Biren and Kristen's Universe - Friends

Week 79

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:40:00 -0600

This past Wednesday, the girls celebrated their half birthday as they turned 18 months old. We keep saying it, but it's amazing how time has just whipped by. The girls are so big now, and doing so many amazing things. Just recently, the girls have learned what sounds lions (grrrrr), birds (tweet tweet... although it comes out more like teet teet), and cows (moooo) make. They even refer to each other by name. Karina's name for Kath is "Tata", while Kath's name for Karina is "Nana". No idea how they came up with those as neither sounds anything like what we call them (Reeny and Kath). Kath is now at the point where she will NOT let you hold her bottle for her. She has to drink it herself. Which is great, except that she likes to walk around spilling her milk at times (which makes Kris and I cry... wokka wokka). Karina has become a copycat, and MUST have or do whatever Kath is doing. As soon as Kath picks up a toy to play with, Reeny goes over and just takes it from her... sometimes even pushing her down. We have two of certain toys, and even if they EACH have one, Reeny needs to have the one that Kath is holding. We're trying to get them to understand the concept of sharing, but it's slow going so far.

Friday, a few of Kris' friends came over to hang out and play with the girls. Grace was also in attendance with her mom, Jen. I had taken the day off, but wasn't able to spend any time with everyone as I had an incredible amount of yardwork to deal with. After the lawn was tended to, I got to installing the chew guard that arrived for our fence. After we got the chew guard installed, I was pretty confident we were going to be ok. Not so... Homer has gotten out a few times since. He's not chewing through the gate this time, but finding areas to dig, and going under. I bought more stones to line the fence with this morning, but he STILL got out a couple times. I need more stones!! He's proving very difficult to keep contained. We shall emerge victorious in this battle! The good thing is, Homer generally doesn't run away, he just hangs out on the other side of the fence... Every now and then he darts into the woods behind our house, but generally comes right back. So we're not overly concerned every time he gets out, but it's still rather annoying.

Yesterday, we were supposed to have a cookout, but Kris woke up not feeling good at all. We were forced to cancel the cookout. This morning, however, Kris woke feeling MUCH better, and so we decided to have the cookout today. We knew not everyone would make it, since it was last minute, but we had a lot of food to get rid of!! We got a decent number of our friends to come over, and had a great day. The weather was very comfortable, so we spent the entire shindig out on the deck. We got to see some friends we haven't seen in a long time which was nice.

[Week 79 Photos]
[Kris' Friends Visit Photos]
[Cookout Photos]

Week 67

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:43:00 -0600

This week was a very exciting week, as one of my best friends got married. Will and Corri wed each other yesterday in a very nice ceremony at which I had the honor of being Will's best man. Thursday night was the rehearsal dinner, which both Kris and I were invited to, but unfortunately Kris had to stay home with the girls so I went solo. Friday night, though, Kris got to go out with Corri and her friends for her bachelorette party. She had a great time...

While Kris was at the bachelorette, my friend Kristin and her fiancee Eric, came over. They were flying in from CA to attend Will's wedding and we offered to have them stay with us for the weekend. Last time Kristin saw the girls, they were just wee babies. The girls had a blast playing with Kristin and Eric all weekend. It was really nice to hang out with them for the weekend and I think we all had a great time.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, was the actual wedding day and so the four of us drove down for the event. Kris and I had left the girls with Grammy and Grampa for the night. We all had a great time at the wedding, and as always it was really nice to see all our friends. Congrats, again, to Will and Corri! Hope you guys have a great time on your honeymoon! After we returned home from the wedding, we ended up staying up til 3am chatting with Kristin and Eric. It made for a rough morning (the girls woke us up at 8:30) but we don't see Kristin very often now that she lives in Cali so it was worth it.

Earlier today, Kristin and Eric took off for the airport to catch their flight back to CA. While they were here, though, Kristin helped us out a little bit by teaching us a few tricks she learned with her dogs to train Homer. So thanks Kristin, for teaching us and our dog a few tricks

In other news, earlier this week we decided to push our couch back against the wall. We had it a few feet away from the wall before, but we were getting concerned that one of the girls might flip herself over the back of the couch when they're playing on it. They had come close a few times, but we were always close by. We didn't want to risk any injury, so we just moved the couch back. Now we're even further away from the TV, but baby safety is more important. We'll just have to get a bigger TV.

