It's Just a Number...Isn't It?

The tiny people in my life are getting bigger. They might just equal One Otter now.

Maybe.

Together they weigh 33 lbs 3 oz. (Are we there yet, Misty?)

Emma says, "Lady, you make dis baby?" Yes, that's Otter standing next to Emma. They're back!

The funny thing about raising twins is always having another baby of the same age around to compare with constantly. Is Logan small (Logan says he's not "too small", he's "easily portable!")? Is Emma big (Hah! Not hardly! Caitlin was a Chunk-a-lunka at this same age.)? I don't actually worry about Logan or Emma's weight and height stats until after the doctor's appointment. When you see those percentiles getting smaller you have to start to wonder just what's going on, especially when surrounded by friends whose children are all in the 95th to 100th percentile rankings. Shouldn't all that height be rubbing off on my kids?

Then again, I did mention that if you want to be my friend you must be at least 5'9" to ride, didn't I?

Perhaps I just have to accept the fact that Eric and I just make smaller babies and be done with it. It's not as if Caitlin is looming over her peers.

Maybe I'm just not convinced that it is me who is short, but y'all who are tall. Well, except for Heather. She gets special dispensation for being shorter than me. I blame it on the introductory chai.* She swept me off my feet! She's really cute! Um...someone had to finally be shorter than me?

Yeah, maybe that last one.

Anyway...doctors.

You know you're a worry wart when you have to check in with your pediatrician to find out if you should be worried and then when they say all professional-like "No.", you worry anyway.

I blame it on Logan's tendency to be easily distracted when nursing (The weight gain - or lack thereof - not the worry wart thing.). If we're not in a quiet room, he'd rather be crawling around and getting into things than nursing. Emma is quite happy to take her share and half of his, which explains which explains why she's a whopping three ounces heavier than he is. The issue seems to be that even though they're still nursing and eating solid food, all of the crawling, their weight gain has started to taper a bit, which is expected once babies get mobile. Yet here I am, looking at numbers and percentiles and feeling a wee bit worried. However, when I look at my children, they look just fine.

Maybe I'll just stick with that.

"I like da foods. I eat more. Nom! Nom! Nom!"

Look at those thighs! Those are edible baby thighs.

Emma and Logan go for their first swing in the mountains.

* This won't make any sense unless you're Heather, so never you mind!

I Can't Remember

I can't remember what it's like to be pregnant anymore. To automatically have a place to put my hands, after spending months wearing pants without pockets. To have a shelf that caught any excess food I wasn't able to slip between my lips.

I can't remember what it was like to pat my belly and have someone, or two, respond back with kicking or poking or prodding.

I can't remember all of the pain and suffering and aches. I can't remember how existing on one and a half hours of sleep felt. (For which I am eternally grateful.)

I can't remember the pregnant walk. The rolling sailor gait, the wide waddle that let everyone around you know that you were Comin' Through!

I can't remember constantly overheating, contracting, twingeing, swelling, and getting nauseated. I can see my feet whenever I'd like and touch my toes from a standing position, should I feel so inclined. I don't bump into doors with my belly button anymore, either.

I can't remember what it's like to breathe for someone else, to pee for someone else, to pump someone else's blood through my body.

I can't remember feeling the constant need to pee. The breathlessness, or the constant fear of falling down. Weebles wobble, but sometimes they do fall down and occasionally get stuck.

I can't remember what it felt like to constantly pet my own belly and attend to all of the gymnastics taking place inside. There's no one left to respond to a gentle poke or pat...inside. No one abruptly tests my bladder capacity anymore, either. (Have I mentioned peeing enough for you yet? Gah! It's a constant of pregnancy.)

As I stood there looking at the reflection of my sad, deflated, melted belly in the mirror, I realized that I'd forgotten all of that. Feelings that seemed utterly memorable and unforgettable at the time, I've forgotten. I've forgotten the body memory, the shape of things, the pressures. Once those babies were happily, joyfully decanted, I started a slow journey back to "normal". I'm not so certain I'll ever see normal again, but I'm a lot closer to my body's version of "normal" than 9.5 months ago.

