A few days after we posted a video of Miranda waving, Eleanor decided she was going to start waving too. Her wave is a little more firm.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (760 KB).]

Every now and then the girls will get a leg stuck between the bars of the cribs. I mean, it really gets wedged in there–up to the thigh. Normally, after we put the girls in their cribs we ignore any crying we hear. If they cry at all, it’s usually at most thirty seconds. Sometimes, we hear angry, extended crying, and when we go to check on the girls, one of them will have their leg stuck. This has happened two or three times for each of them, and we have to force their leg back through while they’re screaming and crying. They usually have a big red mark on their thigh for a day or so afterwards, but it seems no other harm has been done.

Here’s Miranda from last night. She wasn’t as stuck as she sometimes gets, but she was quite upset that she couldn’t free herself.

We don’t think it has anything to do with removing their crib bumper. They’ve been doing this since they learned to roll over. Does this happen to anyone else?

We’ve been trying to teach our kids to wave to say “hi” or “bye”. When we drop off the kids at daycare, we wave to them and say bye until it’s clear they’re going to ignore us, or just stare at us, or until they actually wave back. We also have them wave bye to the teachers when we pick up the kids from daycare. There’s also waving when Agnes’ mom comes up to take care of the girls, when she leaves, and when we just want to say “hi” to them. So far, Miranda has been more consistent in waving.

In this video, I’ve already said “hi” to Miranda once before it starts.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.16 MB).]

Though awkward, it’s clearly a wave.

One of the books that we like to read to the girls is Hop on Pop. We have the “Bright & Early Board Books” edition, which means that it’s nice and sturdy in our girls’ hands. What we didn’t realize is that we have been reading an abridged version of the book.

It’s still a good book to read to the girls at this age. Shortening the book for this edition was probably a good idea, considering the attention span of the average eleven-month old, but there’s something a little disturbing to me that they aren’t hearing the book in its full form. They completely miss out on lines like “House, mouse, house on mouse” and “Night, fight, we fight at night.” In fact, they miss out on a full two-thirds of the original book (the board book is 24 pages; the original was 72 pages).

I suppose the only remedy to this situation is to buy them the full edition when the girls reach the age where they want to read the book for themselves. No Cliffs Notes for them!

We’ve been trying to teach the girls about various parts of the body. We’ll ask, “Miranda! Where’s your head?” and “Eleanor! Where are your ears?”, and show them where they should be pointing. When they get it right, we cheer.

So far, Eleanor’s been ignoring us, but Miranda seems to get what’s going on. She can successfully point to her head, her ears, and her feet. Here Miranda is showing us where her head is.

While we ask these questions in Taiwanese, for some strange reason the name of the actual body part is said in Mandarin. That’s what Agnes’ mother started doing, and we continued the practice. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what language (or mix of languages) we use–the girls are still learning that certain words represent things in the real world. I’m just surprised that I remember the names of all these body parts in three different languages.

The kids are almost one year old and there is a lot of transition going on with their daily routine. For example, they’re transitioning to only one nap a day. Here’s a run-down of their current schedule:

6:00AM: Wake-up and diaper change
This has been pretty consistent for a while plus or minus 20 minutes depending on sunrise, daylight savings time etc. Any later and there isn’t enough time to get them ready for daycare and us ready for work.

6:15AM: Put in high-chairs for 7 oz bottle of formula and some cheerios
We’ve been giving them their bottles in their high-chairs so that they get used to their high-chairs as “the eating place”. They hold their own bottles. In a week or so, this will change to a 4 oz cup of cow’s milk and some yogurt or egg or toast.

6:45AM: Get dressed for daycare and work

7:30AM: Arrive at daycare
This varies from 7:30 to 8:15AM depending on our work schedules

9:00AM: 3-4 oz baby cereal mixed with cow’s milk
They get this meal/snack at school. It’ll be one of the main ways they get their iron once they’re totally on cow’s milk.

9:30-11:00AM: Nap
They only get this nap when they’re at home on the weekends with us. At school, they’re awake and playing.

11:30AM: 7 oz bottle of formula
In a couple weeks, this will change to a 4 oz cup of cow’s milk and some baby food, like 4 oz sweet potato cubes, or zucchini etc.

11:45-2:00PM: At daycare, this is when they take their one nap.

2:00PM: 3-4 oz of baby food with water or juice in cup

2:30-4:00PM: At home, this is when they take their second nap.

4:30PM: 4 oz cup of cow’s milk with a baby biscuit
This used to be a bottle of formula.

