TWO STEPS

Katherine took her first two steps this evening.

She stood up in front of me, and before I knew what she was doing (and quite possibly before she knew what she was doing!), she took two tiny steps towards me, before taking a third step and lunging toward me.

There can not be a prouder father in the world tonight.

Two small steps for Katherine!
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Walked today!
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Heat & Sausages Don't Mix

Last week, beginning with last Sunday July 23, made for a long week. I kept telling myself that I would update this blog with an individual entry for each event, but as the week wore on, I found myself just keeping my head above water, with no time at all to update this bloc.

So now, here it is Monday, and the long week is over. Rather than try to make an individual entry for each event (which would kill me at this point), here is the CliffsNotes version of:

"The Long, Hot Week"
(or, "The Week in Which it was Really Hot, and Daddy Learned that Babies Shouldn't Eat Sausage")

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Sunday, July 23 - HOT, HOT, and more HOT.

Sunday dawned bright and hot. The heat wave California had been facing reached its high point. Terri, the lucky woman that she is, headed off to work at the hospital, leaving Daddy and the kids in a house that was 85 degrees at 9:30 a.m. Are you kidding me?!?

If I had been a man with no kids, I would have been off to the beach on a day like today. However, with two kids, my immediate concern was for their well-being. Eighty-five degrees at 9:30 a.m. did not bode well, especially for two infants who can not yet verbalize when they are experiencing early symptoms of heat stroke.

I racked my brain furiously trying to think of a baby-friendly locale with air conditioning

My work office? Nope - they turn off their A/C on weekends.

The movie theatre? Not nearly baby friendly enough.

The beach? Not when the girls will just sit there and try to eat sand.

Finally, I found myself on pricline.com, looking for hotel rooms in the area. I ended up paying $50 for a four-star hotel. $50 to get out of the heat? DEAL!

I packed up the girls, brought along some bed sheets and blankets to spread out on the hotel floor, and by 11:30 a.m. the girls were playing with their toys in their makeshift play room on the third floor of the Hyatt Regency in a cool 72 degrees.

Outside and at our house, it got up past 100 degrees. Inside our house would have been an oven, so my $50 was well spent.

The heat did not ease up that night, so Terri came over after work, and we had a fun night on "vacation" in our hotel room!

I forgot to take the camera to the hotel, but here are the girls playing in the dining room.
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Monday, July 24 - Easy on the sausage!

Monday it was back to work. The girls were in daycare that day, so they got a break from the heat at the air-conditioned daycare.

At 11:30 a.m., I got a call from daycare. Caroline had thrown up her breakfast and lunch. No fever, but she was fussy, and not holding down any solid food.

I left work and headed off to daycare (My work is much closer than Terri's work to the daycare), while Terri got a hold of our doctor. Our first suspicion was that the vomiting was due to the extreme heat we were still experiencing.

Once at the daycare, Caroline was fussy --crying and inconsolable. I held her, but she didn't want to be held. But as soon as I put her down, she'd cry to be picked up.

The day before, at the hotel, I had introduced the girls to a new food -- these chicken/apple sausages from Costco. 100% chicken with apple in them, they are low-fat, low sodium, and pre-cooked. Perfect, I thought, for the girls.

And at the hotel, the girls loved them. Caroline especially. She shoved down 12 bite size pieces in under five minutes, and really seemed to enjoy the taste.

However, at 12:30 p.m. the following day at daycare, I learned that the sausages don't love Caroline as much as she loves them.

At 12:30 p.m., after much fussing and crying, Caroline had a HUGE bowel movement. I mean, this poop would have made a male construction worker proud!

And embedding the poop? All 12 pieces of sausage Caroline had eaten exactly as she had swallowed them. Caroline was obviously unable to digest the sausage casings (Katherine's stomach does not seem to have this problem, as her sausage pieces digested nicely).

Within five minutes of her bowel movement, Caroline was like a new baby. She was crawling, laughing, and most importantly: Eating.

Crisis averted, I headed back to work.

Caroline: "I'll pass on the sausage, thanks."
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I end this blog with a gratuitous photo of two out of the three best ladies in the world:

Mommy & Katherine: 11 months.
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The girls are standing, but it's too hot to walk!

As I predicted, Caroline stood on her own last Saturday, almost a week after seeing Katherine stand on her own.

As luck would have it, I was holding my camera right at the moment Caroline stood for the very first time. Here is Caroline in her moment of glory:

I did it!
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The look of joy on Caroline's face says it all, doesn't it? I don't need to write anything else.

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This past week, like the rest of the country, has been H-O-T where we live.

Last week it gave us a chance to try out a small wading pool we bought for the kids at a garage sale earlier this year.

Caroline was down for a nap, so only Katherine got to play in the pool with grandma, who was visiting from Los Angeles.

Katherine in her bathing suit with grandma.
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Katherine was hilarious in the wading pool. We sat her in it, and she just sat there.

That's it.

Just sat there.

She didn't move, didn't play with the water toys, didn't splash around.

I realized after about a minute she was waiting for us to start wiping her down with the wash cloth, as if she were in the bath tub!

Katherine kept looking up at me, as if to say, "What are you waiting for? Aren't you going to clean me? And why the heck am I wearing clothes in the bath tub?"

Only after much prodding by grandma did Katherine finally loosen up and start playing in the water. But it took a good 5-10 minutes!

What the heck am I supposed to do in this thing?
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Later in the week, Caroline and Katherine visited their friend Leo, and got to play in his wading pool.

The girls' first pool party.
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Unfortunately, I was at work while this pool party was going on, but I made sure that Terri knew to keep Leo at arms length from the girls.

There is to be NO sitting side by side in the pool with my girls and any young boys until the girls are at least, say, 25 years old! :-)

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It is really hot tonight.

It's so hot in our office where the computer is located, you could fry an egg on the desk -- and I'm not kidding.

We have the girls' bedroom window open while they are sleeping tonight. And since our neighbors also have their windows open, we can smell the faint odor of cigarette smoke wafting through the open window of our neighbor's house and into our girls' room.

Ugh. What a choice. Close the windown and overheat our girls, or leave the window open and expose them to second hand smoke. I'm seriously considering going next door and asking them to move to another room when they smoke.

Hopefully tomorrow will be cooler.

Healthy Competition

Last week Katherine stood up on her own for the first time.

Prior to this event, Caroline showed little interest in getting on her two feet. She is very adept at crawling, and is in fact a much faster crawler than her sister.

However, since seeing Katherine get on her feet, Caroline has suddenly taken a keen interest in standing up.

I'm convinced Caroline is working hard to catch up to her sister's development because:

1. Katherine gets oodles of attention every time she stands up on her own; and
   
2. Caroline realizes that crawling will soon be as obsolete as the horse-drawn carriage, and she's gotta keep up with the new technological advances.
   

Now, I'm no child development specialist. There may be someone out there who will tell me it is impossible for an 11 month old to try to learn a new skill just to keep up with her sibling. They will say that Caroline is merely copying Katherine.

But I disagree. I think that Caroline is definitely trying to keep up with Katherine because she wants the same attention that Katherine gets, and because she knows if she doesn't, her bigger sister will "literally" walk all over her!

Caroline has been practicing hard since Saturday to try to get up on her feet. She'll spend long minutes struggling to get to her feet, oblivious to everything around her.

This evening, I walked into our hallway, and caught Caroline practicing once again, and managed to catch some photos:

Not quite there yet -- but able to get her hands off the ground!
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This is harder than it looks!
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You'll notice that she's not quite there yet. The first photo is the extent to which Caroline can get onto her feet without holding onto anything. She can't quite straighten up her knees, so she's stuck in this squatting position, which of course makes me and Terri laugh whenever we see her do it.

She keeps at it though -- trying up to ten times in a row, after which she collapses in a tired heap and waits for us to reward her with a drink of juice and a snack.

Knowing how hard Caroline is working at it, my bet is that she'll be upright by this weekend.

Wasting Money, Again . . .

I previously posted a blog noting that my girls like to play with items like newspaper, laundry baskets, etc.

Today, Caroline decided to remind me again how I waste my money on my girls.

I bought the girls a very nice Playskool Walker:

Do they use it to practice walking? Of course not.

Instead, I caught Caroline standing and walking with our 29" bar stools:

Also, we have literally HUNDREDS of toys strewn about the living room for the girls to play with. You know what one of their favorite toys are? Two plastic bottles of margarita mix:

Remnants from our days before babies. (click on photo for larger view)

Blended or on the rocks? (click on photo for larger view)

Terri's favorite drink pre-twins was margaritas, so I guess I'm not totally surprised about the margarita mix. If only I could teach them to pour it in a blender!

Look, no hands!

As a parent, you see your kids every day, and so sometimes it's hard to realize just how fast your kids grow.

I know that this first year with Katherine and Caroline has gone by in a blur. But because I see them every day, it's still tough to notice how big they are getting, and how quickly they are developing, until we see friends who remark on how big the girls are getting.

However, every now and then a momentous event occurs that reminds me just how quickly my little girls are growing up.

On Tuesday, the Fourth of July, I was sitting with the girls on the rug in front of our television. The girls were crawling around, playing with their various toys, and I was sitting there watching them.

My attention drifted off to something on the the T.V. (there was a good "Twilight Zone" marathon this weekend!), and so I only halfway noticed Katherine as she crawled up in front of me.

Suddenly, however, as I sat on the floor, I realized that Katherine's face was blocking my view of the T.V.

I looked at Katherine as she stood in front of me, and there she was.

Standing in front of me, all by herself.

It was a great moment to be a father, and I of course jumped up to get my camera. In doing so I startled Katherine so that she fell on her butt.

