Mid-Autumn Festival

Today in Singapore we celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival (a Chinese holiday), also referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival. Our apartment complex invited all of the children to gather at the pool with their lanterns and mooncakes. Below is Ainsley eating her mooncake (which she didn't like, but mom & dad did!) and then pix with her lantern. What is a mooncake? We have no idea, but it is really dense and sugary and delicious. The lanterns are supposed to be traditional paper laterns with candles, but for the little kids they have battery-powered toys that are called laterns because they have a light in them.



Today was also a celebration at the American Club for their 60th birthday. We bought tickets to the family fun events, but Ainsley really only enjoyed the balloons. They had some characters onsite like Barney and Spider Man but they scared Ainsley and she didn't want to be within 20 feet of them. It reminded me of my fear of those mascots at Chucky Cheese!


The twins had appointments with their pediatrician on Friday (12 weeks old). Both are doing well and growing at an above-average pace, but they are still very small for their age. Kara weighs 11 pounds and is 21 1/2 inches long. Jack weighs 9 1/2 pounds and is 21 inches long. Developmentally they are behind, but if you adjust their age for their preemie delivery they are doing quite well. We are proud of their progress and happy that they are healthy. Here is a pic I took right before we left for the appointment:


Ainsley has new words in her vocabulary and it is so much fun to watch her learn. To the untrained ear she talks gibberish, but we can usually decode most of it. This week she learned to say "love you" but it actually sounds more like uh-oo :-) She has a crazy obsession with shoes and toes. The most exciting part about leaving the house is picking out what shoes she is going to wear. She can also say please, thank you, night night, and the very popular umbrella (we say that word almost every day here). This week we bought her a new golf club set which she loves. The red overalls are her favorite outfit right now.


Here are some pix of everyone from the week. We finally got Jack smiling on film but I couldn't get Kara's big smile captured. I got one of her silly expressions that looks like a smile. I'll keep trying to get her smile because it is really cute.






Matt leaves for the states one week from today so we are praying for the twins to make progress on their night sleep so that the week is bearable for everyone left in Singapore :-)

Sleep is in Our Future!

Jack & Kara still aren't sleeping the 12 hour nights we pray for every day, but they are making progress! They sleep in separate rooms for now because they tend to wake each other up and they each have good nights, but never at the same time. Kara can now go 6-7 hours at a time and Jack can go 5-6 hours. Progress!!!! They are both growing and eating well, so we are pleased about that for sure.

Jack:


Chunky Kara:

Ainsley has a new tooth brush that she loves and now she enjoys brushing her teeth. We were growing tired of the daily battles with her to convince her that brushing her teeth was fun and the electric tooth brush saved the day!!

This is Ainsley's new toy that buys us about 15-20 minutes of silence each day, which is key during Jack & Kara's feeding times:

Matt & Jack -- the guys of the house all dressed in blue...

(I was reminded today that I forgot to post a link to the sandwich kisses w/Grandma & Grandpa D...see link at top!)

Happy Labor Day

Labor Day isn't actually a holiday for us in Singapore, but we pretended that it was! Matt took a vacation day and we spent QT with Ainsley. We ventured to Sentosa, an island just south of Singapore to enjoy the beach. Ainsley had fun playing in the sand, took her first swim in the ocean, and played in the water fountains.






Here are some various pictures of the kids during the past week. Kara is definitely putting on the pounds :-)

Ainsley holding Kara:


Ainsley holding Jack:

Kara bathing next to Ainsley:


Ainsley feeding her baby while dad feeds Jack:

Kim Turns 35!

Ainsley received a gift this week that has turned out to be her favorite gift ever. Twin boy/girl baby dolls! She loves them and if she can't find them she walks around the house saying "baby! baby!" The first day she had them we went for a walk outside and when one of the neighbor kids tried to take the dolls from her I thought he might end up with a black eye! Lately she wants the babies naked and won't keep their clothes on. Not sure what that is about. She is super cute with the dolls and is still amazing about Kara and Jack. In other news, potty training is going way better than we expected. She pees AND poops in the potty now. The only time it bums us out is when we are both tied up with a twin and she says "pee pee" and we want to tell her to go in her diaper because we are busy...but alas we can't do that!



