What they're doing this week.

I have to remember to keep tabs of all the new things the girls are learning each week. There are now so many of them, it's hard to keep up.

Some of the milestones the girls have recently hit:

• Numerous words. Coming in bunches now. The big ones this week are "boop" (stands for "poop" -- as in when they've taken a #2), "idoptofo" (stands for "identify yourself" -- a game we play while looking out our back window into the backyard), "hello" (not really new, but now used to greet everyone and everything -- including the moon, the flowers, a bird, etc.)
• Shaking hands. The girls love to shake hands. Katherine will shake your hand a dozen tims on her way to her bath, and say, "bye-bye". It takes her five minutes to work her way into the bathroom. If you've been reading the blog, this is nothing new, but the hand shaking adds a twist.
• Tea time. The girls received a tea set, and now we have good old fashioned tea parties in their room. We didn't teach them how to do it -- they just do it!
• Going down the big slide at the park.
• Pretending to be a cat. The girls have a book that asks them if they can arch their back like a cat. We spend part of each night pretending to be cats. Of course, the arching the back thing is nothing new if you've followed this blog since the beginning.
• Arts and crafts. The girls now color in their coloring books (not inside the lines yet -- we're still working on that), and even made some hats for themselves, as seen below:

Caroline's self-made headgear.

(Click on photo for larger view)

Katherine's self-made headgear.

(Click on photo for larger view)

One other thing I just noticed that's worth mentioning. See the photo of Katherine? Notice who's bottom half is in the background?

Yeah, that's me, having just come home from work.

See what I'm carrying? It's a plastic bag. Not even a nice plastic bag. It's one of those bags that you get in the produce section of the grocery store.

I've got my lunch in that bag. I carry my lunch to work every day in a different plastic bag.

You know why?

Because the girls love my lunch bags. They will find them, take them, and hide them. So every morning I can't find my lunch bags, and end up carrying my lunch to work in a plastic grocery-store produce bag.

Yet another thing they don't mention in the parenting books.