The Zoe and Silas Show

They were supposed to be sleeping. At least they weren't crying...

Zoe was on a mission to get a cake pan out this morning. Silas decided to come along to help her. And they made a big ol' ruckus. Then Silas wanted to help Daddy empty the dishwasher. Of course Zoe wanted to help too! This was all happening by 8:30am today.... Thank god for naptime!

Our house is abuzz with development these days! The babies turn 10 months a week from today. Silas figured out hands and knees crawling on Monday. He has been moving around like a worm up until now, but he finally figured out the alternating motion of real crawling. Here's a video showing them coming after my new phone. Silas started babbling consonants two days ago and Zoe started today. Moving from vowels to consonants is a big step in terms of language development. It really changes each baby's personality! You can hear a little bit of this babbling from each of them in this longer video. I can't wait for them to "talk" to all the grandparents on skype this weekend! Finally, you can see how they react to and explore a brand new toy in this video. The new play spaces we have recently carved out are so great, and we find ourselves having to childproof more and more everyday. They discover things we never thought of! It feels a little like a romper room around her

Zoe spontaneously started shaking her head in the last few weeks. It is her first gesture and it's so darn cute when she does it, primarily because there has been no meaning attached to it. She seems to just like the feeling of it and shakes her head whenever she randomly feels like it. Until dinner tonight, that is. I cooked up a 12-bean soup medley for them this week, and Derek reported to me that Zoe seemed to not really like it. I decided to try and sneak some of the beans in to their dinner tonight, masking them with carrots and quinoa. After the first few bites, Zoe looked at me, pursed her lips shut, and shook her head no. Over and over and over. I grabbed the camera and shot a short bit to commemmorate the moment -- the moment I've been dreading, when she attaches she gesture of the head shake with the meaning of the word no... God help me is all I can say.

Derek went to Berklee College of Music and is a very talented musician. His parents have belonged to various singing groups for years, and his brother excelled in musical theatre. I played clarinet all through school, my sister has a master's degree is flute, and my mother has a beautiful singing voice. What first drew me to Derek's match.com profile was our mutual love of music. To say that we hope Silas & Zoe inherited some of our musical abilities and passion for music is an understatement! Our friends, Ricky and Heidi, have a 33-month-old daughter, Holly. Ricky is also a musician and Holly shows quite an interest in music as well. We have seen Ricky, Heidi & Holly a few times this summer and it seems the little kids always end up playing with some musical toy. Here they are at a BBQ at The Pritchard's house last month, We were at their house again today, and Holly has this awesome Melissa and Doug piano . Silas & Zoe LOVED it! Zoe took a turn first, And the

Chuck bought a house on the Cape a few years ago and we subsequently started a tradition where our lab and a collaborating lab from BU goes to Chatham, MA for the day. View Larger Map This year was the 3rd Annual Lab Day on the Cape, and I was excited to share it with Silas & Zoe! Vanessa & Oliver drove with us in the M.V. to Chatham. We tried to time it so that all 3 babies would sleep for most of the nearly 2 hour drive, but of course that didn't happen, and Vanessa ended up in back on "puffs" duty! The day started at our collaborator's house. It was a gorgeous day, and those of us with kids set up shop on a blanket down by the lake. There were 4 babies all around the same age, an 18-month-old, and 4 older kids. What fun! Everyone ate lunch outside on the blankets and we all enjoyed the gorgeous weather for awhile after lunch. As always, my friends & co-workers were such a huge help with the babies! Here is Auntie Eliza with Zoe, And here is Sonya giv

We had our house "babyproofed" by Safe Solutions of New England at the end of May. What this consisted of was having Tom, the owner, come and do a walk through to discuss what needed to be done. He then sold us and installed outlet covers, cupboard locks, a toilet lock, and miniblind cord wrappers thing-y's. He also bolted furniture in the babies' nursery to the wall so that it can't be pulled forward by accident. He did all of this in the span of 90 minutes! The hardware alone would have taken us 3 months to purchase and install... It was a super simple and cost effective way to get the first part of the childproofing process accomplished. That was the basic stuff. Now that Zoe is crawling up a storm (and Silas is moving more every day), we need to finish out the process by figuring out what needs to be packed away, and how best to use gates and superyard to keep everyone safe with the typical ratio of two of them to one of us. Here's the way our mornings use

We had Silas & Zoe's 9-month well baby visit yesterday. Here are the stats. SILAS: 23 pounds (82nd percentile) 30-1/2 inches (96th percentile) 46-1/2 cm head circumference ZOE: 19-1/2 pounds (57th percentile) 28-1/2 inches (76th percentile) 46 cm head circumference Zoe has always been a skinny little thing, so Dr. Rundquist was very impressed with her catch up. We decided to have Silas checked out by a neurologist at Children's to make sure his toe standing isn't anything to worry about. He is able to stand flat-footed, he just seems to prefer to stand on the balls of his feet. Our PT & OT have been keeping on eye on this, and combined with some stiffness in his legs there is a possibility that he has a tethered spinal cord. I'll write an update about this once we've seen a neurologist. The well baby visit appointments are always long with two babies, but thankfully we only had to get one vaccine each this time so it wasn't too bad. We even got to pick o

Silas and Zoe had their early intervention re-assessment yesterday. They have been getting EI since they were 3 months old, and the program re-assesses every 6 months to check for continued eligibility. Stephanie, our OT, and I decided that it would be great to keep them in the program since they continue to qualify. They were born 4-1/2 weeks early and have shown subtle gross motor delays since birth. They also have a condition common in twins called torticollis . Having a diagonosis of torticollis is an automatic qualifier for one full year of EI. Our diagnostic paperwork didn't get filed at entry into the program, so Stephanie is going to file now in order to keep them eligible for services for one more year. Stephanie comes for a one hour OT visit every two weeks and Rochelle, our PT, comes every week. I am so happy that we have two different therapists check in with Silas & Zoe regularly. The therapists are great with the babies, and it's nice to have folks to check

You can watch Zoe messing around with Silas after lunch today in the video below. And here is some of the cuteness from their 9 month pictures this afternoon... Their 9-month well baby visit is on Friday so we'll have some current stats next week! What I CAN say is that Silas is currently wearing 18-month Carter's and Zoe is wearing 9-month Carter's, so their size difference persists! But as my friend Kristin says, as least it's in the expected direction :)