I've lost the pregnant belly. Forever. Now I have loose, saggy baggy skin as a constant reminder of the last known location of Twins. Evicted, 9/27/07. The giant beachball is no more.

I'm grateful for all it held. Three children; two births. Sixty-five pounds gone. Fifty-two inches around, marking the boundary between me, the twins and all the rest of the world. I'm still amazed skin can stretch so far and yet not burst. I appreciate being able to see my feet again and to fit into regular clothes once more.

But how could I forget what it feels like? After all that, how can it be so easy to forget?

Beneath the Cherry Tree

Remember when I began revamping my garden bed and it started out looking like this?

Well, now it looks like this:

Finished product? Naaaah!

I had put in a bunch (Where "bunch" = hundred or so.) of plants a couple of weeks back, and then when Heather came over again, stuffed another bunch in there. Then I had Eric fix yet another sprinkler head (Those suckers seem to break every year. Not the same ones, mind you, but some random number of sprinkler heads, all around the yard. It's as if they're built to randomly self destruct. Planned obsolescence anyone?) in order to get everything happily watered after a group of plants died off mysteriously. Well, OK, not so mysteriously.

Section detail.

As usual around Chez Hatchet, these plants were started from seed and were originally intended for the cut flower scene. However, since I was running out of time and energy to put them into a bed that needed more work than this one did, it was easy enough to poke them into soil that didn't need much more effort than making holes.

And we made a lot of holes.

However, we aren't the only ones making holes. I discovered green bees also making holes in the soil of this bed. Turns out that I have a lot of native pollinators zipping around through my property and that there are certain bees that are ground dwellers. This one just happened to be the easiest one to find.

At first I thought the piles of sand meant ants, but as I was standing there watching, a small green bee flew up and crawled in.

Bee butt.

Can you see its itty bitty head in the picture below?

Bee head.

By the way, did you know that ground dwelling bees don't like mulch? Me neither! But I do now!

Scarlet zinnia unfurling its petals.

Dahlias poking up from below.

The random Portulaca seeds started here (First image, second to last row in the tray.) have grown up. Considering that they were all supposed to have been started from 'Sundial Peppermint', they have bloomed in a wide range of colors. Of course, there was that one apricot colored one that showed up last year...and the rose pink one....

Watermelon pink.

Orange and light pink.

Orange and white.

There's always something goin' on around here!

I'm looking forward to seeing how the new bed fills in, but since most of what I planted are annuals, I'll have another chance next year to try something new. Hopefully going with annuals this year will mean it will fill in like mad, quickly.

Still debating mulching the top, though. Gotta keep the bees happy.

How about you? Any new flowers in your yards?

She's Baaaack!

Who?

Misty! That's who!

Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty!

Oh and Lee, Mondo-Baby and Monkey-Girl, too. All of whom I am also glad to see. But...

Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty! Misty!

Eeeeeeeeee!

Tomato Massacre

Today I had to kill one of my tomato plants. It was a Green Zebra, which I had been assured was a tough plant.

Not tough enough.

It appeared to have some sort of disease, possibly Septoria Leaf Spot. Who knows?! Not being willing to take chances with the other 15, I ripped it out.

Siiiigh.

Guess I'll have to try those another year.

Flower Power

[Warning! This is a long post about flowers and gardening. Not interested? Time to go look at kitties!]

Remember how I said gardening led to woodworking? Well, it still does.

A trellis? For me? Thank you!