We had visitors this weekend! My great friend Amy and her family came from Thailand to visit us. It was so nice to have them visit and we enjoyed having all the kids together. We also enjoyed an extra pair of hands to help us with the twins :-) Their oldest daughter Elisi and Ainsley played lots together. In the picture below Ainsley had stolen Jack's bottle and decided she should finish it for him while she watched the Olympics.


Waterbug Ainsley now jumps from the side of the pool when her daddy is with her. She has so much fun in the water.

(more pictures in the link above - "24AUG08")

Farewell to Grandma & Grandpa D

Grandma & Grandpa Diamond are leaving us after 8 weeks. They were a tremendous help to us during their stay and we are going to miss them. We really enjoyed their stay and Ainsley is definitely going to miss having them around.

Jack & Kara had an appointment with their pediatrician this week. Jack has grown to 6 1/2 pounds and Kara is 7 1/2 pounds. They are both doing very well and growing at a good pace. They still don't sleep as much at night as we would like, but we can't complain because they are healthy and growing. (In the picture below Jack is on the left, Kara on the right.)



Dave and Barb treated us HUGE with a night away from home so we could catch up on some Z's and recharge our batteries. We opted for an overnight stay at a resort in Indonesia, which is a 55 minute ferry ride from Singapore. It was awesome. We had an incredible time and it was just what we needed. We came home feeling refreshed and missed our kids!


Our best moment of the week was Sunday afternoon. Ainsley decided dad was taking too long to feed Jack, picked up the bottle, walked over to wear Jack was sitting and proceeded to feed him his bottle. We laughed so hard. She grew bored after about three minutes (which is much shorter than the 45 minutes it takes Jack to get through a bottle), but it was an adorable moment.

Ainsley continues to love her baby brother and sister. She is a huge help to us when possible and adores giving them kisses and hugs. Bath time is fun for her as well since she gets to help bathe them. She is particularly interested in Jack's "boy parts" during bath time :-) Today she decided if they were going to lay on the floor, then she should lay on the floor too...

Happy National Day!

August 9th is National Day in Singapore. The country makes a huge celebration of the day and Ainsley's school held a special program on Friday. All of the kids wore red & white and paraded around the schoolyard waving Singapore flags. Ainsley was supposed to march around the playground like the rest of the students but decided instead to run...since that is her preferred mode of travel these days. It is actually more like a trot that develops into a very unstable run. Her scraped knees and bruises are evidence that her trot is not perfected yet. After the parade each class put on a special performance for the parents. (see link on right side for pictures of the program at school)


Jack & Kara continue to put on weight. Kara is officially chunky (she is the one on the right below). Jack is trying to catch up but Kara eats like horse so he is going to have to get serious about things if he wants to pack on the pounds as fast as she is. We will visit the pediatrician this week and will get the official weights.



Kara (Matt now calls her fuego because of her red hair)...



Jack likes to make things interesting during diaper changes. This week he caught not only mom off guard, but also hit Ainsley who was "helping" with the diaper change. He drenched the front of her shirt and face and left her pacifier dripping. Of course we found it hysterical but Ainsley didn't find it as humorous as we did :-)



We had a special visitor this week! Uncle Rob was in town for work again and came by to see us. Ainsley wasn't sure at first that she wanted to hang with Rob, but after a while she decided he was cool and even shared her Humpty Dumpty book with him.

Growing Right Along!

Can you tell who is who? When they are both dressed in yellow and laying next to each other it makes us do a double-take. However, as they grow Jack and Kara are actually looking less alike. Kara looks like she may have red hair, while Jack still has blonde hair. Kara is also a lot bigger than Jack and has cute chubby cheeks. She LOVES to eat and eats a lot. Jack is starting to pick up on how much he eats and is our more sensitive one...he likes to be held a little more than his sister. It is fun to watch them grow and change. We can't believe they will be 6 weeks old this week!

JACK:

KARA:

Ainsley is still loving her brother and sister, but when all three children want attention at the same time she is less fond of them :-)

Ainsley had a laid-back weekend. The potty training is going well. She now has pull-up diapers and uses her potty a couple of times a day. She gets really excited and it is cute. Last week her school took a field trip to Sentosa, which is an island just to the south of Singapore. I (Kim) was able to go with her and we had such a great time. She loved the beach even though she ate about five handfulls of sand. It was so much fun to watch her play with her friends and enjoy experiencing the ocean . Unfortunately I forgot the camera, so there are no pictures to share :-(