The twins at 29 months

Here’s the latest monthly update on the twins.

Feeding.

I have noticed a slight improvement on Eric’s appetite on certain days. I haven’t stopped to check if there’s a pattern on the days that he eats more, and maybe I should do that. Also, he seems to eat quite well at nursery, so I know he is not malnourished. It’s just so frustrating to get him to eat on some days! He’s now gone off toast with butter. Like normal sliced bread with butter. He will eat toasted baguette with garlic and oil, and he loves it with tomato (Spanish style “pantumaca”), but he says he “not like butter”. *Sigh*

At least I am happy that he loves fruit and he will happily eat apples, pears, oranges, lots of melon and even bananas (although not so often). He likes vegetables too and he always eats his broccoli, green beans, peas and carrots. He’s not so keep on potatoes, I don’t know why, and he never eats mash, but will eat *some* chips.

Something else I’ve noticed is that if you give him pre-cut meat he will, more often than not, refuse it. However, give him meat on the bone and he loves that. So now we always buy chicken legs and he eats it all. The same with lamp chops: if you cut the meat for him, he won’t eat it, but if you give him the whole piece he will chomp it down.

And Elisa, you know… she eats everything. All the time. And then some more. Just as an afternoon snack the other day, she had an apple and THREE yoghurts. And she would have had a fourth one had I not said No.

 

Sleeping.

The bed time routine is still working quite well. However in the last couple of weeks or so, our timings have been slipping and they now don’t go down to sleep until well past 8:30 at night! I am not entirely sure how it’s happened, but we used to get them upstairs to start the bath at around 7 o’clock, now it’s rare if we’re upstairs before 7:30. Also, now they always sit in the potty for a wee wee before the bath and that always takes 10 minutes longer than expected…

However, they are sleeping very well. Our monitor broke after our last visit to the grandparents and we haven’t felt the need to replace it because we are almost positive that they don’t make any noises at night (and if they did, we would most probably “let them cry it out” anyway). Since they go late to bed, they are also waking up later. Normally at around 8. Thank goodness Jon works from home and we are flexible with our morning routines! Although perhaps that is our big mistake. If we had to be up at 7 everyday and out of the door by 8, then there wouldn’t be a chance that the kids would go to bed so late! But, hey, I am honestly not complaining. I really like our lazy mornings!

They are still sleeping naps. And they need them. We have had a couple of grumpy/difficult bedtimes in the last couple of weeks because one or the other was too tired because hadn’t slept a nap. I still struggle to understand how they went through a whole week in Spain without a single nap and here they need them so much!

 

Development.

Elisa’s speech is improving so much. She actually has got so many words, but because she still has her dummy she tends to not speak so much. But then, when she doesn’t have it, you can’t shut her up! She also loves singing. It’s actually quite funny: if I start singing a song, she will sing along very nicely with me. However, if she is the one who starts singing, she doesn’t let anyone sing along with her! She will say “no mummy, don’t do that!” and wait for you to shut up before starting again. Too cute.

They are doing so many things that I don’t really know what’s a milestone… So I’ve gone and checked the milestone chart from the baby centre website and these are the milestones for 29-30 month olds:

• Brushes teeth with help. Elisa, most definitely. She actually prefers to brush her teeth herself, and when she’s “done”, then we finish it. Eric, on the other hand, does not like having his teeth brushed and it’s a fight every day to get it done. If he WANTED to do it, though, he is more than capable. He’s brushed his own teeth a couple of times, just as well as Elisa does it. It’s just that he doesn’t like it.
• Draws a vertical line. Yes, they’ve both been able to draw a vertical line for a while now. They even draw circles (of a fashion, obviously, but you can tell they are drawing circles). I don’t watch them much when they are painting on a piece of paper, however I do watch them use the blackboard and vertical lines occur all the time.
• Puts on t-shirt. Mmmm, I must admit that I don’t know if they can do this, as I have never let them get dressed on their own. They can take them off, no problem, but I don’t know if they would know how to put it on. They know where the head goes and where the arms go, but would they be able to put it all together? I will let them try soon.
• Washes hands. Kind of. I fill the sink for them and apply the soap to their hands, and they kind of rub their hands together and then dip their hands into the sink again. Does that count? If their hands are proper dirty, then I have to rub the soap, otherwise it would just be a “hand soak”.
• Balances on one foot. Again, this is something that I haven’t tried with them. I don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to do it: they climb and jump very well. So I will put it on my list of things to try.
• Names one colour. Dah!, they know all the colours! They have known for quite a while as well! In fact, one of their favourite games when we are walking in the street, is to tell me the colour of every single car we come across…
• Names one friend. Yes, they know all the names of all the kids in their class. And when you ask them who their friends are they always say whoever has been their favourite friend that day/week (usual suspects are Mason, Isaac, Isabel and Marc)

 

Socialising

We have met with my friend Graciela and her son Marc a few times in the past month and the twins have been playing very nicely with Marc. Marc is only three months younger than the twins and has just recently moved to the Bumblebees class, so they see him quite often at nursery too. So it’s nice to see that they are starting to recognise friends outside the nursery too. For Halloween we will be going to a party by one of the NCT girls and we will be seeing all the kids again… I’d like to see how they behave with them next time, since it took them so long to break the ice last time!

Socialising between the two of them is changing a bit. They are fighting a bit more, arguing more, and now (quite annoyingly) they have also started hitting each other. They don’t really hit hard, so they won’t really hurt each other, but I don’t want this hitting to get any worse and get to a point where they are actually going to get hurt. I mentioned it to Anna (the nursery room leader) just the other day, so she is going to keep an eye and see if there’s something she can also do.

 

Health.

We have just had a couple of weeks of general colds and runny noses. Nothing too serious, though. No bad nights due to it, nothing that a dose of calpol couldn’t deal with. It can’t have been too bad when we haven’t been called by the nursery to pick them up. With the general cold came nasty poops and lots of snot. But we’re all getting much better now.

—

In other news, just a couple of weekends ago, we left the children with grandma and grandad, whilst Jon and I went for a night away at a hotel. We chose a hotel that was only about 45 minutes away, in case we had to drop everything and go back to Ratley for an emergency. However, the kids were great and *hardly* missed us at all. Jon and I left on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday at midday. It was the perfect length of time for the first time, although I must admit that I wish we had stayed for two nights, but by Sunday morning you could tell that the twins were starting to wonder where we were and to miss us (we called them to let them know that we were on our way back)

We will be repeating this again in December when we go to the company’s Christmas party. We’ll leave the kids with the grandparents and Jon and I will continue our journey to Stockport and spend the night there.

This is one of my most favourite photos of the twins of the last month, taken outside the nursery, one day that they were refusing to get into the car!