I'd been planning on what I was going to do with the big pots for a long while. After getting so many other things done for sale, I was finally ready to put the big pots together, where they would live happily-ever-after on my deck. However, there was a sticking point: some of the plants I wanted to put in there to attract hummingbirds (Cardinal climber and Hyacinth bean vine.) would require a trellis. And a trellis would require building. By Eric, of course. You can't buy the kind of trellis I want (Of course.), instead, I designed it out of 1 x 2s boards. So after bugging him incessantly asking him nicely for weeks, he finally put it together. In order for that to happen, we needed to make some space on the deck which is always a wreck by the end of the year. Thankfully, Heather helped me to clean up my deck and with a lot of shuffling around, my pots finally had a home.

Not that I want to block the view of my lovely street that is now revealed in all its glory after removing my weedy trees, or anything. Ahem.

First blooms.

In the first pot, I have Dahlia 'Arabian Night', Cardinal climber, Hyacinth bean vine, Salvia 'Purple Volcano', Portulaca 'Sundial Peppermint', Dichondra 'Silver Falls', Agastache 'Purple Pygmy' and Lavatera 'Twins White'. I grew all of them from seed. I'm still waiting for the smaller ones to catch up and fill in, but it's really just a matter of time at this point. Unless, of course, the dahlia takes over the whole pot, which is also a possibility and if it does, I'll learn from it. Also, next year, I'll start them sooner than April.

Close up.

Extreme close up.

Growing the dahlia in a pot seems like a great way to get up close to them and pay better attention to their needs (And avoid earwigs. Bleah!). I'm too afraid to pinch them back like mad in order to get a "dinner plate" sized bloom, but I'm pretty happy with the 5" blooms it's sporting now. Maybe if I can get it to overwinter in the basement will I be willing to mess around with serious disbudding next year.

As Thomas Cooper said: "A garden is never so good as it will be next year."

I keep looking forward to next year. One day I might even get to "next year's" garden.

Second pot, different from the first.

The second pot is a trial of Dahlia 'Procyon', butterfly weed, more Cardinal climber, Portulaca 'Sundial Gold', and Scarlet sage, again for the hummingbirds. I'm counting on a lot of hummingbird action at some point this summer! Haven't had a single one so far. Only the sage and portulaca are currently in bloom, but the dahlia should open up any day now. It will be yellow and red, tying together the yellow portulaca and the scarlet sage and vine. At least, that's the plan.

Cardinal climber in bloom. Heeeeere hummingbirds!

After setting up the three big pots, I determined that I really needed something else to fill in the spaces in between them, so I relocated a pair of pots that had volunteer climbers in them. In the first, Morning glory 'Grandpa Otis', which has purple blooms. The first of its blooms opened yesterday. It ought to really enjoy being able to scramble up the 8' high trellis.

Grandpa's gettin' up there.

In the second, a completely volunteer pot, filled with Agastache, Scarlet sage, Portulaca and one Cardinal climber, that I volunteered for duty. I have no idea what that pot will look like as it fills in, other than what it currently is: chaotic. Perhaps I'll pull a few things out and pot them up separately, but I have enough work to keep me busy, so that is a pretty low priority. Neither balanced, nor planned, it seems pretty happy.

Mutt pot.

Finally, I decided to spend some money on a purple Cordyline 'Red Sensation', just to see how the other half lives. The "Other Half", you see, doesn't grow their container plants from seed. They just go out and buy wild, luscious potted beauties. Me? I have to do it the hard way. Around the Cordyline are Agastache 'Golden Jubilee', Agastache 'Purple Pygmy', Salvia 'Purple Volcano', Portulaca 'Sundial Peppermint' and more Dichondra 'Silver Falls'. Unfortunately, I started this pot later than all the others and I used up all of the runts of the plant litter, as it were. So we'll see if this ever fills in as the summer wears on. Or if I just have a giant pot of Cordyline.

Grow plants! Grow!

Then there's the mish-mash of assorted other potted plants that roam around the deck.

Herbs: rosemary, tarragon, summer savory, thyme, purple basil, stevia.

Pot of potentially flowering mish-mash.

Waiting for them to fill in.

Moving on!

The front yard currently looks like this:

Xeric garden, July 2008.

