Chair & Chair Alike, & a Friend's Birthday

Amazingly, Ella and Nate are weeks away from their second birthday. Today they got an early present from Grandma and Grandpa T. -- kid chairs with their names on them! Nate and Ella really love them and already spent a lot of time in them today. Here are some shots:

The unveiling:

















Pretty comfortable!













Happy Nate:













Happy Ella:














Yesterday our big activity was a birthday party for good buddy Kian at the Children's Museum:

Birthday feast:













Ella with birthday boy Kian:













Trying out the Children's Museum's fire truck:































Settling in for story time:

















Nate on the move:

Note from the editor

Below Nate is pictured with a jaguar, not a leopard. My deeper investigation concludes that the jaguar is bigger and is native to the western hemisphere.* I guess I should stop telling Nate and Ella that he is a leopard. I was wrong after all (takes a lot to say that). Here is the conversation I had with another mom at the zoo last week.

Me, "Look Nate, a leopard!"
Other mom, "I think it is a jaguar"
Me, "I think they are the same thing. Look at the pretty leopard Ella!"

*Thank you Wikipedia for the clarification.

The Zoo

Last weekend Grandma and Papa T were in town and we all went to the zoo (Uncle Kevin joined us).


Nate and the penquins.


Nate and the leopard (jaguar? is there a difference?)


Nate with Grandma and Papa T.

As I am uploading these I realize we didn't get many shots of Ella. Rest assured, she was there. Ella loves the zoo but sometimes "gets scary" at the animals and ends up spending a lot of time in the wagon. Here is a cute pic of both kids.

Summer PJs

Tonight is one of the first really warm nights of the year. Nate and Ella are ready in their new lighter PJs, provided by Grandma T.!

Fathers Day Weekend 2010

Hello and happy Fathers Day to everyone! I've been blessed with a very nice day, which included getting to chat on the phone with my own dad and spending lots of time with Karin and the kids.

Here's a shot of Nate and Ella from today -- almost 22 months old now. Below is a shot from yesterday, of them checking out the penguins at the zoo.

Lindsay gets her nurse's pin

Congrats to Lindsay, our super-nanny, who graduated this past weekend with her nursing degree! Nate and Ella were in attendance at the pinning ceremony. We love Lindsay. She has been with us since the twins were six weeks old and she is definitely part of the family. Nate and Ella are crazy about her. Not sure how much longer we'll have her as a nanny as she heads out into the post-college world. But we plan to always have her as a close friend!

Here's the whole gang:













Lindsay with Ella














Lindsay with Nate:














And in these shots, Nate and Ella chow down on pizza at the after-party:

Visit from cousin Dan, food challenges, updates & more

We had an unexpected but great visit from my nephew Dan last night. It was great to see him and I think he liked seeing Nate and Ella. They had changed quite a bit since the last time he saw them. Here's a shot of Dan with Nate:














Ella is as goofy as ever. She flirts with older neighborhood boys, uses phrases like "Are you a top banana"? and "To the mall!" Sometimes she shouts out random things like "Chickens!" or "Aunt Jayne!" Tonight was a particularly rough night on the dinner front:















Nate seems to be fighting off his latest cold. He has made up a ton of ground on Ella in terms of identifying and saying letters. He loves wearing jeans and does a little shimmy of joy whenever a treat is on its way. He also isn't exactly Emily Post yet when it comes to table manners:















Here's is a picture from cleaner times: