I know that we posted another video of the girls dancing, but we liked this one too. Eleanor is playing with a toy from a McDonald’s Happy Meal (that Agnes’ sister had). It’s the Nintendo character Yoshi, and when you press a button on his back, he plays a short two-second tune. Eleanor likes the tune and tries to squeeze in as much dancing as she can during it.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (710KB).]

I’ve been really busy at work for the past few weeks, and I haven’t been making it home in time to see the kids before they go to sleep. I usually call to tell Agnes when I’m starting on my way home, and sometimes Agnes will give the phone to Miranda or Eleanor so I can say “hi”. It usually goes like this:

“Hi Miranda!”

Miranda whips her head around to stare at the telephone.

“Hi Miranda!”

Miranda continues to stare at the telephone.

Anyway, this week Miranda seemed to finally figure out that I was somehow talking to her through the telephone. She said, in her small voice, “hi” and started waving.

Serious discipline isn’t usually necessary until the terrible twos, but we’ve seen lots of behaviors that require disciplinary action. The hard part is coming to agreement on how to respond. I think consistency between parents is more important than the response itself. I tend to be the softie and Bernard is the ruler with the iron fist. Here’s the consensus on some “infractions”:

Just recently, Eleanor started hugging. Agnes’ mom likes to try to get our kids to hug, and Eleanor started doing it spontaneously right around Christmas. We try to cheer when Eleanor hugs Miranda, but we have sometimes found Miranda indifferent to being hugged by her sister.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (880 KB).]

In this video, Miranda seems to like the hug.

Miranda and Eleanor’s photos for month seventeen are up on the site. This past month included Christmas and New Year’s. We didn’t do a whole lot that was all that Christmas-y though. We put up a string of lights on our TV cabinet, which the girls barely acknowledged. We didn’t have a tree. We didn’t go out to see Christmas decorations. We skipped all of our work-related Christmas parties (mostly due to illness). We did at least get together with each of our families for Christmas and New Year’s.

Only one piece of news on the tooth front–Miranda is getting in her bottom left lateral incisor. That’s the last of her center eight teeth. We think she may have a molar coming in, but it’s hard to tell. Eleanor’s teeth are much the same as last month. In the center, she has four top and two bottom. She also has four molars. Last month, the top ones were still cutting through. Now, they’re completely in.

The girls have been getting more proficient with eating. Miranda does a pretty good job of spooning her own food into her mouth. She only runs into problems when she has the spoon turned over so that she’s scooping with the convex part of the spoon. When she’s scooping something more challenging (soup or corn kernels), she’ll lift the bowl to her mouth and start shoveling.

Eleanor has always been a more selective eater, and with some recent turnover in the daycare staff, we’re starting to see some daily reports saying that she’s refusing her food from home. Personally, I suspect that the new people at daycare don’t quite know how to get her to eat. Depending on her mood, Eleanor will sometimes insist on feeding herself and refuse to eat anything you try to put into her mouth. On the other hand, there are times where she just doesn’t want to eat something that she’s eaten well in the past. We’ve shuffled around the meal schedule a bit to make sure that the girls are eating the things they’re likely to eat while they’re at daycare, and the things that are more iffy while they’re at home.

This month the girls started walking! Well, we have Miranda walking on video, but after that first day, she decided she didn’t want to walk any more. When she starts crawling, we say “Miranda, stand up!” and she stops to stand up. Then, we ask her to walk, and she thinks about it, but then gives us a smile and drops back down to crawl. Eleanor started walking on New Year’s Eve, and hasn’t stopped. She’s still more comfortable crawling, but we find her walking at daycare, or between rooms in the house on occasion.

We don’t have a major update on language. The girls are still saying all of the same words that we reported last month. They’re still more likely to say “da da” than “ma ma”. Eleanor has picked up saying “cir-cuh” (circle) for circles. She uses this to refer to the cylindrical blocks in their shape sorter. Eleanor finally learned to say “da dee” (sometimes she’ll say this instead of “da da”) on the telephone when I’m on the other line. Prior to this, both Miranda and Eleanor would turn to look at the phone upon hearing my voice.

As for the shape sorter itself, the girls still play with it, but they’re quite proficient at it now. They easily find the right holes for the different blocks. Mostly, this toy has become a source of transitional objects for Eleanor. She mostly holds onto the blue star-shaped block. The green star is her second choice, then the red star. I think the cylindrical blocks follow that in preference.

We’ll have more pictures in another month, when they reach a year and a half(!).