Jersey, she has to make do with a fleet of rubber duckies.  She insists on having at least one duck with her in the car, and ready access to the others at home.  That is one of the few things she and Halle will fight over: custody of the ducks.  We have about 21 ducks at home.  Rubber ones, felt puppet ones made by their Bubbe, plastic windup ones, cloth and wooden pull-toy ones, and plush dolls.

By the way, for any friends and family reading this blog, that was not a hint to buy her more ducks.  We’ve got quite enough, thank you very much!

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What lies beneath…

Written on May 23, 2010 by in Raising twins

Ominous title for a blog post, huh?

When we last left our happy family, they had reached a detente of sorts with the new neighbors downstairs. We would sometimes check with them if the noise level was tolerable for them and they assured us that all was well. Occasionally the guy downstairs would knock on our door if the girls were getting too rowdy for his tastes (although if he would just wait another minute, the noise would die down of its own accord), but for the most part things seemed to be manageable. We ignored his littered cigarette butts in front of our apartment and their constant slamming in and out of their apartment that made our whole apartment vibrate, and they managed to be civil when letting us know if someone was home sick for the day and could the girls keep it down a few notches?

And then I made the awful mistake of doing them a favor.

Recently, a flyer had been sent round by the complex management advising all dog owners that if any dogs were to be found off leash, or with poo left undisposed of in the proper manner, or bags of poo left around, the dog owner would be fined and possibly have their pooch evicted.

So when I saw the bag of pooch grenades lying on our front doorstep (that we share with the people downstairs), rather than call management about this hazard to my kids’ health, I thought I’d be neighborly and just knock and ask them nicely if they could remove it to elsewhere before any kids walked onto it.

The lady downstairs EXPLODED!!!! She started screaming at me, calling my kids animals, calling us liars and that we didn’t have any carpet upstairs at all and other manner of verbal abuse.

I calmly informed her that not only did we have carpet, it also had foam matting under it!

She screamed again that we were lying (and I certainly wasn’t going to invite a crazy person upstairs to take a look for herself) and slammed back into her apartment.

Since then, everytime my girls made even the slightest noise, she would bash her fist on our door, scream obscenities and slam back into her apartment.

She also took to slamming her door even harder than before everytime she went in or out.

After calling management to ask their advice and they told us our carpeting was fine, and they agreed the structure was old and really carried footfall noise (and other kinds) very well, we went to IKEA anyway and got more carpeting for the few small bare areas the girls didn’t go on anyway and laid that down with more foam matting.

Nice people that we are, we even let them know downstairs before we started moving furniture around.

A scant 3 minutes after the new carpet was laid down and the girls had made a test run, the lady downstairs was bashing on our door again and screaming obscenities.

Oh well, we tried.

Of course if she would just wait about a minute, the girls usually change activities and stop the running which seems to be what makes her react.

And what were they thinking moving in under a family with kids?

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Bears, Birds and Food Ticks

Written on May 17, 2010 by in Beautiful World, Raising twins

We took the twins to the Turtleback Zoo yesterday.  There was an event hosted by a local Jewish organization there and it sounded like fun.  After particpating in the storytime, collecting our goodie bag and having a quick picnic, we set off in search of critters to peruse.

The reptile house was a big hit with the girls.  They loved seeing the tortoises scamper around their enclosure!  Then we saw the bears which were very accommodating as they walked right up to the viewing window and paced back and forth for a few minutes in front of our girls, who made encouraging little bear roars for their new furry friends.

Then we went to the Australian Outback section and the Aviary.  The brightly colored budgerdriars and parakeets were free to fly around inside and the staff sold little popsicle sticks that had sesame seeds encrusted on them at $2 each.  When I saw people coaxing the little birds onto the sticks to have a snack and heard my girls squeal “Birds!! Feed birds!!” I caved and got two sticks.

Then we went fishing for birds.

There’s a trick to it: you can’t just put the stick in front of their mouths, you need to poke a little at their feet and then they’ll step on the stick.

Halle caught on right away and was happily fishing for birds as we tried to restrain her from pulling their tail feathers or other gestures of affection.

Zanna had a harder time and my husband and I both pulled some arm muscles hefting her (the twins are both about 30 pounds right now) in the air to fish a bird from a low branch.  Finally, though, she had one.