The Bees Below Your Knees garden has filled in nicely in the last two years. There are one or two empty spots where a non-xeric plant died and where Eric ran over another plant (Poor Blue Hills Sage! I knew him, Horatio!). If I can remember to do it, I have plants in the backyard that I can move to fill in those blanks.

You know, in my spare time.

Or maybe it will all just have to wait until November when the Market is over.

Keeping the bees below your knees since 2006.

Close up shots in three parts.

Left side.

Middle.

Right side.

Finally, the remaining potted plants have been growing despite my attempts to forget to water them regularly. When last we met, the plants in this pot were a lot smaller! What a difference a month makes!

Needs more purple.

I noticed the Hens and Chicks in my succulent pot are starting to flower. I think that may mean the end of those particular succulents, if I'm not mistaken! I've never seen one flower before, and now three of them are flowering! Hopefully the chicks will survive the death of the hen.

The pink flowers is the first of the flowering Hens.

Since I was in the mood for succulents, a few weeks back I picked up two more Sempervivums. One is 'Blue Boy', pictured in the center here and the other is Bronco, pictured further below. I rather like them. Realistically, Sempervivums are my replacement for Echeveria, which I really liked on my trip to Vancouver (See the picture of the fantastic chair in this link.), but they won't survive our winters. So, Hens and Chicks it is.

'Blue Boy', surrounded by Sedum spurium 'Tricolor' and Sedum pachyclados 'Rosette', along with a couple of portulacas, to fill it out.

This time, I'll get the sedums into the ground in the fall, or at least protect this pot better than last year.

I hope.

Sempervivum 'Bronco' surrounded by Portulaca from the seeds I'd saved here. Did I mention that I have a lot of volunteer Moss rose?

Considering the sheer amount of work represented by all of the plants above, I still haven't found the time to weed that one danged bed. However, my deck looks pretty nice and floriferous.

Now if only those hummingbirds would make their grand entrance!

Tomatoes on NPR

You know that Locavore is becoming mainstream as a term when even NPR uses it. Have a listen as Linda Wertheimer talks about her love of fresh tomatoes and how it has been affected by the current salmonella scare.

I think we will see more and more folks creating their own vegetable gardens wherever and however they can: on balconies, in pots,and under lights in an effort to control their food better. I know that it has been the long series of food scares that has driven me to avoid certain foods in the grocery stores for quite awhile now. As new foods are added to that list, it just confirms my desire to plant as much of my own vegetables as I can.

Interestingly enough, it also forces me to eat seasonally, a concept that I have been lax in following. Now? Now I'm waiting for my tomatoes to come in so that I can have fresh, very local tomatoes, whose entire life cycle I have controlled. They will taste just that much better, for the wait. Also? Guess who will be freezing a lot of tomato sauce, diced tomatoes and tomato purees in the fall?

And guess who else will probably be getting homegrown, canned tomato sauce for Christmas (Eric's special sauce!)? Yeah, you guys (Well, family members at any rate. Much as I love you Internet, I'm not growing that many tomatoes!).

What are you doing differently this year? Are you waiting on your own vegetable garden or the Farmer's Market or are you still shopping at the grocery store for everything?

The Alchemy of Baking

To go from this:

Organic Bing cherries from Morton's Orchards.

To this:

Hot, bubbling, cherry cobbler.

Always seems like a fantastical piece of kitchen magic.

The hardest part, really, is pitting the cherries. I borrowed Heather's cherry stoner (Duuuude! These cherries are like, so juicy!) and set to work. I was soon after stained in cherry blood in speckles all down my shirt, shorts, legs and feet. My hands still haven't recovered.

It takes a fair amount of time to pit 6 pounds of cherries (I made two cobblers: one for us and one for Heather.), but not a lot of effort, per se. In the end, though, it's all worth it. Add a liberal dollop of vanilla ice cream and you have a seasonal treat worth waiting for.

Again, all of this took place while the twins were napping. Hooray for naps!

Recipe anyone?

Thought so!

