Treasure Island beach vacation

Baka and Nikolas took off for St Pete's the day after Christening. Deko, babies and I joined them a few days later, actually the same day our nanny, teta Divna, flew back home! We'll miss her a lot!
Our condo was right on the beach so it was no problem getting the kids down. I even managed to carry the twins back and forth by myself, while baka and deko took care of the canopy that provided wonderful shade so that we could practically stay at the beach all day!
Nikolas and baka were best buddies, swimming in the ocean, playing in the sand, chasing and feeding the birds, looking at kites that some people flew nearby (Nikolas kept searching for them and talking about them, but as soon as he saw one in the air, he'd get scared of it, we never figured out why??? Same way he gets scared of helium baloons when they come close...), looking at jet-skis (as Nikolas calls them, decki ('guys' in Serbocroatian)).
Good place to learn how to eat cherries and throw the pits out without making mommy have to clean up:
Baka also took him to the swimming pool too to let him jump in the water. He figured out that if he pulls his knees to his chest, he won't sink as deep. He still doesn't mind being completely submerged.
He is such a boy: when he talks about a kite, for example, the story would be 'Nikolas vidio zmaja. Zmaj leti visoko, onda padne, kaboom, i pukne' meaning 'Nikolas saw a kite. The kite flies high, then kaboom, fall down and breaks.' This is followed with the hand motions, up and down and bang for the fall. Everything now has to fall and, kaboom, break.
He is learning the song, 'Vi, vi, vi'. His version is 'Vi, vi, vi/Vi, vi, vi/Na strazi smo mi/Ko j' bez puske/Nece lovac dodje. Hehehehe! (laughs!)
One funny event:
Nikolas slept in the same room with deko. One day when he was supposed to be taking a nap, he decided to rummage through deko's luggage. There he found an unopened bag of cookies from an airplane--he opened the bag precisely along the edge and ate all of the cookies. How he did it, none of us have any clue!
Sonja and Michael were drowsed by the ocean air, sounds and views that they slept really well during the day. Usually they'd sleep for a hour or more at the beach so that I could swim :), and then again after lunch, for 2-3 hours at a time. Sonja has been in a great mood upon awakening: she yelled her a-ha's and brrrr's and just plain screamed with happiness every time she woke up (including at 6/7am....). Michael has kept his voice lower than Sonja's but we heard his ma's and ba's a lot too. He's been more active physically, turning over so skillfully and pulling his butt up in the air that we are just waiting for a moment that we can officially call a crawl.
Sometimes he makes it almost impossible to hold him down and change his diaper.
Another thing with Michael, he's been waking up to eat 4x/day for a few days! Must be a start of a major growth spurt.

Twins' Christening and Moore family reunion in Disney World

We had a busy week: first a couple of days in Disney World in Orlando for the Moore family reunion, and then having everyone over at our place for the twins's Christening.
The twins were not big fans of the park--Sonja wanted to be carried most of the time, including pretty much during all meals as well, and back at the hotel Nikolas was bouncing off the walls from all the excitement that he wouldn't let his little brother and sister take proper naps. Well, he definitely has a blast! On top of spending time with his numerous cousins, grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles at the swimming pool outside, he also got to visit a few places at the park: It's a Small World and Pirates of the Caribbean rides and the Hunted House. At night he saw fireworks for the first time (that he can remember, at least) and they scared him but he still keeps talking about them.
Mommy with the kids:

Daddy and Nikolas on their way out of It's a Small World ride:
The following are the pictures from one of the family dinners at the park:
Grandma with Nikolas and Brian:
Nikolas with the big boys:Mommy holding Sonja, by default:
All five of us in one picture, amazing:
Nikolas showing off his table manners (who said, pass the noodles?)
Back at the house, baka, Sanja and deko arrived:
Daddy is making cevapcici for the Christening party on Saturday. The three judges are carefully watching him work (he did an awesome job!):
Cevapcici are ready:
Aunt Cynthia with Sonja:Teta Divna's last few days at our house :(
Sanja and her godson:
The trio:

Nikolas's activities

We've been hanging out with Tuija, Beata, Jyoti and their kids a lot, either at our place or Tuija's.
Tuija and I:
The whole playgroup:
Nikolas and his girlfriend Olivia:

Movies:
On Wednesdays we've been going to kids's movies: these were Nikolas's first movies, not to mention his first visits to a movie theater. He patiently sat through them for the first hour, and then, he'd suddenly decide he had seen enough and he'd ask to go home. A couple of times we extended the movie trip by meeting daddy for coffee in the neighborhood or going out to lunch with Jyoti, Aagneya and daddy too.