The girls were ecstatic!  Little happy yells of “Come here birdy!  Eat food tick!! (food stick)”

And when we finally had to leave, there were heartbroken (loud) inconsolable wails at having to leave the aviary and their little feathered friends.

Today there were a couple flashbacks:  “Food ticks!!” “Where my birdies?!” and more tears.

Probably next time we go to the zoo I wouldn’t be surprised if we spend the whole time just fishing for birds with our food ticks.

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« Older Posts

Monthly Archives: May 2010

A Day At The Farm

Written on May 30, 2010 by in Beautiful World, Raising twins

Today we drove the girls about an hour away to Princeton NJ where there is a farm with U-Pick produce.  Terhune Orchards was a wonderful trip for all of us.  The girls had a blast!

www.terhuneorchards.com

In all, we picked about 3 pounds of strawberries – not the big supermarket ones with almost no taste, but the tiny sweet local NJ kind that you can’t find in a supermarket – ripened fully and bursting with sweetness!

Apparently the supermarket kinds are picked pink and even if they turn red and soft later, the flavor doesn’t change, according to Edible NJ, a freebie foodie magazine.

So we bent and picked, hunting out the hidden jewel-like gleaming red treasures and holding the stems out for Halle and Zanna to pluck the fruit off.  They were so happy doing that, that when their baskets were full, they didn’t want to give them up to get empty ones!

And then Zanna got away from us and started zipping across the strawberry fields, trampling a few plants and berries in her path before we caught up with her.  Halle had also abandoned strawberry picking in favor of playing with a rather nice looking stick she had picked up, so we weighed in, paid up and headed for the toddler tractors.

They have a small lot filled with toddler sized ride-on John Deere tractors for the kids to scoot around in, so Mike watched the girls do that while I bought some goodies in the farm’s store.

The doughnuts are to die for! Oh. My. God!  That must be what the doughnuts in Heaven taste like!  So light and fluffy, a dusting of cinnamon sugar on them, delicious!  And we sipped fresh apple cider along with the doughnuts.

After that, the girls scurried over to the fenced-in Canadian Geese and goats and Mike discovered that there were vending machines full of dried corn to feed the animals, so he got a few dimes and handed them to Zanna to give to me, but instead, she took off like lightening towards the geese – to feed them the dimes.

I couldn’t convince her to not feed the animals the money so after a countdown of 10, I had to pry the dimes out of her little fist and quickly get them into the vending machines and then give her the corn.  THEN she understood that the corn was for feeding (but I still wouldn’t trust her with any dimes :)    )

Both the girls had a great time flinging dried corn kernals to the critters and when we ran out of dimes, they hunted around the vending machines for kernals that others had dropped and made a quick beeline back to the critters for more feeding.

They also got to pet two very docile dogs who were so relaxed they were almost catatonic except for the wagging tails, and a couple of cats.

Then we disinfected their hands and arms and headed home while the girls wailed their displeasure.

After we arrived home and they woke up from their naps, the first thing Zanna said was “Where my farm? I want go farm, pick trawberries!”  (They still leave off the ‘s’ at the beginning of words.) and then she wept when she realized that we weren’t going back there again today.

In June there will be cherries and blueberries and a firefly festival there and we are definitely looking forward to going!

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Fish and markers and ducks…oh my!

Written on May 29, 2010 by in Raising twins

My girls are nearly three years old now, and thankfully I can see signs of maturing emotions (or as mature as a toddler can be.).

Halle has had her little loves, for awhile now.  First it was the matchbox car she wouldn’t go to sleep without clutching in her little fist, then it was the gruesome insect flashcards (how she could possibly sleep while snuggled up to a picture of a Periplaneta americana is beyond me), and then a fistful of crayons. 

Then she seemed able to do without her sleeptime snugglebuddies, but would wake up at the crack of dawn weeping for Diego or The Wiggles.

And then my husband let the girls play with the markers. 

Right before bedtime.

Oh. My. God.  The heartrending screams, sobs and wails that came from that child grieving the loss of her beloved sweeties was unbelievable!  The poor little mite cried herself to sleep that night.  We were cuddling her, of course, but she didn’t give a rat’s patootie about us, she was utterly bereft of what mattered most to her at that moment – her precious, her markers.