Bing Cherry Cobbler
From Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking, p. 197.

Filling:
5 cups (2 lb) pitted fresh Bing cherries (about 3 lb unpitted)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
3 tbsp sugar (You can probably get away with less, depending on how sweet your cherries are.)

Topping:
2/3 c buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c AP flour
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
6 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 tbsp sugar (I used Turbinado sugar for extra crunch) mixed with 1/4 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Stir together cherries, lemon juice and sugar until well mixed in a 9" glass or ceramic baking dish with sides at least 2 3/4 inches high. Bake the fruit for 10 minutes while you prepare the topping.
3. In your measuring cup, stir together buttermilk and vanilla and set aside.
4. Combine dry ingredients in bowl of mixer.
5. Add butter pieces and using the paddle attachment, mix on low speed until large, coarse crumbs the size of small peas form, about 30 seconds.
6. Slowly pour in buttermilk mixture and continue to mix just until combined and a soft, sticky, evenly moistened dough forms.
7. Drop the dough by heaping spoonfuls onto the hot fruit (This is actually a key step, since the heat of the fruit helps to cook the underside of the dough. Otherwise, you'd get dough cooked on top and gummy underneath. Bleah!). The topping will spread during baking to cover the entire surface. Sprinkle dough with cinnamon-sugar mixture.
8. Bake the cobbler until the fruit filling is bubbling, the topping is browned, and a toothpick inserted into the topping comes out clean, 30-35 minutes.
9. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool 15 minutes. Serve warm.

The cherries don't break down completely, but there's plenty of cherry juice in the bottom. The topping is pretty yummy all on its own, as the twins can testify to. Eric, who doesn't like cooked cherries, likes this enough to inhale the biscuit portion and any cherries stuck to it. Loose cherries though, are offered to the twins. They don't object too strenuously.

Logan, as usual, goes nuts when you offer him sliced fresh cherries. He does his funny little hoot/grunt/lip smacking. Emma actually manages to gnaw the cherry meat off and spits out the skin. I'm not exactly sure how, but the magic of gumming your food is involved somehow.

OK, maybe you didn't need that last visual before preparing to make this cobbler....

BTW, this also works fantastically well for any other fruit cobbler you'd like to throw together: peach, blueberry, berries, rhubarb, apples, pears or whatever floats your boat.

Enjoy!

Growing Challenge: First Harvest

Well, not technically my very first, but it is my first that I actually remembered to photograph. And therein lies all the difference.

I've pulled little bits of asparagus here and there. Not enough to actually get enough to cook, mind you, but enough to snack on while working in the garden. I clipped enough cilantro to use in the Thai Chicken recipe, right before it bolted (The cilantro, not the chicken.) in its desperate summer transformation into coriander. I've even pulled a carrot out to nibble on and a few leaves of lettuce for hamburgers. The time had come, however, to see if the mice had left me any strawberries and to taste them.

Strawberries.

Strawberry plants.

The strawberry plants are massive this year. I think I frightened them by tossing lots of soil over them. Perhaps they thought they were going to be smothered? I did try, but apparently their desire to grow and fruit was stronger than I thought. Unfortunately, since they're on the same watering system as the rest of the plants, I think they're getting a little too much water. Some of the berries, the smaller ones, are extremely tasty while the larger ones are diluted and somewhat mushy. Oh well! I'll figure it out at some point.

There's always next year.

Right now, that's my mantra. If something doesn't appear to be going so well, I give myself a break by chanting, "There's always next year!". It makes me feel better.

Even if I'm possibly lying to myself. Hah!

Moving on...the tomatillo plants (My first time planting these.) are looking really good. Purple de Milpa is on the left and Toma Verde is on the right.

Pre-salsa version.

Also in the tomato family is the ground cherry. (I've never grown this before, either.) I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Is it as prolific as tomato plants? Is one enough for a family or not?

Ground cherry.