Pretense play:
At home, Nikolas has been getting creative with his pretense play. The pillows on the couches are his butterflies that he flies above his head, or trucks, the bar stools are either trucks or blocks that he arranges to make trains etc., his food pieces are trucks or dogs or kites.... He takes the baby blanket that's folded to be carried like a bag and says, Nikolas ide u gym (Nikolas is going to the gym.) He also sometimes puts on Robb's baseball hat and his work shoes and says, Nikolas ide na posao (Nikolas is going to work.) What he also started doing is when he sees a picture of something edible in his books or when he pretends that a pillow is a cake, he'll lick it. He's been licking Sonja and Michael's faces too... I don't know what's up with all that licking....
Here are all three (Sonja and Michael must have gotten good licks by Nikolas as I was taking pictures):
Here is Nikolas, 'going to work':
On the days when pillows are just pillows, they are good for a pillow fight:

Language:
His sentences are getting longer and more complex and his vocabulary is expending faster than I can follow. Sometimes I wonder where he learned some word, for example, we fed carrots to some horses with Kathy and her kid, and after that he said, Nikolas jase konja (Nikolas is riding a horse.) I have no idea where he learned the word 'ride' since he's never done it and we were just feeding the horses. He said to me once, pulling a chair next to mine, Nikolas ce da sjedne pored mame da mama cita knjigu (Nikolas will sit next to mommy so that mommy will read a book), which I thought was impressively long.

Sports:
He dribbles his mini basketball like a pro! Again, no idea where he learned it (he never watches TV), but just a few months ago he was still practicing simply catching a ball that was thrown to him, and now he is bouncing it off the floor and catching it 9/10 times.

New tricks:
During naptime he calls us saying that he pooped and needed to be changed when he hasn't pooped, just to get attention. Sometimes he does poop though...
When I'm about to pick up the babies to feed them, he regularly yells, Nikolas hoce da jede, ostavi bebu (Nikolas wants to eat, leave the baby!)
At night I always carry Nikolas to the light switch to let him turn the light off, and as he brings his finger close to the switch, he always says, mama?, prompting me to reach for the switch, and when I do, he then quickly turns the light off himself, giggling. Same with the garage door switch. He loves to joke around! He does this with the food too, offers a piece and just as you are about to eat it from his hand he pulls it away and giggles.

Potty training, day 3

We've tried so many different things to get Nikolas potty trained (at least to start the training): from asking him to sit on the potty, to forcing him to sit there for up to a couple of hours at a time, to entertaining him with a potty training video while sitting on the potty, to just letting him watch the video without sitting on the potty... and nothing worked. He just wasn't interested.
Then, three days ago, he simply decided to take his pajamas and diaper off during his nap time and to play half-naked. We caught him, dressed him, put him back in bed, and he did it again, both time after he peed. That night he did it for a third time and luckily I checked on him and dressed him again.
The next day Nikolas's pooped diaper got a little stuck as Nikolas tried to remove it during nap time, so that there was a bit of mess to clean up--but it became clear to us that a dirty diaper finally started to bother him! So now we let him run around the house with a bare butt so that every time he needs to go to the toilet, he gets uncomfortable doing it on the go, so he runs to the potty (even if it's just gas, funny!). He obviously hasn't mastered the control of his bladder--he might pee in 20min intervals. And a couple of times while was was strapped in his highchair, he peed there forgetting that his butt was bare. No other accidents otherwise... this is a good start!

Great-uncle Mico and great-aunt Lela came to visit us (while Nikolas was flashing his bare bottom in training):

Mommy always keeps Nikolas company at the dinner table--if I sit elsewhere, he orders me 'Sjedi tu!', pointing at my chair at the table.

Sonja turned over, Nikolas is taking swim lessons

Two nights ago Sonja woke me up at 5am crying.... I considered letting her cry and go back to sleep because she had already eaten around 1 or 2am so really she needed to be trained to sleep until 7 or 8am, but I gave in, and then I found she had a real reason for crying--she turned over onto her belly! She was also turned 180 degrees on the bed, her head where her feet used to be. We've had her sleeping in the playpen since she outgrew the bassinet, but the playpen mattress is too soft and wobbly for her now and makes it more difficult to move and turn so that wakes her up more. It's time to set up the other crib in the bedroom, which we still keep in the living room as they daytime bed.
Michael now sometimes turns onto his right side for a change.
When Michael wakes up and gets tired of looking around and supporting himself on his forearms, he starts yelling really loudly, calling for attention. As soon as I touch his back, he starts giggling and yelling at the same time, and kicking hard with arms and legs, excited that he'll be picked up. Sonja, on the other hand, is normally on her back and when I approach to get her, she gives me the biggest smile and usually an excited shrill, and starts banging her legs against the mattress the same way Nikolas did when he was her size, and waving her arms. When I pick her up, she immediately pulls her knees up very high and glues herself around my waist like a little koala. If I let go of her, she'd most likely stay attached!

