Our house went on the market today. I just got a call from a realtor who wants to show our house this evening. This means I can’t bring the kids straight home from daycare. Where should we go to kill some time? Mitsuwa food court? McDonalds? The mall?

We saw X-Files while Effy watched the kids. It was okay. Didn’t have the kind of creative weirdness of the first movie.

I told Eleanor to take a bite of her pancake or I would tear it in two pieces. She was refusing to eat it to avoid ruining its circle-ness.

I’m wondering what the right answer is when Miranda says she wants to do something herself, then yells in frustration when she can’t.

The pictures for month thirty-five are up.

This month, Agnes and I went out for our eighth wedding anniversary. We went to SugarFish Sushi. Effy watched the kids while we were out at dinner.

Eleanor and Miranda have been making up a number of games. In the bath, they’ll push all of the rubber duckies to one side of the bath tub and sit at the other side. When the ducks start floating over, they squeal and yell “No, duckie! No!” and splash them back to the other side. We sometimes also give them a sponge to play with, and they’ve been placing them on their forehead and laughing as the water trickles down their faces.

I’ve been getting Eleanor and Miranda ready for school in the morning recently and I’m not always sure which clothes go on whom. Eleanor doesn’t really care that much, but Miranda does. I end up asking her whether a particular shirt is hers or Eleanor’s. So far she hasn’t steered me wrong.

Eleanor has become quite the tattle-tale. At dinner, Miranda wasn’t eating her peaches, and Agnes asked if she could have some. Miranda refused. Later, when Miranda was leaving the table, Agnes picked up the peaches and started eating them. Eleanor piped up, “Miranda, look! Mommy’s eating your peaches!” Most often, she tattles on Miranda though.

Miranda doesn’t tattle on Eleanor quite so much, but this morning, I asked Eleanor to come over to get changed for school (she was drawing at the table). Miranda informed me that Eleanor wasn’t going to come over, perhaps warning me that I was in for a fight. Fortunately, Eleanor finished her drawing and came over without issue.

Finding things to eat for Eleanor has continued to be a bit of a challenge. There is a wider repertoire of what she’s willing to eat now, but her preference right now is pistachios. Even if she has other food that she’s normally willing to eat, she’ll always ask for pistachios first. She says “I want pistachy”. I make her say it correctly, and then we tell her that she has to eat some of her dinner first. It’s a constant dinner-time routine.

Next month the kids turn three years old. We don’t know quite what we’re doing for their birthday yet, but I’m sure we’ll think of something.

Last night, after the kids had their bath, we noticed that Miranda was dancing while Eleanor was still getting dressed. Add a little ABBA, and we have this video:

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (4MB).]

She starts a little slowly, but then gets into it at the end. We think she’s been picking this up from the other kids at school.

This weekend we were at Agnes’ parents’ house. The TV was on while we were talking in the kitchen. Suddenly, I noticed that Eleanor and Miranda were particularly quiet. I glanced over at them and their eyes were as round as saucers. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was on TV and while I didn’t really think anything of it earlier in the movie, the kids were watching the big confrontation at the end when Harry is fighting the Basilisk. We quickly changed the channels to something else (I think Deadliest Catch, which they don’t understand), but I think the damage was done. They went on for a while about the shark (basilisk?) and its teeth and its eyes and how it was “going to bite you”.

They talked about it the next morning, but fortunately, that seems to be it. Hopefully they have short memories about these kinds of things.

I’m with the kids at my parents’ house. We’re going to try to have them nap in Suephy and Albert’s old rooms. My room need cleaning still.

It’s been more than a month since we went to Disneyland, and Miranda occasionally talks about driving in a red car (at Autopia). In fact, she gets excited at red cars in general: “Look! A red car!”

Agnes asked her about driving recently and Miranda showed how she was driving.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.25MB).]

Okay. I can officially say that this is the latest the photos have been posted. It’s basically the end of month thirty-five and therefore I need to turn around and start preparing next months photos right after this post goes up.

It’s been a busy month with my family coming to visit over Memorial Day weekend. We went to the Huntington Gardens and Disneyland and we ended up with over eight hundred photos for the month. We tried to cut these down to just a small set of them.

There have been a number of verbal changes in our kids in the last month. You can definitely carry a conversation with them (though they don’t always pay attention to you). They’re also becoming more verbally defiant. For instance, we’ve been reminding them to say “please” when asking for things, and when they are annoyed by it, they’ll try substituting a different sound: “Can I have some juice, plah?” We don’t let them get away with it. Eleanor has also tried something where she’ll respond with “what?” when I ask her to do something. She’s looking right at me when I ask, so I know it’s an attempt to just ignore me. I’ve been jumping all over that one. The girls will also do things like substitute “slah” for “sorry”.

I don’t think it’s deliberate, but Miranda’s been responding to some yes/no questions with something that sounds like “nyah”, which is open to interpretation. I’ve been trying to get her to pick either “yes” or “no”, but on the other hand, both Agnes and I will sometimes say “yah”, so I can’t really blame her.

The kids have learned both Agnes and my names and every now and then, Eleanor will call me Bernard. I tell her she has to call me daddy. We wanted them to know our names in case they’re lost and they are asked what their parents’ names are.

Miranda and Eleanor have been correcting each others’ pronunciation. Unfortunately, they don’t always correct it with the right pronunciation. Eleanor was lecturing Miranda yesterday, saying “It’s not school, it’s skull“. In this case, they really were trying to say “school”.

The kids have been making up songs. When we give them a bath together, they like to sit in the tub and swish their legs back and forth, which churns the water and causes bubbles. They sing a song that consists of them repeating “bubble feet” over and over. It can get in your head if you’re not careful.

We’ve been jogging with the kids at the beach a few times over the past month, but the pictures will come with the month thirty-five update. Don’t expect those pictures right away, but hopefully it won’t be a full month before I get them up.