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).]

We haven’t had a lot of luck in playing catch with Miranda and Eleanor. Eleanor was bumped in the face once with a big rubber ball and so she winces when a ball is thrown towards her. Miranda is okay with a ball being thrown to her, but she doesn’t having the timing and coordination to catch.

I had a thought that we could at least have the girls learn to throw more proficiently. I pulled out a bucket we had in our garage and showed how they could throw a tennis ball into it.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (3.45MB).]

Eleanor picked it up right away. At the end of this video, you can see Miranda’s strange side-arm technique. She doesn’t quite have the timing down for when to let the ball go, but she can get some distance on it.

Here are Miranda’s attempts at throwing the tennis ball in the bucket.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (2.12MB).]

We tried hard not to laugh at Miranda hitting herself. Fortunately, she didn’t seem bothered by it.

I’m definitely late in posting this video. A little before Christmas, the girls recorded a birthday video for Albert. There are a couple of false starts, but they finally get it out.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (8MB).]

A little bit ago, our kids discovered a Disney Christmas carol book that we have. It plays different songs as you press on each of the Disney characters. After a few days of playing these songs, we found that Eleanor was chiming in with a “hey!” at a couple points in Jingle Bells. We thought we would take a video of it.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.9MB).]

Miranda wanted some attention too as we were making this video of Agnes and Eleanor. The first time she falls looks like an accident, but then she decides to repeat it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The girls have been singing for quite some time now, but we haven’t really gotten good videos until just recently. These videos are from the end of last month. Miranda and Eleanor each know “Twinkle, Twinkle”, “A, B, C”, “Baa Baa Black Sheep”, “Where is Thumbkin?”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, “Ring Around the Roses”, and a whole bunch of other songs from different CDs they listen to in the car. Many of these songs have hand motions that go with them. In general, Miranda tends to be more in tune than Eleanor, but she can sometimes trail off. Eleanor sings more loudly. Sometimes they argue about who gets to sing a particular song.

In this first video, Miranda is singing “Twinkle, Twinkle”. She occasionally trails off, and Agnes prompts her to continue. I like that Miranda repeats “Up above the world so high” a second time and then gets distracted. I guess she lost track of where she was in the song.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (2.69MB).]

Eleanor is usually in tune enough for me to recognize what she’s singing, but on this day, I had no idea what she was singing or which hand motions these were. Part of it at the end looks a little like “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, but I don’t think that’s it. Maybe it’s just some song from daycare that I haven’t heard. The video starts out tinted a little blue, but clears up.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.77MB).]