week ending aug 31, 2008:

This week the kids and Grammy Carole and I went on a car trip. We stopped by Great Granddad and Grammy Elaine’s in Wilmington for lunch, then headed up to my cousin Jeff’s house in NJ for a 35th anniversary party for my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Skip. During the drive up we learned for sure that Chloe does have motion sickness. She had virtually stopped complaining about her belly since starting the Nexium, but about an hour into the trip she actually threw up. When we stopped for lunch we gave her a ¼ Dramamine and she was fine for the remaining 2 hours of the drive. Jeff’s daughter Maura is 9 months younger than Alex and Chloe and they all got along very well. The twins were sad to have to leave on Sunday morning and Alex said he wants us to move to NJ. Aunt Nancy pointed out that it is impressive how well the twins handled playing and sleeping in strange surroundings, and she’s right.
Last week I talked about how Chloe has taken well to learning to write her numbers and how Alex got quickly frustrated and wanted to quit. This week I noticed that they have taken opposite rolls in their bike riding, ie Alex has taken well to practicing riding his bike and Chloe gets quickly frustrated and wants to quit. Chloe fell off her bike almost a year ago, bloodied her knees on the pavement, and ever since has been very nervous about biking. For a while she would only ride her tricycle. Then I coaxed her into riding her bike if I held onto the handlebars the whole time. A few weeks ago I bribed her with knee and elbow pads to get her to ride without me holding on, but she is still very nervous and won’t ride faster than a snail’s pace. We never see other kids riding around here, so there really isn’t any incentive for her to try. The picture is of the inside of our video cabinet. There are over 100 children’s videos most of which were hand-me-downs or presents, but the amazing thing is that the twins can recognize nearly all the movies by the boxes even though they don’t know how to read yet. Their ability to memorize massive amounts of information is pretty impressive. They recognize dozens of companies by their logos. I guess all this memorizing of visual information is a starting point for reading. Chloe is starting to show an interest in learning how to read and will sound out letters and try to figure out what words they are.


This is a one minute long video of Alex and Chloe at Extreme Bounce Zone in Millersville with a mele of other kids all escaping death and destruction with only inches to spare. To play the video, click on the triangle in the lower left hand corner of the picture. Alex and Chloe are wearing white shirts and Alex has blue shorts and Chloe has a light colored skirt. If you have RealPlayer you can mouse over the top of the video and "Download video" will pop-up and you can download the video and watch it in full screen size so you can actually tell which kid is which.

school orientation 2008

School orientation: Today was “orientation” at school which is essentially a meet-and-greet with the teacher and half of the class for 1 hour. The twins will attend the same preschool as last year only with a new teacher and 3 half-days per week instead of 2, so we are all pretty blasé about the whole thing. I had driven almost all of the way to the school when I realized that I’d forgotten my camera, so we drove all the way home to get it and then were 10 minutes late. Last year all the parents had cameras and many of the kids had both parents in attendance. This year I was the only parent with a camera. In the class of 14 there is one girl in their class who was in their class last year and one other girl that Chloe was friends with from waiting in the hall to be picked up after school. Also in their class is another set of twins. Their teacher this year seems friendlier and more proactive than the one last year, so I’m hoping that the kids like school better this year. At orientation Alex and Chloe played with many of the classroom toys and I facilitated some introductions to the other students. It seems that kids at this age are a little more interactive with each other rather than engaging in the “parallel play” that they did last year. The twins were very excited to see what the “class pet” is. There are 3 fish. Chloe took the initiative to ask the teacher if she could feed the fish and was rewarded for her efforts. The other kids were disappointed that they hadn’t been the first ones to think to ask.

week ending aug 24, 2008:

Week ending August 25, 2008: This week Chloe saw a different gastroenterologist who gave us a prescription for Nexium to replace the Prevacid that Chloe has been taking. Without seeing the slides from Chloe’s endoscopy (which I was unable to get before the appointment), the new doctor didn’t have anything else interesting to say.

Because the doctor is in Baltimore and we’d been planning to go to the Maryland Science Center before the summer is over, we headed over to the Inner Harbor the same day. The twins have been begging to go and it was probably their 4th or 5th time at the Science Center so they remembered many of the exhibits that they wanted to revisit, and we saw a bunch of new ones. They particularly liked excavating the bone replicas, sitting in the dinosaur foot prints, and playing with the fancy water table.

This week I set up a project for the kids to make a pretend clock and I asked them to write the numbers 1-12 on the clock. They haven’t practiced writing numbers very much but Chloe practiced a little on a piece of paper and then made her clock. Alex wouldn’t write on the clock, and after tracing one number I’d written on a piece of paper he refused to try any more. We had the same conversation we’d had a dozen times before about how it can be frustrating to try something new when you can’t do it the way you like, but practicing is the only way to get better. Alex wasn’t swayed. I told Alex that next year in kindergarten he’d have to practice writing because everyone has to learn writing in school. Alex said, “I’m not going to learn to write.” I said everyone has to learn how to write so they can get a job. Alex said, “Then I just won’t get a job. I don’t want to write, I want to be an astronaut.” It was hard not to crack up laughing at that point, but I did mention that many people want to be astronauts so he’ll have to work hard in school if he wants to get to be an astronaut. The talk didn’t change his mind that day, but the next morning Alex brought up the subject on his own and told me that he wanted to practice writing. Unfortunately we had to hurry out the door that morning, so I didn’t have time to take him up on his offer, but I’m glad he thought about it and somewhat amazed that took the talk seriously enough to remember it the following day.