And at daybreak, she popped up like a jack-in-the-box shrieking for her markers.

Being a wise mama, I gave them to her.

Unfortunately, her sister Zanna liked putting the caps in her mouth, which was a definite no-no.

So off we went to the dollar store where I bought a 16-pack of Crayola pipsqueaks.  The caps were big enough to not be easily put in Zanna’s mouth, and there were enough for them to share.

Halle, remarkably, took responsibility for the care and well-being of the markers.  She carefully capped them after use (after I explained that uncapped ones would dry out and become fodder for the Garbage Fairy), and would tote them around in a little basket.  If any spilled out, she would lovingly place them back in their mobile transport.  When she wanted to play with something else, she would either carefully place the basket in a safe place, or announce that she was “Done Markers” and hand either myself or my husband the basket to be put away on a shelf.

We were shocked at how responsible she was.

Another acquisition from the dollar store was a tiny fishbowl with two teensy fish that would dance around in the water after the base was switched on.

Perhaps that was a mistake.

The girls clamored, whined and cried to get closer to the fish (I kept them in the kitchen within sight but out of reach). Eventually I caved and put the fishbowl on a table and warned the girls not to touch the fish, the bowl or the base, OR the water, or back into the kitchen the fishies would go.

They love those fish.  They can hardly restrain themselves from grabbing them, but so far they’re doing pretty good.  When they have enough, they tell me the fish are sleepy and I should put them back in the kitchen for their nap (the fishies’ nap, not the girls’.)

Another love that Zanna has is for ducks.

She has been Queen of the ducks since we lived in South Florida.  There were a huge mob of ducks that roamed the complex grounds and everytime they saw Zanna they would follow our stroller as she waved to her loyal subjects, vibrating with excitement and joy at the sight of all those ducks.

These days, up north in New Jersey, she has to make do with a fleet of rubber duckies.  She insists on having at least one duck with her in the car, and ready access to the others at home.  That is one of the few things she and Halle will fight over: custody of the ducks.  We have about 21 ducks at home.  Rubber ones, felt puppet ones made by their Bubbe, plastic windup ones, cloth and wooden pull-toy ones, and plush dolls.

By the way, for any friends and family reading this blog, that was not a hint to buy her more ducks.  We’ve got quite enough, thank you very much!

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

What lies beneath…

Written on May 23, 2010 by in Raising twins

Ominous title for a blog post, huh?

When we last left our happy family, they had reached a detente of sorts with the new neighbors downstairs. We would sometimes check with them if the noise level was tolerable for them and they assured us that all was well. Occasionally the guy downstairs would knock on our door if the girls were getting too rowdy for his tastes (although if he would just wait another minute, the noise would die down of its own accord), but for the most part things seemed to be manageable. We ignored his littered cigarette butts in front of our apartment and their constant slamming in and out of their apartment that made our whole apartment vibrate, and they managed to be civil when letting us know if someone was home sick for the day and could the girls keep it down a few notches?

And then I made the awful mistake of doing them a favor.

Recently, a flyer had been sent round by the complex management advising all dog owners that if any dogs were to be found off leash, or with poo left undisposed of in the proper manner, or bags of poo left around, the dog owner would be fined and possibly have their pooch evicted.

So when I saw the bag of pooch grenades lying on our front doorstep (that we share with the people downstairs), rather than call management about this hazard to my kids’ health, I thought I’d be neighborly and just knock and ask them nicely if they could remove it to elsewhere before any kids walked onto it.

The lady downstairs EXPLODED!!!! She started screaming at me, calling my kids animals, calling us liars and that we didn’t have any carpet upstairs at all and other manner of verbal abuse.

I calmly informed her that not only did we have carpet, it also had foam matting under it!

She screamed again that we were lying (and I certainly wasn’t going to invite a crazy person upstairs to take a look for herself) and slammed back into her apartment.

Since then, everytime my girls made even the slightest noise, she would bash her fist on our door, scream obscenities and slam back into her apartment.

She also took to slamming her door even harder than before everytime she went in or out.

After calling management to ask their advice and they told us our carpeting was fine, and they agreed the structure was old and really carried footfall noise (and other kinds) very well, we went to IKEA anyway and got more carpeting for the few small bare areas the girls didn’t go on anyway and laid that down with more foam matting.

