Claire has finally switched from calling Ronin “No-no” to calling him “Nonin” about half the time. It is hard not to say it also. I always wondered what the other moms in the playground thought when I would call Ronin No-no. Maybe they thought he was really misbehaved and that nickname stuck because I was always having to tell him “No.”

Claire and Ronin in a slide
I went to a playground last week that was not fenced, because the bushes at my favorite fenced playground have little blue berries all over them right now and I can’t convince Ronin that they’re not blueberries. He keeps picking them and luckily hasn’t eaten any, but it was getting difficult to monitor him constantly with Claire climbing up ladders on the other side of the playground. The twins had a wonderful time at this other playground, and I was able to successfully keep them from wandering off by reminding them to stay on the sand, but after we’d been there for a while Claire sprinted out of the playground toward the road and wouldn’t listen to me. I ran after her and caught her, and saw Ronin running the other direction. I had to grab Claire and run after him as well. We left shortly after, but I have started asking other twin moms for advice about this, since it is really difficult to deal with two babies running in opposite directions.

Claire in the sky with polka-dots
Both children are doing really well with their ABCs. Ronin loves to sing the song and they both recognize almost all of the upper-case letters and most of the lower-case. Claire is noticing letters everywhere too. She spelled out S-T-O-P to me from a stop sign the other day, so I told her what it meant. They like to give me directions when I’m driving–Ronin says “Go that way” and points whenever I am stopped at an intersection. Maybe one of these days I’ll do some baby navigation and see where we end up. They both count to ten and beyond (although Ronin likes to say “Eleventeen” instead of 17), but they get more enthusiastic about saying all of the numbers than in actually being accurate about what they’re counting. Claire is doing better about accurately counting up to four objects. Ronin just likes to continue counting, and he’ll count the same things more than once so he can keep saying numbers.

Ronin, King of the Mountain
We are going on vacation this week, so it will probably be about two weeks before you see another blog entry from me, but hopefully it will be worth the wait.
































