11 Months Old!

Jack and Kara passed 11 months last week. They seem to be changing at rapid pace now and it is so much fun to watch. Kara can wave good-bye, clap her hands, stand on her own for a few seconds, and cruises along the furniture. She is silly and clowns around all the time. Jack loves to wrestle and giggle with Ainsley and has started to cruise a little bit. He has such an amazing smile and enjoys getting into anything he is not supposed to. We are enjoying the kids so much and all three of them are fun in their own ways.

All three kids are getting along pretty well. Ainsley and Kara play together quite a bit now and Ainsley loves her "bubby" and wrestles with him and makes him giggle. In the picture below you will see Ainsley got a huge bruise on her head where she fell twice this week. We need to wrap her in bubble wrap!

Saturday was an important milestone. All three kids had grilled cheese for dinner. No spoons were used during dinner time :-) While we still have to spoon feed some things, we are getting very close to ending that phase, which we are pretty excited about.

Ainsley loves the Merlion so we took a family trip to see him and then we ate lunch by the water. The babies are getting a bit heavy for the Bjorns but we couldn't figure out how to make the trip without them. Probably the last time we will use the Bjorns, they will join the huge pile of baby stuff we are proudly getting rid of. No future use needed :-)

The Wizard of Oz continues to be a staple part of our days and now Jack is addicted. Argh!!!

Grandma and Grandpa D arrive this week. We are so excited to see them!

Short Weekend

While our friends in the US enjoy a long Memorial day weekend, we had a normal weekend. We had planned to go to a Memorial day bbq at one of the American bases, but changed our minds because it was too far to travel. We ended up having a great weekend of the usual family stuff.

By the way, update on our sleeping debacle... Kara's outbursts seem to have gotten less frequent and separating Jack and Kara has turned out to be the golden ticket. Also, we bought some fans and put in the kid's rooms and leave them running all night to make just enough noise to mask whatever is going on outside the room. We are still waking up early, but the clock doesn't have a 4 at the front of it when we open our eyes, so that is a huge improvement from a week ago :-)

The highlight of Ainsley's weekend was her friend Ben's birthday party. She talked about going all day Saturday and was so excited when we finally went. You can see below she is not about to let the birthday cake out of sight as that was the second most important part of her weekend.


Displaying her artistic side during the party...

Ainsley on the subway ("choo choo train" as she calls it) on our way to Carrefour (basically Wal-Mart) where we end up buying the shoes displayed in the video below.


We picked out the shoes because they were pink and had Mickey Mouse (and I personally liked how cheap they were since she will grow out of them before Carrefour even gets around to recognizing the revenue from the purchase). After I put them on her feet to make sure we had the right size (size 27 in Singapore) the magic happened and there was no way she was walking out of the store without the shoes.

We are Sleepy

The past 2 1/2 weeks have presented us with waking up beween 4 & 5am every morning. First we thought Jack was behind the disturbance, but it turns out that Kara is the guilty party. She was waking up Jack, which sent Jack into a crying frenzy while Kara settled herself back to sleep. Now Kara and Ainsley are sharing a room. Saturday morning Ainsley slept through Kara's shenanigans, but Sunday morning she was up with the roosters. The silver lining is that when Ainsley wakes up at 4:30 she doesn't cry non-stop like Jack...so for now we are picking our poison to be an early Ainsley rather than an early Jack. NOW, if we could just figure out what is waking up KARA or else convince her to go back to sleep when she wakes up before 5am!!!!!

Jack & Kara eating strawberries (don't be fooled, Jack doesn't get any of it in his mouth, it ends up all over his clothes and high chair...Kara however does great, unless you give her a vegetable and then she immediately vomits and demands fruit or cheerios):

Jack looking cute after two days of sleeping well since his no-good sister was banished to the other room:

Ainsley in her new swimsuit and hat ready for an outing to the pool!

Ainsley by the pool wearing mommy's sunglasses. These glasses cover up the huge boo-boo that appeared when daddy brought her back from an outing. The boo-boos that appear on "daddy's watch" are reaching an unhealthy number.

Jack is always smiling when we take pictures, but it is not an accurate picture of his behavior. For some reason when we pull out the camera he is all smiles, but this video is a more accurate picture of what he is up to all day...

Funny Pictures

Ainsley likes to pick out pj's for Jack and Kara which means they often end up wearing each other's pajamas. Below is Jack in Kara's and then Kara in Jack's. This is also a good shot of Jack's teeth (all six of them!).



We have been using the blow up tub for the twins because leaning over the bath tub is back breaking (hard to describe but picture marble floor, narrow tub with high walls, etc). Ainsley also likes to have her bath in the baby tub and daddy likes to have fun with the shampoo.
Kara's new thing is she likes to crawl over to you and tackle. This is one of her pursuits.

Jack and Ainsley both love the camera. As soon as we pull it out they start smiling. This is Jack smiling about me taking photos.
This is Ainsley on the bus. Notice how she is holding her bus pass like it is very important (she seriously loves the bus) and when I ask her to smile for me she won't move from her proper bus riding stance.

Visiting the Merlion wearing her "eyes" we bought in Chinatown.

The Duece, A-Dog and Dadda.... (and Sophie and Mila...)

Well this week has been interesting to say the least, the kids have treated me with both love and at times a bit of contempt. The contempt came about in the fact that they woke up at 5am for 6 of the seven nights that Kim was gone. I am not sure what is causing this latest sleep riddle but i am sure like all things that it will stop over time and give itself for something else.

The love is that they started to crawl to you if you called their name (sometimes) and they were really nice in the morning, letting me lay and watch them, so that made up for it.

Ainsley had a great time talking to mom on the phone as she would now talk and talk and when she ran out of things to say she would just say "Hellow Mommy" over and over :) One time she talked to Kim for 5 min (seemed like forever) and never said much else besides Hello Mommy and Yes and No.

Kim is home tonight so we are excited to spend Vesak day together and have some time to just be on a date for our belated Mother's day celebration. We went to Fidgets today to take the twins and Ainsley out of the house. It has been raining a lot so there was not swimming in the mix.

The twins are definitely getting a ton more mobile and a lot of fun.

No pictures this week as i can't get the camera to work, i am sure they will be back next week when Kim is back in charge :)

Holiday Weekend

This weekend was a three-day weekend for us. We had a great time with lots of swimming, playground activity, laughs, etc.

Ainsley and I went to Holland Village one morning to the wet market. She loves going with me because she gets to take the bus and the nice man at the fruit stand always gives her a free banana.


Back at home she loves helping make food for Jack & Kara. She is a pro at using the food processor and can even fill up the ice trays for me!

The three amigos!

Lots of crawling going on these days. Hard to keep up!