Nikolas has been taking swim lessons with Aagneya, Abbie and another girl from their apartment complex. While the instructor spends a lot of time singing songs with kids in a circle and getting them to dip their faces in the water, Nikolas is completely bored with that stuff and asks me to jump in the water from the edge of the pool instead. He has no fear of water. Dipping his face in the water and blowing bubbles has been his bath-time activity for a while, nothing new there. It's much more fun to climb out of the pool, hold my hands and jump in the water. I let him get completely submerged to see how he'd react: if he'd blow air by himself or hold air or swallow water, so I'd know what we'll need to work on, and surprisingly, he seems to be blowing bubbles through his nose because he hasn't gotten any water in his nose after numerous jumps! I saw some bubbles coming out and they looked like they were coming from his nose. Anyway, I can get him to kick with his legs, but he likes to hold on to me with his arms so we have to work on scooping water with his hands. In the middle of kicking with his legs and moving through the pool he likes to suddenly turn onto his back and dip the back of his head in the water just enough so his face won't get wet.
No matter how cold he gets in the water, he enjoys it so much that he won't come out by himself!
By the time I've finished this blog entry, the lessons have ended. The result: Nikolas is enjoying his newly discovered love for water, especially jumping and splashing in it, and, surprisingly to me, he has memorized the songs that the instructor has been singing at every lesson, which Nikolas kept ignoring every time ('The wheels of the bus' is the one he keeps singing at home now).

Twins' 4-month checkup

Sonja
weight: 13lbs 10oz (50%)
height: 24 3/4" (50-75%)

Michael:
weight: 12lbs 12oz (10%)
height: 24 1/4" (25%)

Teething (all three)

Two major events with the babies:
1. Sonja and Michael are both struggling with teething pains.
2. Last night, for the first time, neither Sonja nor Michael woke up to eat in the middle of the night from 9pm until 8am. (As I read this blog a couple of weeks later, I have to correct myself and note that the all-night sleep was an isolated event--they still wake up at 12/1am and then again at 5:30/6am, usually only Sonja for the second feeding).

Teething or what?
Still on the subject of teething, Nikolas has 10 teeth in the bottom jaw and 5 in the upper right, 4 in the upper left with the 5th just starting to come out.
Nikolas's cuteness is proportional to the amount of attention he is getting. When the babies get the most of it and mommy isn't able to grow five arms to handle everyone, he yells, cries, hits his head against the floor....he can also sneak up to a baby in an instant when no one is looking and slap it out of jealousy. When he knows he'll be criticized, he says 'Budi dobar!' ('Be good!'), which is what we tell him way too frequently.
Our major focus is on the balance between babies' needs and Nikolas's entertainment. When he is happy, he is the best kid in the world! And really, it's not very hard to make him feel attended to: just talk with him about the animals in the backyard or fish at the pond where we took him fishing (where he might have actually killed a few fish by smacking the fishing pole on the water), read him a book (for the past week he's been sitting more peacefully when one reads him a book and going through pages and talking about the pictures instead of climbing on the reader--he also selects poems or stories and says, we've read that one, read me this one, etc.), play some music and dance with him, tickle him and talk with him on the floor at his eye level. I've discovered that being at his eye level changes the depth of our communication: he feels more grown-up so he makes his tone more serious and calm and his sentences and stories extra long: 'Nikolas ide u sobu da se igra sa blokovima'(Nikolas is going to the room to play with blocks,) or 'Nikolas je vidio orlove u zoloskom vrtu i pauna sa pilicima' (Nikolas saw eagles in the zoo, and a peacock with chicks.)
He is *constantly* talking or singing. Now not only does he recite songs and poems in Serbocroatian but he has also memorized several Mother Goose songs that daddy reads to him often. He also likes to show off counting to 20, and to be funny he invents little rhymes like those nicknames that he has made for us plus more that doesn't always make much sense but it makes him and us laugh (he'll point out that it's funny in case we are not sure what he is saying!)
We find Nikolas on every piece of furniture that he can climb, and he also likes pulling all the pillows off the couches and piling them on the floor to make a little gym for himself. Every now and then he'll throw in a 'yoga' pose (this is what he learned as yoga almost a year ago! I plan to teach him some real stuff.)
Nikolas enjoys being helpful. He'll pass me a clean diaper while I change a baby, and he'll take the dirty one and throw it in trash (picture below). He'll also pick up his toys and put them in designated boxes when asked to. Oh, and he'll take my coffee mug and put it on the dining table when I'm done. He looks so proud when he helps out :) He walks with a special bounce :)