Natural Disasters, Kisses and Fist Bumps...

17 months old
Wow…that was fast! It’s almost September which marks the half birthday of our teeny-tiny twosome Astral and Defy! The boys will be 18 months old in a couple of days! That’s a year and a half and also only 6 more short months until they are 2…

This has been quite an exciting month. We’ve had family visit from the Midwest, an earthquake and a hurricane of sorts. Astral and Defy would have slept through the earthquake if it wasn’t for daddy yelling an expletive when the house started shaking. They went right back to sleep though and had no clue what was going on. Fortunately everyone was fine and only a few things were broken from falling off of shelves, etc. I was at lunch with a colleague in Arlington, and it actually took a while before we realized it was a natural disaster rather than a man-made one. People in the DC Metro area are somewhat paranoid…talk about PANIC. When we got back to the office, the building had been evacuated and people were just beginning to roll back in.

This past weekend hurricane Irene made her debut, but didn’t really hit our area badly (yeah…no coast here), but since the media hyped it up people were running around, frantically clearing grocery store shelves, and preparing for the apocalypse. We had a lot of rain, some high winds but thankfully no power outages in our neighborhood. Tree branches were everywhere, but besides that no other sign of a hurricane.

Cafe Green - Duk Bok Gi, Jobche , Quinoa Burger, Chocolate Shake and Spicy Green Juice w/ Organic Vodka

Lucas and I have been together for almost 10 years and this month celebrated our 5^th year of marriage! We worked together when I was an undergraduate and our first date was a keg party the day after Valentine’s Day. After that one night we were inseparable! We celebrated a nice dinner out with just us for the first time since I was hospitalized for strict bed rest at 28 weeks pregnant. It was so weird not having the boys with us, since we’ve chosen to do a more attachment style of parenting. Lucas' family was in town and took care of the boys while we were out. We dined at this great 100% vegan restaurant in DC, Café Green. The food was ridiculously delicious!

Astral and Defy aren’t eating as much as usual right now. We’ve been assured that this is a normal phase that many toddlers go through. They will eat all the fruit you can put in front of them, but are pretty picky with their other usual favorites. Thankfully they still love their smoothies and green juice, so we pack them full of green veggies, legumes, seeds, flax oil and other fats like olive oil or avocado. I am still nursing, and they also drink about 20 plus ounces of enriched coconut milk a day. Star and Sunny are enjoying this phase because they get all the rejected food that Astral and Defy throw on the floor, but mommy and daddy aren’t quite as happy about it!

the tofu scrambles they took a few bites of and then fed to the pups

They are talking so much more now; they basically mimic whatever we say (if they are in the mood) in their baby talk language of course. It is so cute to hear their little vocal cords at work. They are starting to say the names of people which is totally heart melting.

They’ve recently mastered the fist bump. A few weeks ago a cousin tried to give them a fist bump instead of a high-five. No one had tried it before and ever since they’ve been fist bumping. Defy just holds his fist out to everyone he meets. It is super freaking adorable. I am sure there’ll be many secret handshakes in their future.

Astral is our stubborn boy and really won’t do anything by request right now; they’ve traded personalities yet again. He will look just look at us like, "yea right", and continue doing whatever he was doing (so like mommy). Defy will shower us with kisses, but a kiss from Astral is a rare and beautiful little treat. Defy actually kisses everything from the phone while talking to one grandma or another to illustrations in his books. Speaking of books, they are such little book worms! Sometimes when you walk into the room they will just be sitting right next to one another, each with a book on their lap. They’ll be side by side, intensely eyeing the pages like they are reading about some complicated theory, then all of a sudden they’ll switch books and continue "their studies". It’s just too much!

They also love to draw, color, throw balls, run from one end of the room to the other (sometimes high-stepping), and ride their tricycles. Their feet can almost reach the pedals on their tricycles. The packaging said they were made for 3 years and up, but I think they’re almost tall enough to get cruising on their own.

Timing is always a challenge with multiples when there is one parent on duty, but today everything ran smoothly and Lucas was able to take them to their first baby concert this morning. They love music and dancing so we thought they might enjoy it. They weren’t at all thrilled with it; Lucas enjoyed it way more than they did. They didn’t dance as expected and Astral only clapped once. Yes, just one single clap. Defy cried a bit and they hung really close to daddy the entire time. They are off and on when it comes to large crowds. They each seem to prefer their brother over any other playmate, which is normal with identical twins.

Astral had his first splinter on Sunday and we had to remove it with tweezers. It was a two person job and was just awful. Astral is also the same little guy that a couple of weeks ago took a spill down some concrete steps out in the neighborhood and scraped his little nose and upper lip area. It was so terrible! It bled a little and then looked raw for a week or so. It is healing up nicely, but is still pinkish. This happened while I was at the office, but if I was there at the time I’m sure I would have panicked and unnecessarily rushed him to the ER (another reason Lucas is a great choice for the stay at home parent). This little injury happened as a result of a new found independence. He wanted to hold the handrail on his own and walk down the steps like a big boy. It is super hard to know that letting go may equal falling down at times, but we realize that we just might have to let go in order for them to go for IT…

16 months old