Earlier this month Ed and Suephy (and Jared and Dylan) got our kids their birthday gift: matching personalized puzzle stools. These stools have colored letters that can be taken out and put back in. We thought they would be nice because they’ll help Miranda and Eleanor eventually learn how to spell their names. I think Eleanor has the tougher name to spell since the A is silent.

The girls loved their stools. They’re short enough that they can easily sit on them and have their feet touch the ground. They each like to reassemble their names, and they don’t like it when one of them tries to play with the other’s puzzle.

This is Eleanor on the first day she got the stool:

Miranda’s sitting across both stools.

Eleanor and Miranda have started reading out the letters, saying “baby” before each lowercase letter: baby i, baby r, baby a, etc. It comes from them calling anything small a baby.

It took a little while, but the girls can assemble their names most of the time. We sometimes have to call out the next letter for them, or help them fit it quite right into the stool.

This weekend, we put them down for a nap at 1:30pm, and I also went to lie down. I woke up every half-hour or so to the sound of laughter coming from their room. I finally dragged myself out of bed at 4pm and found them sitting in their cribs. There was a pile of blankets, stuffed animals, and both of their pants in the center of the room. Bernard was in and out of the house at the time and he confirmed that they were awake for the entire two and a half hours in their respective cribs.

On one hand, I was amazed that they entertained themselves for over two hours; on the other hand, I felt bad that we essentially trapped them in their room for that long. Anyway, we chalked it up to a one time thing because it was a hot day, and probably hard to sleep in the afternoon.

Tonight I put the kids to bed at 8:15pm, and it’s 9:15pm now and I still hear laughter from their room! I also hear talking and singing. My mom says that we may have to put them in separate bedrooms, but this won’t work until we move into a bigger house with more bedrooms. Should I yell, “Eleanor and Miranda, stop talking! Go to bed!”? I can’t imagine that two twenty-four month old kids have that much to say to each other.

We haven’t had any serious tantrums from Eleanor since we wrote about them last month. We’ve been using the techniques that we talked about, but I’m sorry to admit that I also use the following technique and it works really well:

ME: Eleanor, go get your shoes.

ELEANOR: No.

ME: Okay, then I’ll put Miranda’s shoes on first.

ELEANOR: No, Eleanor first! (Eleanor runs to get her shoes.)

ME: Eleanor, get on the changing pad. I need to change your diaper.

ELEANOR: No.

ME: Okay, then I’ll change Miranda’s diaper first.

ELEANOR: No, Eleanor first! (Eleanor dives onto the changing pad.)

You get the idea. The only time this doesn’t work is if Miranda overhears me and then wants to go first. But actually, Miranda doesn’t care as much if she goes first. So conversely, this technique doesn’t work as well on Miranda. On the other hand, she is usually willing to do the things we ask her to do. Bernard says it’s only a matter of time (i.e. a few weeks) before Eleanor figures out what I’m doing and refuses to play along. Sigh.

Bernard wrote about Miranda’s three consecutive days of biting. I wanted to wait a little before writing about it because I needed to see if it was really resolved. It got so bad last week that I would find myself breaking into a cold sweat every time my cell phone rang. My cell phone is programmed to give a unique ring when a restricted call comes in–and all calls from the hospital (and the daycare affiliated with the hospital) are restricted. So basically I know the moment the daycare is calling me.

DAYCARE TEACHER: Miranda bit another child. We are continuing to shadow her. If this continues, she may be suspended.

ME: Is the other child okay?

DAYCARE TEACHER: Yes, we put ice on it and they’re okay.

This is so embarrasing. When I pick up the kids, the daycare has a slew of papers for me to sign; namely, the bite reports, and one day, a bite report and an ouch report. (My kids were the biter and the victim.) I sign them as quickly as possible so that the other parents don’t see the papers and figure out that I am the mother of the biter. I scan the other kids’ arms and legs to see if I can figure out who she bit.

