The Zoe and Silas Show

2/28/13: The kids woke up when I was in the shower this morning. By the time I went in to get them they already had some serious playing underway - riding the train in search of bones for Zoe the Kitty Cat (??).

2/27/13: Books before bed.

2/26/13: Having a sleepover on the dining room floor.

2/25/13: For the last week or so S&Z have been "hiding" from me as I'm getting home from work. They usually go into their room or the guest room with Julia and close the door. All I hear is giggling and shushing when I come in the front door, and then I call out, "Zoe! Silas! [long pause, lots of giggling] Where are Zoe & Silas??!!" At this point they can't contain themselves any longer and they come racing down the hallway shouting "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" and they fall into my arms. Sometimes I am a few minutes early (or late) - I might start texting Julia when I'm a couple of blocks away so that the nightly tradition is sure to continue :)

2/24/13: Stalking the leftover birthday cake.

2/23/13: We had Derek's family over to celebrate he and his Dad's birthdays on Saturday night.  We went with a pizza party theme for the get-together. S&Z were very excited to see their cousin Kaylan. We thought it would be fun for the kids to make their own pizzas. We had cake with lots of candles for the birthday boys. We were listening to the 70s station on Spotify, and before you knew it we had a dance party going! LOVE THEM!!!

After a family trip to the Science Museum was foiled by sickness back in November, we finally reserved library passes for this weekend. Derek has really fond memories of going there as a kid, so I think he was just as excited to go as S&Z were! Zoe & I had so much fun when we visited a few months ago that I couldn't wait to go back with both kids. I wasn't particularly interested in science classes growing up, but I have ended up with a research career in neuroscience. I adore watching S&Z explore the exhibits at the museum and seeing what kinds of things interest them the most. I am brainstorming more ways to expose them to science stuff as they get older. Microscopes Solar power Locomotion That's right. Breast imaging. Dinosaurs This guy hails from North Dakota!! Sound and frequency The biggest accomplishment of this visit was that Derek got Zoe to sit through the entire Lightning Show with him. She is really sensitive to l

2/22/13: On Friday Zoe & Silas went to the dentist for the first time. We've talked about going since I added them to my insurance this calendar year. It took a little searching to figure out where to take them; we finally settled on a nearby practice that Vanessa took Oliver to a few months ago. Zoe nominated Silas to go first and we all trooped back to the exam room together. He was a little apprehensive at first, but our awesome hygenist made the cleaning experience pretty easy overall. The dentist we saw has 5-year-old triplets, so we had fun talking to him. Definitely makes having twins sound easy! It really helped Zoe to watch Silas go first. When it was her turn she hopped right up in the chair and opened her mouth WIDE. They did so great!!!!! We celebrated the milestone and good behavior by having lunch at Blue Star :) After nap we had a playdate with Tracy, Josef, and Nick. All 4 kids had a great time getting some winter

2/21/13: Can you tell who the morning person is out of the bunch?

2/20/13: Mommy Shorts is a very funny blog that I follow. She does all kinds of photo contents and I recently entered a picture of Zoe & Silas kissing into a Valentine's Day contest. She ended up writing a different kind of post  and our photo was selected as 1 of 21 featured entries. I found out today that her riff on The Bachelor was picked up by Huff Post Parents ! S&Z's picture is the main photo in the article about the post !  If this hadn't happened today, below would have been the photo of the day. It seems like that also could have been great fodder for Mommy Shorts.

2/19/13: Reading "I Can Do It" in preparation for their first trip to the dentist on Friday.

2/18/13: S&Z were playing in their room shortly before bedtime last night when the power went out. Unfortunately I was in the kitchen when it happened so they were totally traumatized as soon as we were plunged into darkness. They immediately started screaming so I grabbed my phone and opened up the Flashlight app as quickly as I could so that I could corral them and get us to mine & Derek's bedroom where the real flashlights are kept. Once I got them settled on our bed I grabbed the Pooh bears, a few books, candles, and a box of crackers. I quickly worked on figuring out if the power outage was just in our apartment, our building, or our block. I called our landlord who called NStar on our behalf.  It was interesting to see how each of the kids dealt with this stressful circumstance. Whenever I needed to leave the bedroom to do something, Silas wanted to hold the flashlight and be right by my side. He refused to stay in the bedroom. Zoe, on the other hand, found n

2/17/13: We had another lazy day at home today. S&Z played in their pj's all day, until 5pm when they took a bath and put on a new pair of jammies for bed tonight. We had green smoothies and green eggs and ham for lunch. I discovered a cool photo editing website recently called PicMonkey . I had fun playing around with some of the features tonight!

2/16/13: Meow! Derek is off work this weekend and we had a pretty lazy day on Saturday. Zoe had fun showing off an array of mad faces for the camera while we snuggled on the couch. Julia came over to babysit on Saturday night so that we could celebrate Derek's birthday. We haven't been out since OCTOBER so we have been looking forward to this for weeks!  We met up with Jeff & Megan at King's in Dedham for dinner, drinks & bowling. We had an awesome time!!! Thank goodness S&Z slept in until almost 9am today!