Christmas time

We went to a few Christmas parties. First, there was one organized by Robb's department:
Then there was a party with baby mamas, where Sonja and Michael got to try banana oatmeal cookies for the first time:
Here is our little girl, again, cruising along the sofa:
We spent Christmas Eve at Jen and David's place where we had a traditional Cuban dinner and the kids had a lot of fun playing together.
Daddy and Sonja:Kiddie dinner (watch Michael stealing food off of that girl's plate!):
Michael now has her fork in his hand, too, and quite a handful of food in the other hand:
Michael with mommy:
Sonja with mommy:
Christmas day we spent at home opening presents and enjoying the kids!
Nikolas played mostly with Sonja and Michael's new toys--here he is riding Sonja's little car:
Nikolas has a quick and funny mind. Daddy was supposed to put him in bed one night and Nikolas overheard him say that he was so tired he'll go to sleep himself right away too (after one of his work all-nighters). Then I told Nikolas it was time to go brush his teeth and go to bed, and he immediately said, 'Daddy, go sleep'.
I'm trying to explain certain words to him, like klopka (trap) and ideja (idea). In the story about Little Red Riding Hood where it says that wolf trapped grandma, he keeps looking on the picture to understand what a trap is (for a while he was sure it was the slipper on the floor that fell off grandma's foot.) When I mention the word 'ideja', he says 'Branko Kockica kaze 'ideja' (a children songs singer says 'idea' in one of the songs on our CD.)
As Nikolas's favorite stories are still Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf, everything is about climbing into the chimney and burning the butt or tail. He now makes chimneys out of legos too, and improvises them out of other toys and throws stuffed animals on top of them so they'd 'burn their tails.'

Sonja now loves to grab Nikolas' s food off his tray. She was chewing a huge piece of turkey today at lunch before I noticed her!
She loves to grab food/water from Michael too and he sometimes tries to take it back and other times he'll grab a toy and make a lot of noise and show it off in front of her as if he's trying to distract her from what she had just taken from him. At other times the two little one play together beautifully. Sonja still waves her arms when she gets happy and excited and smacks Michael right on his head, her favorite target, as she giggles. He takes it for a while, and if she overdoes it, especially if she is holding a hard toy, he cries for help. But if he doesn't get hurt, he'll giggle back at her. Sonja's milder show of excitement and affection is leaning towards Michael with open arms like she'll smack him in the middle of his face, but she'd slow herself down in the last moment and gently place her hands on him and just touch his face with her open mouth or licks him a little (she does this to the rest of us too).

Nikolas uses scissors properly, crafts

I made an attempt last fall to teach Nikolas how to use scissors but it didn't work out the first couple of times and then I gave up because we could never hide from the babies to practice. Now that he plays with scissors at school for various projects, I discovered that he knows how to use them. He's been bringing a lot of projects from school where he either scribbled something with colored pencils or watercolor or glued stuff on paper, etc.
At home he now likes to walk into the kitchen to the espresso machine and stick his plastic cup under the spout to 'make his coffee' that he would 'share' with mommy and daddy.

Michael's second tooth, Nikolas sees Santa

Michael got his second bottom tooth (his left).
Nikolas went to Abbie's birthday party at Sun Country with other kids from the class. He had a blast jumping into a pool filled with sponges!
I finally saw him participating in a group game instead of defiantly playing on his own:
Birthday pizza and cake (Nikolas licked all the frosting off first!):
Right afterward the birthday party I took all three kids to our community holiday party at the clubhouse where Nikolas had an option to make a gingerbread man or to paint or to sit in Santa's lap and tell him that he was a good boy and that he wanted a bicycle for Christmas. Instead, he chose to circle around the food table and grab crackers, cookies and pigs-in-a-blanket... When we left and almost walked to our house, he said with a bit of panic: 'Treba da idemo nazad. Nisam rekao Deda Mrazu koji poklon hocu da Novu godinu!' ('Are we going back? I haven't told Santa what present I want!')

Nikolas-haha

Nikolas is quick to find reason to procrastinate going to bed:
Me: 'Nikolas, it' s time for bed.'
Nikolas: 'No, no, you and mommy wait a minute, I'm gonna go wash my hands.'

