One Week

After one week of traveling to the glorious Austin, TX I am back in Singapore. It was a quick trip filled with work, catching up with friends, seeing Bailey, enjoying fall weather, and doing my best to fight jet lag. Well worth the long flights!

I came home to my beautiful children and discovered that Kara grew a ton of hair, can sit in her bumbo with ease, has recovered from her cold, and is on the brink of rolling from her tummy to her back (apparently it has happened three times already, but it doesn't count until mom can see it!).

Jack can sit in the bumbo, but he doesn't get the "with ease" label yet, he is doing MUCH better during tummy time at raising his head, is also growing some hair, and is officially growing out of his clothes. He was wearing a pink onesie that said "Precious" on it when I saw him...definitely time to pull out the next sizes from the closet :-) (Side note: Grandma D says Jack looks like Pa)




Words cannot express how much I missed my Ainsley. My friend Tina sent me home with a present for Ainsley, the Hello Kitty pop-up tent. It is ridiculous how much Ainsley likes the tent.


And some things never change... Jack & Kara gave up sleeping all night almost a month ago and decided they were in no hurry to cross that milestone. We are of course exhausted, but we know they will get there eventually. Grandma D was a huge help for Matt during the night while I was gone, for which we are very thankful.

Halloween in Singapore

Happy Halloween! Singapore has mixed reviews on Halloween. It seems like about half the people care about it and the other half don't. It is definitely not near the holiday that it is in the states. I got a laugh when our helper told us she went out on Halloween night "to see all of the white people dressed up."


At our apartment complex there was a huge crowd for Halloween. All of the kids dressed up, did a short parade around the pool, and then went door to door trick-or-treating. Ainsley had SO much fun. I was shocked at how much fun she had. Instead of saying "Trick or Treat" when people opened the door she opened up her bag and said "More!" The twins did the parade around the pool but then went home to get ready for bed.




Ainsley got lots of loot and enjoyed eating her chocolate!


Ainsley is beyond happy to have Grandma D in town :-)

Deepavali Holiday Weekend

This is a holiday weekend for us in Singapore! We aren't doing anything to celebrate Deepavali specifically, but we will enjoy the three day weekend it is giving us!!

We are gearing up for Halloween and went to a pumpkin carving party Saturday afternoon. Ainsley dug some of the guts out of her pumpkin but didn't do any of the carving. Instead she painted the top of her pumpkin and enjoyed picking up pumpkin seeds.


The finished product:

The big news in our house this week is that the twins actually slept through the night on the SAME night. It only happened once, but we'll take it! Kara slept through the night first for one week, then she stopped. As soon as she stopped, Jack was able to make it though the night for about a week. Then they just started trading nights when each would either wake up or go all night, but never at the same time. Hopefully we are close to making it a regular occurrence!!!!!


Jack & Kara being cute...


Ainsley's new soccer ball. Don't try to take it from her or she starts yelling "Ainsley's!!"

Lots of photos and videos this week...too many to add here so check out the links to the right "Photos & Videos" and "More Videos."

Pictures

Next week is the Deepavali holiday, which is an Indian festival (also celebrated by some Hindus and Buddhists). It is a light festival that originated to mark the end of the harvest season. It is celebrated on the first day of the lunar month, which comes in the month of October or November. In honor of this holiday, Ainsley's school decorated the hands and feet of the children with henna designs. It takes about a week for these to wash off.


Ainsley's new fork and spoon set from IKEA: (side note, she is sporting her hairdo, a ponytail!!)
At a birthday party for Graham (who turned 3 years old). Ainsley is watching him blow out his candles:

Ainsley eating her cake and watching the crazy boys (notice they are trying to eat the entire piece in one bite as she slowing scrapes the icing and watches in amazement):

Good Appointment -- 3 1/2 Months Old

Jack & Kara had an appointment with their pediatrician this morning. Both are healthy and doing great! They don't tell you percentiles during doctor appointments here (which I find comforting because it eliminates the parental comparison of how babies rank against each other), but I can tell you what Dr. Yip said when he saw Kara... "Wow. She is growing quite well. Definitely the bigger of the two."

Kara: 13 pounds 13 oz., 23.6" long
Jack: 12 pounds, 14 oz., 22.4" long
(note Ainsley didn't pass 13 pounds until she was 5 months old!)

Jack is a handsome devil and in his new little outfit (thank you Laura!) he was a true lady killer for his appointment.

Other differences with pediatrician appointments in Singapore are that the doctor gives the vaccines, not the nurses and all meds are dispensed at the doctor's office during checkout, so you don't have to make an extra stop on the way home at Walgreens. The bummer is that insurance is not directly billed by the office so today's appointment cost us a sum of S$800. Oh, and they only take CASH. Ouch!

OU WHO?

Sorry Capps clan, but we couldn't pass on this. Unfortunately we couldn't watch the game in Singapore, but when we woke up we discovered the Red River was in favor of Austin this year. Hook 'em!


I have been bad at taking pictures lately and realized that it probably looks like we never leave our living room. We do, but the camera does not! So, this week I tried to take the camera out a couple of times.

Ainsley wore a UT shirt to school on Friday to show her spirit, but since she is the only American in her class it probably looked foreign to her friends. We are certain that her school spirit is what lead to the Longhorn victory.

Jack & Kara are doing well. They are growing and making progress. Kara is still difficult in the later afternoons, but aside from that we couldn't be more pleased. Jack is waking up once during the night but often goes 8 or 9 hours, so we are not complaining. The endless smiles we get are precious and we love them.

Kara is getting quite the belly!


Ainsley continues to enjoy her gymnastics class and is getting better at trying new things. She has been trying to jump all week and today when she did the trampoline she almost did it, but still can't figure out how to get her feet off the ground.


More pictures listed above in "12OCT08"

Kara Wins the Gold!

Gold medal category: sleeping all night


Kara has officially won the Gold medal in the Diamond house for being the first of the twins to sleep all night. Most baby books consider a consecutive 6 or 8 hour stretch to be "sleeping through the night" but in our house we don't count it a win until they can sleep 12 hours, meaning we don't hear a peep from bedtime to wake up time. Last night Kara slept from 7:15pm to 7:00am. It was nothing short of a miracle in our minds and we are over the moon with excitement. Kara would like to thank the little people (Jack & Ainsley) for keeping their disruptions to a minimum so that she could perform to this level. Jack only woke up once at 2:30am and Ainsley managed to make it all night without one of her unexplained night wakings. Today the sky is a little more blue, the birds are chirping, the grass is greener, and their is a blue bird on my shoulder.

We were rewarded with a good night's sleep because we played a little game we call the Positive Game last night. It is not always an easy game to play, but we had a really hard afternoon with all of the kids so we sat down after all the kids were in bed and played our little game. The rules are that you can only say positive things and they must be something about our family of five. The karma gods were listening to us. Now, if we could just get the forces of good to help little Jack make it through a day without his endless crying and carrying on!

I was in Australia most of last week but now Matt and I have very little travel over the next month. It will be nice to enjoy being all together. Ainsley is sure happy to have momma and dadda both at home. She continues to like her gymnastics class and it seems to be helping her with her courage to climb all over the furniture at home. Makes me nervous with these dang marble floors we have here!!!



We have been horrible at taking photos lately. We promise to improve this week :-)