Nice people that we are, we even let them know downstairs before we started moving furniture around.

A scant 3 minutes after the new carpet was laid down and the girls had made a test run, the lady downstairs was bashing on our door again and screaming obscenities.

Oh well, we tried.

Of course if she would just wait about a minute, the girls usually change activities and stop the running which seems to be what makes her react.

And what were they thinking moving in under a family with kids?

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Bears, Birds and Food Ticks

Written on May 17, 2010 by in Beautiful World, Raising twins

We took the twins to the Turtleback Zoo yesterday.  There was an event hosted by a local Jewish organization there and it sounded like fun.  After particpating in the storytime, collecting our goodie bag and having a quick picnic, we set off in search of critters to peruse.

The reptile house was a big hit with the girls.  They loved seeing the tortoises scamper around their enclosure!  Then we saw the bears which were very accommodating as they walked right up to the viewing window and paced back and forth for a few minutes in front of our girls, who made encouraging little bear roars for their new furry friends.

Then we went to the Australian Outback section and the Aviary.  The brightly colored budgerdriars and parakeets were free to fly around inside and the staff sold little popsicle sticks that had sesame seeds encrusted on them at $2 each.  When I saw people coaxing the little birds onto the sticks to have a snack and heard my girls squeal “Birds!! Feed birds!!” I caved and got two sticks.

Then we went fishing for birds.

There’s a trick to it: you can’t just put the stick in front of their mouths, you need to poke a little at their feet and then they’ll step on the stick.

Halle caught on right away and was happily fishing for birds as we tried to restrain her from pulling their tail feathers or other gestures of affection.

Zanna had a harder time and my husband and I both pulled some arm muscles hefting her (the twins are both about 30 pounds right now) in the air to fish a bird from a low branch.  Finally, though, she had one.

The girls were ecstatic!  Little happy yells of “Come here birdy!  Eat food tick!! (food stick)”

And when we finally had to leave, there were heartbroken (loud) inconsolable wails at having to leave the aviary and their little feathered friends.

Today there were a couple flashbacks:  “Food ticks!!” “Where my birdies?!” and more tears.

Probably next time we go to the zoo I wouldn’t be surprised if we spend the whole time just fishing for birds with our food ticks.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
0 Comments - Leave a comment!
« Older Posts

Monthly Archives: May 2010

A Day At The Farm

Written on May 30, 2010 by in Beautiful World, Raising twins

Today we drove the girls about an hour away to Princeton NJ where there is a farm with U-Pick produce.  Terhune Orchards was a wonderful trip for all of us.  The girls had a blast!

www.terhuneorchards.com

In all, we picked about 3 pounds of strawberries – not the big supermarket ones with almost no taste, but the tiny sweet local NJ kind that you can’t find in a supermarket – ripened fully and bursting with sweetness!

Apparently the supermarket kinds are picked pink and even if they turn red and soft later, the flavor doesn’t change, according to Edible NJ, a freebie foodie magazine.

So we bent and picked, hunting out the hidden jewel-like gleaming red treasures and holding the stems out for Halle and Zanna to pluck the fruit off.  They were so happy doing that, that when their baskets were full, they didn’t want to give them up to get empty ones!

And then Zanna got away from us and started zipping across the strawberry fields, trampling a few plants and berries in her path before we caught up with her.  Halle had also abandoned strawberry picking in favor of playing with a rather nice looking stick she had picked up, so we weighed in, paid up and headed for the toddler tractors.

They have a small lot filled with toddler sized ride-on John Deere tractors for the kids to scoot around in, so Mike watched the girls do that while I bought some goodies in the farm’s store.

The doughnuts are to die for! Oh. My. God!  That must be what the doughnuts in Heaven taste like!  So light and fluffy, a dusting of cinnamon sugar on them, delicious!  And we sipped fresh apple cider along with the doughnuts.

After that, the girls scurried over to the fenced-in Canadian Geese and goats and Mike discovered that there were vending machines full of dried corn to feed the animals, so he got a few dimes and handed them to Zanna to give to me, but instead, she took off like lightening towards the geese – to feed them the dimes.

