About a month ago, Agnes wrote about how Miranda and Eleanor weren’t sleeping. Well, since that time, they’ve been hit-or-miss with their weekend naps. Sometimes they’ll sleep. Sometimes they’ll talk or sing or laugh for more than an hour and just won’t sleep.

Last Sunday was one of those days where they wouldn’t sleep. We heard a bunch of laughing, then later, some yelling. When we finally looked in on them, we were in for a surprise.

Miranda had taken off her shirt, her undershirt, her shorts, and her diaper. She also took off the ultimate crib sheet that’s supposed to protect the sheet underneath from accidents. She was sitting in her bed, completely naked.

Eleanor had taken off her shirt, her undershirt, her shorts, and her diaper. The ultimate crib sheet was half off the bed. She went a step further and pulled her shorts back on (without the diaper) and peed in them. When we came in, she was saying that she was wet.

We’re still trying to figure out who started everything.

In the spirit of our kids saying things like “Miranda do it!” or “Eleanor do it!”, we have a video of Miranda putting on her own pants. She’s also watching TV at the same time–It’s Blue’s Clues, for those who don’t recognize the music.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.8MB).]

She does a decent job, but it I’m pretty sure she didn’t pull up the back of the pants over her diaper. At least the diaper won’t be in the way when we eventually get around to toilet training.

This is by far the latest we’ve been in posting pictures for the past month. There’s not really a good excuse for it; we just got busy with a number of different things right at the end of the month. Over the last month, we celebrated the girls’ birthday with a visit to the swimming pool, we bought tricycles, and we visited the Long Beach Aquarium.

This month Miranda and Eleanor have both picked up a number of phrases:

“Miranda do it!”

“Eleanor do it!”

“I need help!”

“I need goldfish!”

“I need cereal bar!”

“No, Miranda do it!”

“No, Eleanor do it!”

“Mommy, more milk please!”

“It hurt… Eleanor…”

Obviously, from this sampling of their speech, the girls are much more insistent that they do everything, however capable they might actually be at whatever it is. The “I need help!” is almost always followed by another claim that they want to do it without us. It takes quite some time to get ready in the morning.

Eleanor has learned the code words for asking for more milk. It took her about two months, but she finally started addressing it to “Mommy” and adding “please” to the end. We still don’t give her more milk, but she’s relatively happy to be understood.

The last quote was from Miranda, who went through a period this week of constantly blaming Eleanor for bumping into her or otherwise hurting her. We would scold Eleanor, but not very severely, because Miranda didn’t really seem that hurt, and because we seldom actually witnessed what happened.

Eleanor’s counting has improved. When items are all in one line, she can pretty consistently count to at least fifteen. When they’re grouped or broken into multiple lines, she tends to start over and not arrive at the correct total. When there are fewer than four items, she knows how many there are without counting out loud. Miranda recites numbers in the right order, but she still doesn’t keep track of what she has counted very well, so she seldom ends with the right number.

Miranda’s more likely to run around the house, stumping along quite loudly. She also sings a lot more than Eleanor, though Eleanor will sometimes join in. Eleanor keeps up a constant stream of dialog. She seems to go non-stop throughout the entire day. We still find Miranda’s sentences more complete and complex though.

We have a few videos that we’ve been delinquent in posting. Hopefully we’ll get to them soon.