Heather pointed out that there are mites chewing on parts of it, but that some other critter appears to have them in check, since it hasn't taken over the whole plant. I kid you not when I tell you that to survive in my yard, you've gotta be tough! I don't have the time or energy to spray and poke and prod at plants. The birds, bugs and other critters are my first line of defense against the Bad Bugs and it appears to be working out! Yay for lazy gardening!

Below is one of the 4 different types of watermelons we planted. They all look pretty good so far! I really need to get out there and switch out the spray heads for drippers. Yeah, I'll get right on that!

Watermelon 'Sugar Baby'.

During a visit to another farm, we were offered extra seed potatoes that the farmer had "left over". After sowing her rows and rows and rows of potatoes, she had great big bags of seed potatoes left, so we gratefully grabbed a few handfuls and popped them in. There are three varieties here: All Blue, La Ratte and German Butterball. I'm looking forward to trying them all. (Yet another first for me. I feel like a newbie with all of these new veggies I've never actually grown before!)

Taters.

Strangely enough I was running out of room to put in more plants, so I squeezed the potatoes in amongst the squash and next to the watermelons. It's gonna get crowded in there!

Holes for Taters.

My assorted squash are all up and doing well. I'm looking forward to figuring out how to store all of them! Pumpkin, yellow squash, zucchini, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, acorn and buttercup squash. I think we're gonna have a lot of soup this winter....

Squash plants! Pumpkin? Acorn? Who knows!

My pile of beans and basil plants are all moving along nicely. I really need to get in there and thin out the basil. I've grown both before and killed them both. Or have gotten 6 beans and 4 leaves. I get distracted, often, with all of the other things I have going on and wind up losing my harvest to being too busy to harvest!

Beans and basil.

Then there are my tomato plants. They've really started going crazy and if it weren't for the fact that this picture is now a week old, you'd really see the difference in height. I need to get in there and tie them up to their stakes, it's getting wild in there!

16 tomatoes, 12 peppers, and a few marigolds for grins.

Guess what I found in the tomato patch?

Tomatoes!

Why don't you look surprised? I'm always surprised when my plants do what they're supposed to do. Gardening is funny for me that way: I always feel like I'm totally faking it, so when something turns out just right, it gives me a little thrill. I get my thrills where I can.

Cherokee Purple.

Gardener's Delight.

Snow White.

There are plenty more tomatoes in there now, but it's late and I need to sleep.

So what are you growing this year?

Nine Months

And four days, but who's counting? [Points finger at self and mouths, "Me!"]

Let's just jump right in with the big news, shall we?

The twins are Sleeping Through The Night.

Ohhhhh yeaaaaaaaaaah!

Maybe not every night, but we're coming up on about a week of the most uninterrupted sleep I've had in...um...well...[Scratches head in confusion.] about 14 or 15 months. Most nights they go to sleep between 6:30 to 8:00 and wake up once at 11 for one last round of milk. Then they sleep until 5:30 am and will often nurse and then go back to sleep until 7:30 or 8:00 am. One night this past week, they slept from 7 pm 'til 7 am. It was the most incredible thing ever! Of course, I didn't go to bed at 7 pm and thus take advantage of 12 potential hours of sleep, but maybe some day I will!

"Psssh! What you so excited 'bout sleep for when you can play wif me?!"

Logan does have a good point. He and Emma are ridiculously cute. Massive levels of cuteness! They are a lot of fun to play with when I sit on the floor with them. They crawl all over me and it feels rather like having two large puppies yanking and tugging at me. Except that these puppies can giggle and babble "Mom-mom-mom! Da-da-da!". They also squinch up their eyes when they smile at you and bounce up and down as they practice standing.

"Are you callin' me a puppy?"

Logan is now a power crawler and can go really fast. We have tried to race the twins, but they keep getting distracted by toys or kitties or dustballs along the way. I think Logan is faster, since he doesn't do the funny crab crawl that Emma does, but since they won't race in a straight line, we'll never know.

On your mark...get set...Emma! There's no grappling in racing!