But for the rest of the day, Katherine continued to pull herself up from a sitting position into a standing position, all on her own, without any help from Mom and Dad.

She was so happy at what she learned, she would laugh and wave her arms every time she stood up.

I guess it's only appropriate that on the Fourth of July, Katherine declared her independence by standing up on her own two feet!

Concentrating REAL hard!
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Look! No hands!
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Independence Day

Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays.

Maybe it's because I like fireworks. Maybe it's because I was a political science major in college and have always been somewhat patriotic. Whatever. I like the Fourth of July.

So I looked forward to celebrating the girls first Fourth of July.

To get into the festive spirit, I bought the girls some red, white and blue dresses, along with matching headwear.

I'm not sure what the headwear is called -- a bandana, a scarf, or what? -- but Caroline had a name for it -- BAD. She wouldn't wear it, and kept ripping it off and tossing it to the ground. We managed to coax her into wearing it for brief periods, but ultimately the headwear ended up in Daddy's pocket. This is one of the only photographs I got of her where she isn't screaming as if the headwear is burning her scalp off, and even in this photo you can see she is none too pleased!

Caroline's Not Really Into Headgear.
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Katherine, on the other had, seemed to enjoy the outfit, perhaps sensing it meant something fun was going to happen.

Katherine in Fourth of July Garb
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In the morning, we took the girls to a Fourth of July celebration in a nearby park, where we ate a Pancake breakfast. The girls shared half a pancake, and enjoyed looking at all the people in the park. There were lots of other kids in the park, which always entertains the girls.

After breakfast, the girls got to march in "The Kid's Parade". Dressed in their red, white, and blue dresses, Katherine and Caroline got to march behind a fire truck, and through the park along with about 100 other kids dressed in various holiday costumes. Although they didn't win a prize for best costume, the girls did get a little American flag and a participation ribbon!

Caroline & Katherine in the Kid's Parade
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The whole affair, from pancake breakfast to the end of the parade was about an hour and a half, which was just about as much fun as Katherine and Caroline could take. We got them home before noon, and spent the rest of the holiday hanging out at the house.

No fireworks for the girls this year. Mainly because the girls are asleep by the time fireworks start! Maybe next year, though.

Channeling Zoolander

If you've read this Blog for any amount of time, you know that I have a sick fascination with comparing my kids to television characters, movie monsters, comic book characters, and rock star personalities. (See "Godzilla & Mrs. Kravitz" (Jan. 9, 2006); "Linus and Katherine" (April , 2006); "The Newest Superfriend" (May 1, 2006); "The Tortoise and the Hare" (May 4, 2006); and "Elvis is IN the Building!" (Jun. 5, 2006).

Since I'm on a roll, why stop now?

Caroline and I have been playing a game for the past three weeks, where she makes a face by scrunching her upper lip like she is "pouting" and simultaneously breathing in and out of her nose rapidly. If I make the same face, we will stare and each other and make that face until one of us laughs.

It struck me today that Caroline's "pouting face" looks very much like Derek Zoolander's "look".

(If you have no idea who Zoolander is, consider yourself lucky. You save $10 and about 2 hours of your life by NOT watching this movie).

I'll let you decide who's got "the look" -- Caroline or Zoolander?

Caroline's "pouting" face
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Zoolander's "look"
("The man has only one look, for Christ's sake!")

Back From Vacation

The girls took their first summer vacation this past week, to Oxnard, California, to hang out with Grandma & Grandpa Lim and their assorted Cousins.

The Girls with Grandpa and Grandma Lim and Cousins at the Santa Barbara Zoo.
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The vacation was five days in a beach house, with tons of attention heaped on the girls, much to their delight.

The drive down was beautiful. We headed down Highway 101, as opposed to taking Interstate 5, and had a lovely drive. For those of you not from California, Highway 101 takes a bit longer, but is more scenic. You pass through some cool small towns that still have locally owned stores and restaurants. Interstate 5 is quicker, but it's a long drive with not much too see, and one chain fast food restaurant after another. We stopped in Solvang on the drive down, ate some Danish food, and took this photo:

Greeting from the Danish Village of Solvang, CA.
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The weather in Oxnard was not as hot as we would have liked, but warm enough to take the girls out to the beach a few times, alghough not in their new swimsuits Mom bought for them.

Grandpa Lim cooked all the meals, which meant good eating, and Grandma Lim played with the girls and helped change their diapers, much to Mom and Dad's delight!

A few of the highlights of their trip, with photos:

• Touching sand on the beach for the first time (Katherine enjoyed it, Caroline not so much)




Katherine enjoying the cool sand between her toes.
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"Uh, that wave is getting pretty damn close!"
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• Enjoying the crisp breeze of the Pacific Ocean




That warm Pacific Breeze!
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• Taking a mini-train ride at the Santa Barbara Zoo.
  
  
  
  You can tell we're on vacation because we're all wearing hats!
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