I couldn’t convince her to not feed the animals the money so after a countdown of 10, I had to pry the dimes out of her little fist and quickly get them into the vending machines and then give her the corn.  THEN she understood that the corn was for feeding (but I still wouldn’t trust her with any dimes :)    )

Both the girls had a great time flinging dried corn kernals to the critters and when we ran out of dimes, they hunted around the vending machines for kernals that others had dropped and made a quick beeline back to the critters for more feeding.

They also got to pet two very docile dogs who were so relaxed they were almost catatonic except for the wagging tails, and a couple of cats.

Then we disinfected their hands and arms and headed home while the girls wailed their displeasure.

After we arrived home and they woke up from their naps, the first thing Zanna said was “Where my farm? I want go farm, pick trawberries!”  (They still leave off the ‘s’ at the beginning of words.) and then she wept when she realized that we weren’t going back there again today.

In June there will be cherries and blueberries and a firefly festival there and we are definitely looking forward to going!

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Fish and markers and ducks…oh my!

Written on May 29, 2010 by in Raising twins

My girls are nearly three years old now, and thankfully I can see signs of maturing emotions (or as mature as a toddler can be.).

Halle has had her little loves, for awhile now.  First it was the matchbox car she wouldn’t go to sleep without clutching in her little fist, then it was the gruesome insect flashcards (how she could possibly sleep while snuggled up to a picture of a Periplaneta americana is beyond me), and then a fistful of crayons. 

Then she seemed able to do without her sleeptime snugglebuddies, but would wake up at the crack of dawn weeping for Diego or The Wiggles.

And then my husband let the girls play with the markers. 

Right before bedtime.

Oh. My. God.  The heartrending screams, sobs and wails that came from that child grieving the loss of her beloved sweeties was unbelievable!  The poor little mite cried herself to sleep that night.  We were cuddling her, of course, but she didn’t give a rat’s patootie about us, she was utterly bereft of what mattered most to her at that moment – her precious, her markers.

And at daybreak, she popped up like a jack-in-the-box shrieking for her markers.

Being a wise mama, I gave them to her.

Unfortunately, her sister Zanna liked putting the caps in her mouth, which was a definite no-no.

So off we went to the dollar store where I bought a 16-pack of Crayola pipsqueaks.  The caps were big enough to not be easily put in Zanna’s mouth, and there were enough for them to share.

Halle, remarkably, took responsibility for the care and well-being of the markers.  She carefully capped them after use (after I explained that uncapped ones would dry out and become fodder for the Garbage Fairy), and would tote them around in a little basket.  If any spilled out, she would lovingly place them back in their mobile transport.  When she wanted to play with something else, she would either carefully place the basket in a safe place, or announce that she was “Done Markers” and hand either myself or my husband the basket to be put away on a shelf.

We were shocked at how responsible she was.

Another acquisition from the dollar store was a tiny fishbowl with two teensy fish that would dance around in the water after the base was switched on.

Perhaps that was a mistake.

The girls clamored, whined and cried to get closer to the fish (I kept them in the kitchen within sight but out of reach). Eventually I caved and put the fishbowl on a table and warned the girls not to touch the fish, the bowl or the base, OR the water, or back into the kitchen the fishies would go.

They love those fish.  They can hardly restrain themselves from grabbing them, but so far they’re doing pretty good.  When they have enough, they tell me the fish are sleepy and I should put them back in the kitchen for their nap (the fishies’ nap, not the girls’.)

Another love that Zanna has is for ducks.

She has been Queen of the ducks since we lived in South Florida.  There were a huge mob of ducks that roamed the complex grounds and everytime they saw Zanna they would follow our stroller as she waved to her loyal subjects, vibrating with excitement and joy at the sight of all those ducks.

These days, up north in New Jersey, she has to make do with a fleet of rubber duckies.  She insists on having at least one duck with her in the car, and ready access to the others at home.  That is one of the few things she and Halle will fight over: custody of the ducks.  We have about 21 ducks at home.  Rubber ones, felt puppet ones made by their Bubbe, plastic windup ones, cloth and wooden pull-toy ones, and plush dolls.

By the way, for any friends and family reading this blog, that was not a hint to buy her more ducks.  We’ve got quite enough, thank you very much!