Looks like I posted the pictures from the carnival, not the ones from the Science Center: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/EdgewaterCarnival

week ending aug 17, 2008:

Week ending Aug 17, 2008: This week we delved deep into the underbelly of the guinea pig world. We went to two pet stores and the SPCA. We bought and read a book about raising guinea pigs, we started acquiring guinea pig accoutrement, and we did a great deal of research about guinea pig cages. Most notable was our visit to the SPCA which had several guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, and one rat available for adoption. The small animals had a room to themselves and after providing us directions to reach the room, no one seemed concerned about our extended presence in the room, so I took each of the animals out of the cages, one at a time, and let the kids pet them all. We didn’t have any allergy or asthma attacks, so I thought that was a good sign, since the animals shed all over us. The rabbits were so big that they didn’t really fit on either of the twin’s laps. The rat named Pippin was very friendly and curious and Chloe now wants me to do rat research to see if a rat would be an appropriate pet because she liked him as much or more than the guinea pigs. One of the guinea pigs we pet was a long haired silky variety and his name was Fabio. Fabio had the unfortunate coloring of my wet hair when I pull gobs of it (covered in soap scum) out of the shower drain, so I’m glad Chloe didn’t favor him because I would have a hard time getting past that mental imagery. My favorite was a girl pig named Smiley. Before we went to the SPCA Chloe insisted that she wanted a white female because she liked the looks of the white ones in the book, and Chloe has always had a gender bias toward girls. All her stuffed animals are girls (according to Chloe), as are her baby dolls, and she announced this week that she doesn’t like boys (referring to boy children, which I’m betting her father is hoping that she holds onto this view until at least college). Anyway, after meeting Smiley, Chloe decided that a tri-color would be good too. I told Chloe that we couldn’t take Smiley home yet since we didn’t have a cage ready and the pig is really supposed to be her birthday present, so I didn’t want her to be disappointed on her birthday. Now that I’ve met some pigs, I’m pretty excited about getting a guinea pigs, so I was secretly hoping she’d say her usual “that’s ok Mommy” (that she always says when she’s arguing with me) and inform me that if she got the pig now she wouldn’t be disappointed on her birthday!
With all this guinea pig fuss, Alex decided that he wants a pet. Now he and Chloe fight over who gets to feed the cat because Alex wants to prove himself pet-worthy. At the pet store Alex fell in love with the mice and decided that I was getting one for him. I told him that I didn’t want a mouse to get loose in our house because I didn’t think we’d be able to find it. We’ve read that guinea pigs like to have companions, so I figured that 2 guinea pigs wouldn’t be appreciably more trouble than 1. Alex insisted that he did not want a guinea pig, and suggested that a fish wouldn’t be able to get away. I conceded that a fish might be an acceptable pet, but we aren’t done with the debate yet.


Our pictures from a very nice visit to the Smithsonian on Friday (we didn't get any pictures with the dinosaur bones because the kids were too nervous to allow me to step far enough away from them to get a shot with all those big scary dinosaur skeletons around): http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/SmithsonianNaturalHistoryMuseum

week ending aug 10, 2008:

Week ending Aug 10, 2008: This week I made a few choices that may prove, in the long run, to be unsound. My first choice was that I agreed to let Chloe have a pet. After the Great Pet Debate in the car on the way home from OBX, I had told Chloe that she had to the feed the cat everyday if she wanted a pet. Well, she actually did it. Every day. She kept asking when we’d talk again about getting a pet and I kept saying “not until after the Chincoteague vacation”. Well, just about as soon as we walked in the door getting home from the vacation, Chloe started asking about pets again. I told her that I would have to research what kinds of pets are good for 5 year olds and that we’d get a pet by the time her birthday is here. After a smattering of research, I think a guinea pig is the front runner. I think I may regret this decision if we end up with an ignored pet that I have to feed and clean up after, but we’ll see. Chloe does seem to be more responsible about pets than I was as a kid.

My second possibly unsound decision this week was to sign up as the Sunday school teacher for the 3-8 year olds in the fall. Since Alex and Chloe have been going to Sunday school for 2 years now, I feel that it is time that we give back to the institution. The reason I may regret my decision is that I have some pretty serious social anxiety and being in front of a group, even a group of kids, does not agree with me. My plan is to just suck it up and plug through. I did a trial run this week and we only had 4 kids with 3 grown-ups in charge. Everything went very smoothly and I still felt like I’d been through the ringer afterwards.

The children’s birthdays have been a hot topic of discussion this week. They know that after my birthday, we start planning their party. This week they’ve each picked out their themes (Wall-E for Chloe, and Speed Racer for Alex), they’ve decided the guest list, and we’ve designed the cakes. We had some points of contention, for instance they wanted to invite as many friends as Natalie did (20+) and we decided that 6 boys and 6 girls was enough (including the 4 cousins that we always invite). Another point of contention was that they wanted the venue to be Chuck-E-Cheese. I can barely stand Chuck-E-Cheese when the place is almost empty, there is no way I was going to host a party of 14 five year olds there. So we settled on our backyard as the venue without too much of a fight. Next I need to create some invitations and pick a date.

Also this week, Chloe saw a picture of the Michelin man and asked 20 questions about who he is and why he looks that way. I didn’t have many answers, so I looked it up at this site: http://www.bobkestrut.com/2006/03/05/just-who-is-that-jolly-puffy-toff/