5:30PM: Pick them up from daycare

6:15PM: Dinner

We give them a mix of foods like chinese turnip cake, tofu, udon noodles, vegetables that they can pick up, and jar baby food. Our goal is about 6 to 7 oz of food total, and eventually a 4 oz cup of cow’s milk as well.

6:45PM: Bath

7:00PM: 7 oz of formula

They’ve been having less and less of this bottle, and soon we’ll just give them a cup of cow’s milk at dinner and get rid of this bottle entirely.

7:15PM: Brushing their teeth and bedtime story
Currently, brushing their teeth consists of taking a damp piece of gauze and running it over their teeth and gums.

7:30PM: Bedtime
Their bedtime tends to be a little closer to 7PM on a “school night” since they only take one nap at daycare and are pretty exhausted by the end of the day. On the weekends, we let them stay up closer to 8PM since they’ve taken two naps during the day.

As you can see, the main changes over the next couple months will be elimination of the bottle and transition to all cow’s milk. As of last week, we’ve eliminated the 4:30PM bottle, so they’re down to only three bottles a day. That one was the easiest bottle to get rid of though since it was really only a pre-dinner snack.

And yes, Bernard and I eat dinner after they go to bed, since it’s just too difficult to prepare dinner for everyone right after work.

When we play with the girls, we’ll sometimes stack their blocks in front of them. Both of them will carefully try to lift off the top-most block without knocking over the stack. Miranda will put the blocks in her mouth, bang them together, shake them (they rattle), and scatter them. Eleanor has shown some interest in stacking the blocks herself.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.24 MB).]

This video was taken while Agnes’ parents were at our house. You can hear both of them cheering when Eleanor adds the third block.

A friend of ours said that these ouch reports will become more and more common as our kids get older. Miranda had her second ouch report today:

Miranda was crawling when she lost her balance, and she hit the corner of the toy shelf. She has a red mark, but no bruise.

They washed her, applied ice, gave her a big hug, and called Agnes. When we got to the daycare, we didn’t notice any marks on Miranda. Whatever might have been there must have faded pretty quickly. Miranda seemed her usually happy self.

While on the topic of strollers, I guess I should say that we bought a jogging stroller about two months ago. We ended up buying the 2005 BOB Revolution Duallie stroller. REI had the 2005 model on clearance, and we ended up getting it for under $300. The 2006 model has a split canopy, alloy wheels, a new harness system, and thinner tires, but it also retails for over $500. I don’t think we would ever have spent that much on a jogging stroller, but the clearance price on the older model seemed worth it.

The BOB stroller is a little too big for everyday use, which is why we still ended up getting another Peg Perego Twin Aria to replace our broken one. The BOB doesn’t fit through most doorways.

On the other hand, I’ve been really pleased with it as a jogging stroller. It rolls very smoothly and steers comfortably. I’ve been out jogging with it four or five times and the girls usually end up falling asleep in it. The canopy is generous and shades the girls well, except when the sun is right on the horizon. Running into the wind can be a bit of a challenge because the stroller catches the wind and seems to inflate like a parachute. There’s a stretch during one of my normal routes that is both uphill and into the wind that has become a bit of a pain.

The best thing about the twin jogging stroller is that Agnes and I can go out running together, which is something we pretty much haven’t done since before the girls were born. I think it’s also nice for Agnes when I take the girls out for a run–she can catch up on sleep, work, chores, or anything else.

Here is a picture from May when we first got the stroller. We had to take it around the block to try it out, even though neither of us was wearing running clothes.

Yesterday I wrote about how our Peg Perego Twin Aria stroller broke and that we needed to buy a replacement stroller right away. I listed out a number of complaints we had with the Twin Aria, the chief of which was the insufficient sunshade (other than the poor stitching which resulted in the stroller breaking in the first place). We were going to take a look at a number of other models to see if there was a better option out there.

We looked at the Maclaren Twin Techno, the Combi Twin Savvy, and the Inglesina Twin Swift, all of which were recommended by Baby Bargains. The Maclaren has nice sunshades, but it seemed complicated to open and close. It also weighed a ton at 25.7 pounds. The Combi was okay, but it also seemed heavy at 21 pounds. It also didn’t seem that sturdy. The Inglesina was 28 pounds. By contrast, the Peg Perego we were replacing is 14 pounds.

Ultimately, we decided to stick with the Peg Perego and live with the shortcomings that we know about. Our new stroller is “toffee” colored, rather than our original “black and sable”. Shane recommended that we look at the Kiddopotamus Rayshade to add to the sun protection of our stroller. Apparently, he and Anna have had some good results with theirs.

I don’t know if we’ll come to regret losing this chance to switch to a different stroller, but it really did seem like the best option for what we’re looking for in a twin stroller.