"Mommy, you not 'cuze me of cheatin', are you?" Blink. Blink. "I not ever cheat."

And they're off! But wait! Logan is distracted by a blade of grass.

"Mommy! Look! Doggie!" Nyeeerrrooooow! Emma takes advantage of Logan's distraction to pull ahead.

"Ooooh! Kitty?"

If you look at the above picture, you'll see Emma's left leg in a semi-standing position and her right leg tucked under. That's still how she crawls.

We were wondering if she was going to beat Caitlin's record for first steps: 9 months and 3 days, but, unfortunately, Emma missed her cut off date (June 30th to tie, June 29th to break the record). Looks like Caitlin retains the title of Undisputed First Walker in the family. Emma has been practicing standing up, pulling up, jiggling up and down and free standing, but still no solo steps. She likes to hold onto our fingers and cruise around, whenever possible. Right after we got home from visiting Caitlin at Grammy's house, Logan stood on his own for twelve seconds. I counted. Then, thunk! right into a sitting position. Perhaps he's planning on lapping Emma and will walk before she does?

"Heh heh heh! You never knows, do you?"

Caitlin gives Logan pointers on early walking.

The twins are both eating regular food like champs. Logan is still clearly more interested in eating than in nursing, while Emma is the reverse. However, both like cake and cobbler. They're always interested in trying out new flavors. Like door screen.

"Mmmm. Tastes...rubbery. Maybe I stick to meeyulks?"

Oh, did I mention that Emma is the first one to crawl right towards trouble? Yeah. We've starting calling her Screaming Goat. If there's a single piece of paper left in the room that she is in, she will find it, shred it and eat it. Books, newspapers, drawings, book covers, doesn't matter. Emma is willing to taste test all of it.

Logan, on the other hand, we call Angry Monkey. If you set him down in his highchair and there's no food on it immediately, he gets really upset and won't stop hollering until you stick food into his mouth and switch him over from screaming to eating.

"Not my fault service is terruhbulls at you house. You should maybe work on dat."

Life with twins is still like being stuck in a Baby Blender. Once they're awake it's Go! Go! Go! until naptime or bedtime. You go from waking-changing-feeding-changing-clean up-play time-fussing-screaming-naptime without any down time. I find that there's no time to eat or drink (They keep grabbing my glass.), sit at the computer and blog (They keep trying to type.), or even read (Emma the Goat tries to eat my book!). Those of you that can nurse and read at the same time? You don't know how lucky you are! All of my projects, baking, cooking, cleaning, gardening, farming, etc. all have to be squeezed into the small amount of time they spend napping or else I have to wait until they fall asleep for the night and hope there's still enough light left outside to work in. It also means that there are a lot of half finished projects around my house and the weeds...the weeds! [Sounds of weeping.]

One interesting new skill that popped up this weekend was pointing.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! A plane! No, it really is a bird.

No, not her! Emma! Emma has started pointing and gesturing. Being the well trained parents that we are, we spend all of our time guessing what she's pointing at and naming it. Who knows what she is really pointing at or trying to tell us, but by golly! we're gonna tell her over and over and over again that that is Daddy/kitty/Mommy/a nose/a car. We've also been working on a few words in Baby Sign Language since that worked so well for Caitlin and seemed to help her be a lot less frustrated while she was still pre-verbal.

"What's da sign for 'Hey, doggie! Gimme a ride!'?"

Early sharing also appears to be starting. We were at dinner recently and Logan offered Emma a bite of his bread, then took a bite himself and offered her another bite. It was really cute and Emma appreciated Logan's thoughtfulness, right up until he poked her in the eye with soggy, disintegrating Italian bread. Yum!

"I knowed he meaned well, but next time I going to hold da bread."

And that, my friends, is Life With Twins: Ninth Month edition. It gets a little easier each month and the sleep! The sleep is wonderful!

The End.
[Pinchy! Pinchy!] Some tushies are too cute to resist.