He loves the Disney cartoons The Big Bad Wolf and The Little Red Riding Hood that I have on a DVD that's been dubbed in Serbocroatian, but dubbed so badly that it's hard even for me to understand, but he doesn't care... he makes his own interpretation of what they are saying: when I knock on his door, he's been saying 'klian' (rhymes with Brian). I could not figure out for at least a month what he meant until it just recently hit me that it meant 'ko je?' (who is it?).
When I tell him the Little Red Riding Hood story at bedtime, he interrupts with comments:
'Nikolas je vidio vuka kako je skocio na krov i usao kroz dimnjak i pao na vatru i izgorio rep. Vuk je otisao do rijeke da potopi rep. Onda je dosao lovac i upucao vuka puskom. Tri praseta su pjevala "Ko se boji vuka jos, tri za gros, tri za gros, vuka se ne bojim ja, tra-la-la-la-la."' Vuk je dosao da pojede baku i baka se sakrila u ormar.' (Nikolas saw the wolf jump on the roof and get into the chimney and fall into the fireplace and burn his tail. Wolf ran to the river to cool his tail down. Then a hunter came and shot at the wolf, etc. etc....)
As if the cartoon is not enough, he asks me to read him these two stories, one after the other every single day before going to bed. In other stories in books he looks specifically for a wolf or pigs as the only two things that make the the story or a poem appealing. Clifford the Big Red Dog and The Cat in the Hat take the second place in Nikolas's interest.

Mike's first tooth, Sonja's crossed fingers

Today Mike has gotten his first tooth: his bottom right (not visible on the photo).
Sonja's latest habit: she likes to cross her middle finger over her index finger. She even sometimes keeps them that way while she crawls!

Thanksgiving, etc.

Nikolas's school organized a little Thanksgiving party for parents as well as kids. I got to chat with a few moms when I wasn't dragging Nikolas away from the food table from which he kept grabbing crackers by handfulls. It's amazing how this kid (are all kids like this?) ends up choosing either crackers or cookies or some other junk food (pigs-in-a-blanket is another one of his top choices) over a healthier alternative, even if he had never had the junk version before and has no idea what it tastes like. I remember how excited he was about having chocolate before he even had the first bite. Now he asks for it every day and I give him either chocolate or healtified brownies or banana bread with chocolate chips.
This week prior to Thanksgiving the teacher asked the kids what they were grateful for, and compiled a list of their answers. Nikolas was apparently grateful for bread :) Modest and real :)Like the two previous years, we spent this year's Thaksgiving in Orlando at aunt Anne and uncle Butch's house. Just like before, we all had a wonderful time--babies were safely exploring the house, Nikolas's attention was split between the TV in his own room where he immediately figured out how to play a DVD (!), the babies, the adults and the swimming pool where he swam once with daddy although it was pretty chilly. Here are Sonja and Michael enjoying the view from their exersaucers through a glass door onto the swimming pool and the golf course.

Nikolas, returning from a swim:
Kids with daddy:
Nikolas is spinning Sonja in her walker:
Smothering hug:

Thanksgiving dinner:
Sonja couldn't wait to get her hands on mommy's wine during Thanksgiving dinner!Sonja kisses Nikolas:

Michael makes funny faces:

Back at home after Thanksgiving, the babies ready for a meal:Playing together:

Sonja and Michael's eating & interests

I've doubled the amount of food that I've been giving them. Now they have full 3 meals a day, and I'm throwing in things like coconut oil, quinoa, molasses, goat meat, okra, melon, cranberries, papaya, goat cheese, egg yolks, etc. Michael eats as much as Sonja so it really boggles me why he still weighs less.
Sonja grabs whatever she can that will assist her in standing up. Michael pulls himself too but not so much. He prefers to get under tables and chairs where he often gets stuck or he lies by the kitchen gate and opens and closes it and chews on its rails. I guess he is teething--he hasn't gotten his first tooth yet. His other favorite place is the shoe rack by the entrance door and the box filled with books that he climbs into to play with books and whatever toys happen to be there.

Bathroom is still both Sonja and Michael's special place. As soon as someone opens the door to go in, they hear it from wherever they are at the moment and instantly appear together! I have to keep them out since, of course, they immediately go either for Nikolas's potty of the toilet brush!

The twins can entertain themselves for good chunks of time without asking for attention or to be picked up. I can easily let then play for 45min at a time. That's assuming that they don't see me--as soon as they do, huge smiles spread over their faces and they speed-crawl towards me or towards whichever gate is separating me from them and climp up and smile and giggle at first, then soon make sounds between calling and crying until they completely lose patience and demand to be held even if I'm talking to them the whole time.

polite talk

Nikolas is learning polite talk, but it comes out funny most of the time :)

Peppy: 'Nikolas, help me put the toys away.'
Nikolas, sitting on the bed: 'No, you clean, I'll watch...'
Then he helps after all, and at the end he says: 'Thank you for helping, Peppy.'

Or, he grabbed my empty coffee cup that he usually takes back to the dining table for me and handed it to Peppy this time: 'Peppy, put this up on the table, please.' (although he was standing right by the table.)

Mike climbs onto and into boxes

Mike's favorite thing to do these days is to climb on top or inside the boxes with toys or books. Again, he has not mastered getting out of them, but once he is in the toy box at least he can entertain himself for a while playing with various toys.
Here we go, on the way into the box with books:Get me down!

Sonja claps her hands (she brings her right hand to her left).
Sonja and Michael started nursing together again, not on the nursing pillow anymore, of course, but sitting on the floor instead. They look like two little puppies as they and push each other's hands off of me and smack each other's head and poke each other's faces!

Nikolas's recent lines:
Eating pineapple, talking to Peppi: 'Pineapple is good. Do you wanna try some, Peppy?' When did he become so polite?
As I was reading a story to him about bunnies: 'Nikolas je juce vidio zeku (we recently saw a bunny on our street). Zeko je skocio da poljubi Nikolasa i otisao.'

Halloween; Mike stands up, Sonja cruises

I took Nikolas to 'Boo at the Zoo' this Halloween. They've done an amazing job at the Zoo, with keepers along the path dressed up and passing candy, but the dress-up of the entire place was really over the top. Nikolas was so amazed that he kept walking with his head turned backwards, unable to take his eyes off the costumes and transformed areas. He was mostly in wonder, not laughing and not getting scared (except of steam--I had to carry him over it).
This is Nikolas in line to get into the zoo that was controlled by police. He was excited to see a policeman, as always!
Back at our house, we had a Halloween party with the baby moms and dads:
At the end we went trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, in style, his royalty pushed by daddy:
While Sonja comfortably cruises along furnMichael is now able to pull himself up--only he is not sure how to get down, so I often hear him cry for help when he gets tired standing in the crib!
This brings back memories of what Nikolas used to do at this age (Michael sleeps in Nikolas's old crib from where he can reach the changing table and grab the diapers and onesies):
One day when I was busy with Nikolas and the babies lost their patience in their exersaucers, I decided to give them a piece of melon in a chewing mesh to distract then for a little while longer. This was the first time I used it. As soon as the babies got one each, they started vigorously sucking the melon through the plastic mesh that for literally the next 45min I didn't hear any other sound from them except for the sucking noise! What a way to calm a baby!
In the afternoons, now that the weather has become cooler and more pleasant, we often spend an hour or so in the front yard. Sonja and Michael now like to explore and especially taste the grass and fallen dry leaves. i can't leave them out of my sight for a second or I'd soon be pulling a long string of grass of a long petal with the leaf at the end from their mouths!
Here they are, analyzing the leaves:
The most fun thing to do though is to tumble togewith the sibling is the best thing yet!
Party in the front yard with another set of boy/girl twins (Malokai and Addie)--well into the night!
Here are all three at Tuija's place, playing with little Matilda:
We obviously need to buy Nikolas a baseball glove and a real baseball. Pretty good improvisation from his part for now, I have to say--a cloth octopus as a glove and a cloth baseball!
Nikolas still enjoys the swings. He is completely comfortable with the regular backless swings for older kids, but he usually chooses baby swings anyway, and he asks me to swing him as high as I can and never stop pushing!
Our cutie, ready for a walk with mommy: