The girls find it funny when we repeat what they say. Miranda in particular goes off and produces a long stream of nonsense sounds when we start to play this game.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (4.5MB).]

As a warning, this is another long video.

Eleanor likes the book Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs! by Sandra Boynton. We’ve read it to her so many times that she has it memorized. Here’s a video of her “reading” the book. The video is kind of long (and the file kind of large at 4.5MB), so it may not download right away.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (4.5MB).]

For those of you who may not be able to understand her, here are the words to the book:

dinosaurs happy and dinosaurs sad.
dinosaurs good and dinosaurs bad.
dinosaurs big and dinosaurs tiny.
dinosaurs smooth and dinosaurs spiny.
dinosaurs weak and dinosaurs strong.
dinosaurs singing a dinosaur song.
dinosaurs cold. dinosaurs hot.
dinosaurs cute and dinosaurs not.
dinosaurs early. dinosaurs later.
dinosaurs crammed in an elevator.
dinosaurs plump, dinosaurs lean.
dinosaurs red, blue, yellow, and green.
dinosaurs looking right at you
to say goodbye because we’re through.

She gets a little stuck in reading through “dinosaurs red, blue, yellow, and green” because she’s trying to point at each of them with her foot.

I used to think of myself as a patient person, but having kids has changed that. I find myself yelling constantly, and just feeling frazzled almost everyday. The kids aren’t terrible; we’ve pretty much passed the tantrum phase, but now they whine a lot. Now I know why all those junior high school teachers had those circular signs with the word “whining” and a line through it–whining is really, really annoying. When the kids whine, I find myself getting incredibly angry–tantrums just made me want to cry, but whining could be worse because I retaliate against them.

I think part of the problem is that they tend to whine at the same time, whereas, they never had a tantrum at the same time. With two kids whining at the same time, I can’t help but start yelling. Here’s what I sound like:

ELEANOR, PUT ON YOUR SHOES! SIT DOWN! SIT DOWN! SEE, NOW YOU DROPPED YOUR CEREAL! PICK IT UP! PICK IT UP NOW! MIRANDA, STOP WHINING! NO, YOU CAN’T WEAR THAT SHIRT, IT’S DIRTY! YOU HAVE TO WEAR THIS ONE! STOP! STOP TAKING OFF YOUR PANTS! IT’S TIME TO GO TO SCHOOL! PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON! FINE, I DON’T CARE! MOMMY’S GOING TO WORK AND I’M LEAVING YOU HERE BY YOURSELVES!

I hate it when I lose it and just start yelling, but I’m not sure how to deal with whining. Ignoring it just makes them whine more. I read somewhere that you should whine back at them, but I’m skeptical about that technique. Any suggestions? Should I time-out for whining?

This past weekend, we finally found a way to get the girls to nap. We went and retrieved one of our two Pack n Plays from Agnes’ parents’ house and set it up in our bedroom. At nap time, we put Miranda in her crib and Eleanor in the Pack n Play so they were in different rooms. They were quiet and went to sleep pretty quickly. It worked for both days of the weekend, so we may have something that works (knock on wood). This may mean that all naps will be separate from now on, even though it means that Agnes and I can’t nap in our rooms at the same time any more.

I seem to remember my parents had to come into the room that I shared with Albert to tell us to stop talking (and laughing) and go to sleep.

The girls turned twenty-six months a little while ago, and we’ve posted photos for the month. We took relatively few photos this month.

There’s not as much to report on this month. Eleanor and Miranda each have had periods of time where they’ve been a little sensitive, but I chalk that up to them being two. It also is probably related to the recent problems we’ve had with them napping on weekends–they get crabby when they have no sleep.

We’ve noticed that Miranda’s pronunciation is generally better than Eleanor’s. For instance, I pulled out a pair of pants that had pictures of Mickey Mouse. Eleanor looked at them and said “gigamouse!” She continued to repeat “gigamouse”. I walked over the Miranda and asked her who was on the pants, and she said “Mickey Mouse” pretty clearly. They both say “hally birthday” though.

Miranda’s counting has been getting better this month. She can count items up to about six before she starts to have some trouble. When she’s just counting out loud, she’s been skipping from seven all the way to twelve. We’ve corrected her so many times that when she’s counting and reaches seven, Eleanor will chime in with an overly emphasized eight. Eleanor can count up to twenty, but in order to count that many items, she needs someone’s help to guide her finger to keep track of what she’s counted already.

Between the two of them, Miranda has been exerting her independence more. She always wants to do things herself. Eleanor is okay with us putting on her socks and shoes, but Miranda has to do that herself. Eleanor likes to be carried from our front door down the steps to the minivan, but Miranda has to do it herself. It has helped Miranda in that she’s more proficient at a number of things like dressing and undressing. Miranda can get completely undressed for her bath by herself. She can also pull down her pants, take off her diaper, and walk to the potty chair with her pants around her ankles. Miranda’s also okay at putting on her clothes, but tends to get stuck in her shirt still. Eleanor usually needs help with undressing and dressing.

Eleanor’s been a little less cautious about climbing on things recently. She’s always been pretty cautious, but she seems to be taking more chances recently. In the photos, there are pictures of her on a climbing wall, and standing on a slide. Neither of the girls liked their first ride on a carousel though. Agnes’ mom took them to South Coast Plaza where they have a big, but slow carousel. Eleanor clutched at the pole of her horse and cried her head off. Miranda quietly but firmly gripped the horse’s neck and wouldn’t look around. These horses didn’t even go up and down. We’ll have to find a smaller carousel for them to get acquainted to the idea better.

Eleanor can pedal her tricycle most of the time, but still scoots on it when she needs to turn. Miranda primarily scoots on her tricycle. Miranda is also less comfortable wearing her helmet. She fiddles with it more.

Next month we’ll have pictures of the girls’ Halloween costumes. We have them already, but we’ll leave the pictures until after Halloween.

I had a tough yesterday afternoon. We decided that Agnes should get some food from the grocery store while I watched the kids ride their tricycles in the enclosed area by the side of our house. Miranda and Eleanor had fun riding their tricycles, but eventually they got bored and starting playing with some things in the garage. I kept an eye on them, but they seemed to be doing okay.

Eleanor started playing with a strap on our jogging stroller while Miranda tried to put away her tricycle next to it. The jogging stroller was moving around and it was coming pretty close to knocking over Miranda. I told Eleanor to not play with the jogging stroller. She ignored me. I told her to let go of the strap. She ignored me. I walked over to her, and she instantly dropped the strap she was playing with, smiled, and started walking away. I’m pretty sure she understood what I was saying and was testing to see what she could get away with, so I told her that I was giving her a timeout for not doing what I said, and sat her on the steps. She wasn’t happy, but she didn’t protest.

Miranda came over to sit next to Eleanor. Each time Eleanor would start to get up, I told her she had to sit there longer. Miranda got up and tried to open the door to get into the house. She turned to me and started complaining, but Eleanor was still serving her timeout. Finally, I reached over and opened the door. It turned out that Miranda was leaning against it and she lost her balance and sat down hard onto her butt. She started complaining that she hurt her butt, and she still wanted to go inside. I told Eleanor to go inside too because I wasn’t going to be able to watch both of them if one was inside and the other was outside.

Miranda got over being upset about her fall and started climbing on a step stool we have in the kitchen. Eleanor started climbing up right behind her. I told Eleanor that Miranda was playing with the stool (yes, we shouldn’t let our girls play on the step stool, but they can sit on it pretty safely), but she kept on trying to climb up as well. I gave Eleanor another warning, and eventually picked her up, and sat her on the floor by the wall.

After about two minutes, I let Eleanor get up again, and I explained to her why I had given her a time out. She wanted milk. Eleanor tends to want milk when she’s upset. I gave her water instead because she had had enough milk for the day already. Eleanor started asking for a bagel, but we didn’t have any left. She was getting upset asking for a bagel over and over when Agnes came back from the store. She rushed to Agnes, who placated her with some goldfish crackers.

After dinner I gave Eleanor a bath. When we were done, I asked Eleanor to stand up so that I could lift her out of the tub. She continued to play with the water. I asked her to stand up again. She continued to play. I reached in and lifted her up anyway, and started crying from being startled. Later, she was okay with me reading to her and carrying her to her crib for the night, but I still felt on edge.

Maybe it’s not realistic to expect Eleanor to follow instructions when they’re repeated three or four times. Maybe I need to always come over to her, stop her activity, make eye contact, and give her an instruction before I interpret her actions as doing something willfully wrong. It’s hard though. For instance, Eleanor was playing with an electrical cord earlier today. I took it out of her hands as I told her it was dangerous. She laughed and kept on trying to pick it up with a free hand. I ended up needing to hold both her wrists and take the cord out of her hands. She ended up getting a time out for that instance as well. I know that I’m supposed to be setting boundaries for our kids, but it’s just a pain when every confrontation ends up with one of them in tears.

I know that we’ve been writing a lot about napping recently. It’s just that we’re not quite ready to believe that the girls no longer need naps. They look tired when it’s their nap time, and they’re cranky if they don’t nap, but right after we put them in their cribs, they start talking, and singing, and laughing and they end up not sleeping.

A little over a week ago, we wrote about how the girls took off their clothes instead of napping. The next weekend, we thought we should make sure the girls don’t take off their diapers. There’s just too much additional cleaning to do when they don’t wear their diapers. We had heard of two suggestions in the past. The first was to put the diaper on backwards so that the tabs that hold it on are in back. Theoretically, they won’t find the tabs to pull, and therefore won’t be able to remove their diapers. We chose the second approach: duct tape.

We put a single strip of duct tape across the front of Miranda’s diaper. She scratched at it a bit and decided it didn’t bother her. We put a strip of duct tape on Eleanor’s diaper too and put them in their cribs to sleep.

Two minutes later, I heard giggling and singing. I let it go for another fifteen minutes before I went in to see what was happening. Eleanor and Miranda were both standing in their cribs talking to each other. I told them both to lie down and go to sleep.

A little while later, they were talking and laughing again. I went in there again and they dropped down onto their cribs without me telling them to lie down. I was about to leave when I saw Eleanor was playing with something. It was her diaper. She was otherwise fully dressed, but somehow she slid out of her diaper and put her pants back on. I took off her pants, slid on her diaper (which wasn’t easy), and put her pants back on. I then put a big loop of duct tape all the way around her body to tape her pants and shirt together.

Eleanor didn’t get out of her diaper again, but neither she nor Miranda napped that day. When I finally pulled them out of their rooms, I had trouble getting them out of their diapers. When you pull duct tape off of a diaper, it rips. Ripped diapers are messy. I suppose scissors might have worked, but we haven’t tried duct tape again since then.

I’m not sure what to try next. We’ve made the room as dark as we can with heavy curtains. We’ve tried to physically tire them out in the mornings with some kind of activity. I’ve sat in the room with them to make sure they don’t stand up and talk (they peek through the crib bars and try to catch my eye).

I suppose the next step is to try separating them so they don’t keep each other up. One of them can nap in our room. We just won’t be able to nap at the same time, unless we want to sleep on the sofa.

I took Miranda and Eleanor to their daycare yesterday morning. As I was getting them into their car seats, Miranda asked for a book, and so I gave her one of the books we keep in the car. On the way to the daycare, Miranda started asking “what’s that?”

MIRANDA: What’s that? What’s that?

BERNARD: I can’t see it Miranda. Daddy’s driving.

MIRANDA: What’s that? What’s that?

BERNARD: Can you show Daddy?

MIRANDA: What’s that? (not holding up the book for me to see)

ELEANOR: Ah-mm! (the Taiwanese for the wife of your dad’s older brother–it’s what our girls call Erin)

MIRANDA: Ah-mm. (not convinced)

ELEANOR: Ah-mm!

BERNARD: I don’t think it’s Ah-mm. (since we don’t have any pictures of Erin in the car)

MIRANDA: What’s that?

We finally came to a red light and I asked Miranda to hand me the book. She had been looking at a picture of the author of the book, Anne Geddes. The only resemblance Anne Geddes has with Erin is that they both have curly blonde hair.

The only excuse I can come up with is that Eleanor must not have had a very good view of the book since she sits on the other side of the car.

Last month we bought a couple of tricycles for Eleanor and Miranda. When we looked at the tricycles in the store, we were concerned that Miranda’s feet didn’t quite reach the pedals, so we bought her a smaller tricycle. After we got home, we found that the one we bought Eleanor wasn’t the one we tried in the store, so we ended up exchanging it for the same kind that Miranda had.

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

Eleanor’s able to pedal her tricycle, but she has a bit of trouble steering at the same time. You can see Miranda scoot into the video towards the end.

So far, we’ve been keeping them in an enclosed area by the side of our house. I don’t think we’re ready to take a walk somewhere with them because we didn’t get the tricycles that have a “push bar” that parents can use to help steer them back home.