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

What lies beneath…

Written on May 23, 2010 by in Raising twins

Ominous title for a blog post, huh?

When we last left our happy family, they had reached a detente of sorts with the new neighbors downstairs. We would sometimes check with them if the noise level was tolerable for them and they assured us that all was well. Occasionally the guy downstairs would knock on our door if the girls were getting too rowdy for his tastes (although if he would just wait another minute, the noise would die down of its own accord), but for the most part things seemed to be manageable. We ignored his littered cigarette butts in front of our apartment and their constant slamming in and out of their apartment that made our whole apartment vibrate, and they managed to be civil when letting us know if someone was home sick for the day and could the girls keep it down a few notches?

And then I made the awful mistake of doing them a favor.

Recently, a flyer had been sent round by the complex management advising all dog owners that if any dogs were to be found off leash, or with poo left undisposed of in the proper manner, or bags of poo left around, the dog owner would be fined and possibly have their pooch evicted.

So when I saw the bag of pooch grenades lying on our front doorstep (that we share with the people downstairs), rather than call management about this hazard to my kids’ health, I thought I’d be neighborly and just knock and ask them nicely if they could remove it to elsewhere before any kids walked onto it.

The lady downstairs EXPLODED!!!! She started screaming at me, calling my kids animals, calling us liars and that we didn’t have any carpet upstairs at all and other manner of verbal abuse.

I calmly informed her that not only did we have carpet, it also had foam matting under it!

She screamed again that we were lying (and I certainly wasn’t going to invite a crazy person upstairs to take a look for herself) and slammed back into her apartment.

Since then, everytime my girls made even the slightest noise, she would bash her fist on our door, scream obscenities and slam back into her apartment.

She also took to slamming her door even harder than before everytime she went in or out.

After calling management to ask their advice and they told us our carpeting was fine, and they agreed the structure was old and really carried footfall noise (and other kinds) very well, we went to IKEA anyway and got more carpeting for the few small bare areas the girls didn’t go on anyway and laid that down with more foam matting.

Nice people that we are, we even let them know downstairs before we started moving furniture around.

A scant 3 minutes after the new carpet was laid down and the girls had made a test run, the lady downstairs was bashing on our door again and screaming obscenities.

Oh well, we tried.

Of course if she would just wait about a minute, the girls usually change activities and stop the running which seems to be what makes her react.

And what were they thinking moving in under a family with kids?

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Bears, Birds and Food Ticks

Written on May 17, 2010 by in Beautiful World, Raising twins

We took the twins to the Turtleback Zoo yesterday.  There was an event hosted by a local Jewish organization there and it sounded like fun.  After particpating in the storytime, collecting our goodie bag and having a quick picnic, we set off in search of critters to peruse.

The reptile house was a big hit with the girls.  They loved seeing the tortoises scamper around their enclosure!  Then we saw the bears which were very accommodating as they walked right up to the viewing window and paced back and forth for a few minutes in front of our girls, who made encouraging little bear roars for their new furry friends.

Then we went to the Australian Outback section and the Aviary.  The brightly colored budgerdriars and parakeets were free to fly around inside and the staff sold little popsicle sticks that had sesame seeds encrusted on them at $2 each.  When I saw people coaxing the little birds onto the sticks to have a snack and heard my girls squeal “Birds!! Feed birds!!” I caved and got two sticks.

Then we went fishing for birds.

There’s a trick to it: you can’t just put the stick in front of their mouths, you need to poke a little at their feet and then they’ll step on the stick.

Halle caught on right away and was happily fishing for birds as we tried to restrain her from pulling their tail feathers or other gestures of affection.

Zanna had a harder time and my husband and I both pulled some arm muscles hefting her (the twins are both about 30 pounds right now) in the air to fish a bird from a low branch.  Finally, though, she had one.

The girls were ecstatic!  Little happy yells of “Come here birdy!  Eat food tick!! (food stick)”

And when we finally had to leave, there were heartbroken (loud) inconsolable wails at having to leave the aviary and their little feathered friends.

Today there were a couple flashbacks:  “Food ticks!!” “Where my birdies?!” and more tears.

Probably next time we go to the zoo I wouldn’t be surprised if we spend the whole time just fishing for birds with our food ticks.

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