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.