One.. two.. three.. FOUR! Happy Birthday, Kiddos!

The kids are overtired and hopped up on icing. The presents have been unwrapped, the candles blown out, said icing has been hosed off. Twice. Justine is singing "Happy Birthday" to Vasco in bed. They have come a long way from the teeny tiny way-too-early babies that they were (pictures and NICU journey), and they amaze us every single day.

Speaking of amazing, remember how we discovered that 3 was not the magical age, but the magic is scheduled to start at 4- 4 and a half-ish? Well, you decide for yourself, but literally 3 minutes after they blew out their candles, the following highly mysterious things happened:
1) they spontaneously and neatly arranged the entire pile of books on the bookcase
2) they cleared out a space for their new toys, and neatly arranged the new toys in the cubbies.
3) they got undressed for a bath on the first request, and made sure all the clothes were in the laundry basket
4) in order to go take a bath, they went straight to the bathroom. As opposed to running naked past the bathroom into the living room, twice around the kitchen and back right past the bathroom into the bedroom.

I'd write more, but I'm going to go celebrate this magical new universe with a glass of wine (and my Spanish homework) (normally it is tequila that helps my Spanish along, but it IS a school night after all!) :)

A Long Long Long Weekend (Happy 4th of July!)

One trip through the crowds in downtown DC. One hour-long paddle-boat trip around the Tidal Basin, complete with chasing flocks of geese through the water. One 4th of July BBQ, complete with Irish and Greek dancing. Haircuts and a quick private tour of a local fire station. A 4 and a half hour 5th of July BBQ. Lots and lots of running from the rain. All by Saturday night.
On Sunday I anticipated that we would 1) not be able to top the excitement of the previous two days, and 2) have to design some activities. Cool activity number one: craft project with sticky tape animals and my awesome rendition of a zoo, complete with waterfalls, a pond, slides (!!) for the animals, and an occasional cage. And coconut trees.


However, despite our bests efforts, the SUNDAY-AFTERNOON-BOREDOM set in... And no, those are not address labels. They are "boy-earrings for the face". Okay?
Guitar lessons started this Wednesday. Which, of course, adds two child-sized rental guitars to the mule-load of stuff we drag through the tunnel to the garage every Wednesday night: stuffed animals, remnants of half-eaten snacks, new snacks that I use to lure them to the car, backpacks, etc.. The guitars make super great picture props:

.. And this is how they sound... :) I'm hoping there will be an "after" video, where our angelic guitar duet will deftly strum out "Born to Be Wild"..