At home, we decided to have a conversation with Miranda and I also purchased two books, Teeth are Not for Biting and No Biting.

ME: Miranda, did you bite someone at school?

MIRANDA: (She looks down and speaks in a very quiet voice.) Yes.

ME: Miranda, biting hurts. No biting, okay?

MIRANDA: (She tries to look away. I turn her to face me.) Okay.

When I read the two books to her, she had a very deep frown on her face, and was really interested in the pages that showed a kid’s hand in another kid’s mouth and the one that had a kid crying with a big red mark on her arm. After her initial disturbed reaction, she wanted to read the books over and over.

Actually, she hasn’t bitten anyone since we talked to her and read the books to her. I hope this is the end of biting.

We got a book recently called Not a Box, and in it, a rabbit is playing with what looks like a box, but is really one of any of a number of imaginary creations. In one of the later pages, the rabbit is thinking of what it is he’s playing with if it’s not a box.

I found Agnes and Miranda saying “Hmm” as they were looking at that page.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1MB).]

Eleanor has started saying this spontaneously when she’s working on something. Today, she was doing it while working on a jigsaw puzzle.

It’s been a little while since we’ve heard about any biting at daycare, but suddenly last week, we had three bite reports in three days. Miranda was the biter in all three reports, and Eleanor was the one who was bitten on the first day. We don’t know who was bitten on the other two days–we’re not told.

On the third day of biting, I came home from work while the girls were having their dinner. Agnes told me we had another bite report. I considered whether I should say something to Miranda. I wasn’t sure because 1) I’m sure Agnes already said something to her and 2) I’m sure it had been hours since the biting incident. Miranda’s pretty aware of things though, so I thought it was worth a conversation.

“Miranda, did you bite someone today?”

“Yes.”

“Miranda, I don’t like it when you bite people. You shouldn’t bite people.”

Miranda didn’t say anything.

“Miranda, say ‘No biting people’.”

Miranda started to avoid looking at me, and started playing with a block on her tray.

I took away everything on her tray and said, “Miranda, say ‘No biting people’.”

Eleanor said, “No biting people”. Agnes picked her up and took her to take a bath.

Miranda just turned and stared at me. I repeated myself a couple more times, while she just looked at me. I’m pretty sure Miranda understood me just fine. I think she just didn’t want to say “No biting people” because she knew she did something wrong.

Finally, in a small voice, Miranda said “No biting people”. I said OK, and gave her back the things on her tray.

The next morning, Agnes had a talk with Miranda about biting as well, and so far we haven’t had another biting incident. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that she’s starting to get the message.

We had Miranda and Eleanor’s second birthday party today at Agnes’ cousin Jean’s house. They have a community pool back behind their house, and so we packed up the girls’ swimsuits and headed out there. They have “water play” each Wednesday at their daycare, but this was the first time our girls had seen a swimming pool. We stuck to the wading pool.

Jean’s kids Chris and Jasmine are in this picture with Agnes, Eleanor, and Miranda.

Considering her reaction at the Redondo Lagoon where she refused to go into the water at all, Eleanor did fairly well. She liked sitting by the side of the pool with her feet in the water, and then she decided it was okay to walk around in the one-foot section of the pool. After a little bit, she stepped down into the 1.5 foot section. We were playing with a few pool toys, some of which sink to the bottom of the pool. It was when Eleanor tried to reach down to get one, and ended up with a face full of water that she decided she didn’t like the pool any more. I eventually coaxed her back out one more time.

Miranda generally liked the pool and had fun playing with Jean. She too had an accident where she ended up with a face full of water. While she seemed to still be okay with being in the pool, we thought they were getting a little cold, so we called it a day.

Agnes’ mother wrapped the girls in towels to warm them up. They look like burritos. Eleanor’s the one in blue holding the Happy Birthday balloon.

We went back into the house and had some pizza and cake. The girls didn’t quite understand how to blow out their candles so I assisted. Miranda had parts of both my slice of cake and Agnes’ mother’s slice. Eleanor thought the cake was something foreign and therefore refused to try it outright.

As a side note, I finally got around to loading up a lightbox script, so you should be able to click on any of the pictures in this blog entry to see larger versions.

Eleanor and Miranda turned two! We posted some pictures from the last month. The girls’ birthday party is on Sunday though, so you won’t see any birthday party pictures until next month. Eleanor and Miranda got an expansion set to their Mega Bloks and a bubble machine from Albert and Erin, and a set of walkie-talkies and a twenty-four piece puzzle from Agnes’ friend Sophia. She also gave us a small playhouse that we can set up either in our patio or in our backyard, but we haven’t set it up yet.

This month started off a little rough with Eleanor going through a couple of weeks of throwing tantrums. Eventually, we all settled down a bit. We as parents have a better sense of what sets her off (rushing her, not giving her enough warning of a change in activity, letting her get too tired or hungry, etc.), and she seems to have gotten a little less sensitive to the things that bothered her. There were many days where Miranda would observantly comment: “Eleanor mad”.

We have also been trying to do a better job of preparing our girls for things coming up. We bought a toy doctor’s kit and a book that shows what happens when we visit the doctor. Miranda and Eleanor both seemed to like the toy hypodermic needle the best. They’ll stick it in their leg and exclaim “Ow!” No actual needles are used, of course. Their doctor’s appointment went fine, for the most part. Miranda is 33 inches tall, and 21 pounds, 12 ounces. Eleanor is 33.75 inches tall and 22 pounds, 10 ounces.

We also picked up a toilet training doll that has a water bladder that one can use to simulate using the potty. Eleanor really likes it and hugs it whenever she gets the chance. We named it Annie (no offense to any of our friends with that name) and we found that we had to buy a second one for Miranda. Neither of them seem bothered that we have two identical dolls both named Annie. We haven’t really started our toilet training in earnest though. We kind of feel we need to work our way up to it.

Last month, Eleanor would often string together long sentences where everything but the beginning and end would be a string of nonsense syllables. She’s doing that a lot less and seems to be concentrating on putting together actual words to convey what she means. Miranda strings together longer sentences than Eleanor at this point. At Agnes’ prompting the other day, Miranda told me “Daddy no touch it” when she didn’t want me to add to her block structure. Miranda’s also big on saying “Miranda do it”. Me, my, and mine are also starting to show up pretty regularly.

Eleanor and Miranda still squat and ease their way down stairs, and they neither jump nor run. They’ve learned to hold each other’s hands and they know not to wander off when we ask them to stay close–at least most of the time. Eleanor has wandered off at least two or three times this month. We had to chase her through the Mitsuwa food court.

Eleanor knows all of her letters and seems to understand how to count how many of something there are. At least when I ask how many there are, Eleanor will start counting and stop when she reaches the right number.

Miranda continues to be more fashion conscious. When I asked her to get her socks the other day, she returned from the sock drawer with every single colored sock. I suppose the white socks are Eleanor’s. Miranda insists on wearing one red sock and one blue sock. We constantly get comments on her color choice at the daycare, and you’ll see her in these mismatched socks throughout this month’s pictures. Agnes is predicting we’ll see this at least for the next year.

Stop signs, bicycles, and motorcycles seem to be the big things that catch our girls’ attention these days. They point out every one of them that they see. Favorite books these days include One Fish, Two Fish, which Eleanor can practically recite, and we’ve seen a resurgence of popularity for Goodnight Moon.

On their birthday, the girls went to see the doctor in the morning, and then we dropped them off with some cupcakes at daycare at lunchtime. Miranda was quite upset that she was told she had to eat her lunch before her cupcake, but the daycare teachers stood firm, and the girls ate their cupcakes for their afternoon snack.

I think it’ll be another year before girls know enough to look forward to their birthday. Right now, they’re just happy to get a few new toys, and maybe get some cake and ice cream.