We read to the girls before they go to bed, and recently we got a new bookcase for our living room where we keep all of their books. Agnes has been asking the kids to pick out what they want us to read to them, and it’s been interesting what they’ve been picking. Eleanor consistently picks One, Two, Three! by Sandra Boynton. Miranda’s been picking Elmo’s Little Playhouse. The funny thing is that we have two copies of Elmo’s Little Playhouse, and Miranda brings over both copies because she wants us to read the book twice.

We read the books that they bring over, and then the girls go to bed. Miranda’s been known to bring her copy of Elmo’s Little Playhouse to bed with her.

We’ve also found that Miranda likes to look at books upside down. She’ll grab a book and sit down to look through it, and more often than not she’s looking at it upside down. I’m sure it’s a preference thing, rather than random chance, though I have no idea why she likes upside down books. Anyway, every time we see her holding a book upside down, we say “Miranda, your book is upside down”, or “Miranda, turn over your book”, and she’ll turn it over.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (764KB).]

In the background, you can hear Eleanor say “Da!”. I don’t remember what she was pointing to, but she was reading her own book at the time.

We bring the girls to the park on most weekends, and Miranda and Eleanor have been getting better at making their way around the playground. They know where the steps are, and which way to go to find the different slides. We don’t let them go down any of the slides unsupervised, and we put them in our laps for the larger slides.

In this video, Miranda is climbing the last bit necessary to reach the large spiral slide. Miranda seems to like climbing, and she’s pretty good at it. Fortunately, she still has no fear of climbing, even though she bumped her head last week while climbing on a chair at home.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.66MB).]

In the video, you can hear another woman telling her daughter (also named Miranda) to stay out of the picture.

I know that we posted another video of the girls dancing, but we liked this one too. Eleanor is playing with a toy from a McDonald’s Happy Meal (that Agnes’ sister had). It’s the Nintendo character Yoshi, and when you press a button on his back, he plays a short two-second tune. Eleanor likes the tune and tries to squeeze in as much dancing as she can during it.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (710KB).]

Just recently, Eleanor started hugging. Agnes’ mom likes to try to get our kids to hug, and Eleanor started doing it spontaneously right around Christmas. We try to cheer when Eleanor hugs Miranda, but we have sometimes found Miranda indifferent to being hugged by her sister.

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

In this video, Miranda seems to like the hug.

Merry Christmas everyone! We had a nice Christmas. We’ll share more photos in a few days, but we wanted to post a video of Miranda unwrapping one of our gifts. This was a gift that Agnes received. It’s a Tiffany Oyster Bay Note Cube^® Pad from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This video is longer than usual at about twenty-nine seconds. In the background, you can hear Eleanor unwrapping another gift at the same time. They both loved ripping into the wrapping paper.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1,691 KB).]

I like how Miranda kind of stares at the cube for a moment after she’s done unwrapping it. She’s trying to figure out what to do next.

Last month we wrote that Eleanor took her first steps, though we weren’t sure if it counted. She barely made it three inches before sitting down again. Eleanor hasn’t made a serious try since then.

Yesterday, Agnes’ Dad and Max came over to our house, and while they were here, Agnes and her Dad tried getting Miranda to walk between them. With a lot of encouragement, she finally made the crossing a couple of times.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (812 KB).]

Miranda didn’t repeat it today, but that’s because we were pretty busy with both of them for most of the day. I’m starting to think that our girls are more likely to walk if Agnes and I can work with them one at a time. Anyway, that’s a thought for another time. For now, yay!

For a while now, Eleanor has been swaying to music. Miranda picked it up a little later, and they’ll both dance when they hear music they like. Recently, Eleanor has been adding an extra wiggle when the music is faster. My mom bought the girls a toy in the shape of a barn that teaches the girls about different kinds of animals. When you press the button on the top, it plays banjo music. Eleanor likes to hold the toy and press the button to move through the different songs until she finds one that she likes. We’ll hear Oh, Susannah and Skip to My Lou.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.39 MB).]

I like that Miranda is swaying to the first song at the same time, even though she’s busy looking at her book.

In the month or so leading up to Miranda and Eleanor’s birthday, Agnes and I started thinking about the toys we liked as children. One of the toys that we recalled was something that you pushed back and forth and these small balls in a plastic dome would pop up as the wheels rolled. I couldn’t think of what the thing was supposed to be. An abstract lawn mower? A vacuum machine?

A little later, I was talking to Albert about toys and he said that he saw a “Corn Popper” push toy and asked if I remembered it. I guess it’s a corn popper–because everyone knows that you push along a popcorn popper…

Albert bought two of these corn poppers for Miranda and Eleanor. Miranda took to it right away, though she could initially only push it when she had both hands up in the air (even though she needs only one hand to push it). Eleanor didn’t seem that interested. In the two weeks since we got these corn poppers, Miranda has figured out how to push it without raising her other hand, and Eleanor has learned to play with it.

Here’s a video of Miranda from the first day we got the corn poppers.

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When we play with the girls, we’ll sometimes stack their blocks in front of them. Both of them will carefully try to lift off the top-most block without knocking over the stack. Miranda will put the blocks in her mouth, bang them together, shake them (they rattle), and scatter them. Eleanor has shown some interest in stacking the blocks herself.

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This video was taken while Agnes’ parents were at our house. You can hear both of them cheering when Eleanor adds the third block.

The other night we were getting Miranda and Eleanor ready for bed. They already had their baths and bottles and were in a pretty decent mood. Something started them laughing. I think it’s the first time we’ve seen them laugh together like this.

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