Yesterday turned out out to be a beautiful day, in the 50s. Today was even warmer, so we decided to take the girls outside for a bit to play on the lawn, since the snow had finally melted away. Karina absolutely loved to just run as fast as she could, while Kath was more curious. She walked around slowly and just picked up things like pinecones or leaves and look at them (and on occasion, try to eat them). Karina was just running around everywhere as fast as she could, every now and then stopping to also pick up pinecones and leaves. They both had a blast outside, and were not very happy to go back into the house. We can't wait to spend more time outside as the weather gets warmer.

Kathryn really loves talking now. She will just babble on and on about who knows what while she plays with toys or whatever. It's kinda interesting watching her "talk", because you can tell she's thinking about something. I wish I could go into her head to know what it is she's talking about haha! The girls continue to add to their vocabulary and now regularly say ball, baby, car, popper, clock, cookie, cracker, Kathryn says "nana" for banana and Karina says "doh-doh" for doggie and "bah" for bottle. There are other words that they seem to repeat but we haven't been able to make the translation into English yet, so we're not sure what they're trying to communicate. They also really like to repeat words that we say. For example if we say diaper, the girls will try their best to pronounce it. It's pretty funny to listen to them try.

Karina has taken on a pretty stubborn personality of late. She gets VERY upset when you take something away from her, yet she's constantly taking things away from Kathryn. She always wants whatever Kath is playing with. It's really fun and interesting watching their personalities develop as they get older.

[Week 67 Photos]

More babies...

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:11:18 -0600

...ok, well just one more... This past Saturday, Kris went to a surprise baby shower for our friends Sean and Amanda who are expecting a baby mid-December. Kris said the surprise went nicely, and she had a good time. I forgot to mention this in my update last night, so I just wanted to write something up. We wish Sean and Amanda the best in the remaining weeks, and we're very excited for yet another baby for the girls to play with!!

Week 39

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:30:00 -0600

In their final days of being "8 month olds", the girls are enjoying themselves immensely. Karina is much more comfortable crawling around the house. So much, in fact, that she too has joined in the game that is "Catch the Kitty". They will both start crawling after the cat as soon as they see one. Usually it's Zander that's the victim, but this week Grady fell victim to Karina a few more times than usual. Fortunately for the cats, they either hear or see the girls coming and have time to get away... but it's still very funny to watch!

The girls are getting bigger and taller, and soon they won't be as comfortable in their infant car seats and Snap n Go stroller. So we decided it was time to buy a new side-by-side stroller for them. Kris took our new Inglesina Twin out for a spin with Jen and Grace. The girls enjoyed the walk in their new stroller (despite the grumpy face on Kath in this photo).

As the girls near 9 months of age, their teeth are continuing to come in slowly but surely. Something new that has started to happen more and more in the past week or so is Kathryn grabbing toys from Karina. For example, earlier today Kris gave them each a teether, Kathryn got the one she likes, and Karina got the one she likes. We sat them down facing each other, and it took Kath all of 10 seconds to drop her teether and go grab Karina's right out of her mouth. We tried giving Kath her teether back, but she would just go back for Karina's... so we figured, fine.. just giver her that one, and give Karina the other one... didn't matter, she now wanted her original teether... just because Karina had it. And we've seen it at least a few other times very recently where Karina will have a toy and Kathryn will just grab it from her and play with it. This is gonna be a "fun problem" to deal with as the girls get older, hahaha! Hopefully she grows out of it...

On Monday, Kris took Kath in for her EEG at Children's Hospital. Kathryn has these shaky arm movements that we (and our pediatrician) have always believed are voluntary and therefore not indicative of any type of seizure, but the EEG was something the neurologist had recommended she undergo to make absolutely sure she doesn't have any neurological disorders. He said that he truly doesn't think that we have anything to worry about but felt better safe than sorry and suggested we get the test done. Anyway Kris described the experience as traumatic (I think for Kathryn and Kris as well!). They glued around 25 electrodes to Kathryn's head and a couple on her chest to monitor brain activity. Kath can be pretty stubborn when we try to get her to do something she doesn't want to, so needless to say she did NOT enjoy getting electrodes attached to her head. But once they were attached, the technician did various things like flash blinking bright lights in her face (to see how her brain reacts) and then let her fall asleep for about 5 min before waking her back up. Kris said Kathryn cried so much, that she actually threw up. We felt so bad for the poor little girl. Thankfully Grammy was able to stay with Karina so that she didn't have to tag along and sit through the whole ordeal. And the good thing was that after a good nap, Kathryn was back to her old self again as if the whole thing had never happened.

A few weeks ago, Kris started playing these Baby Genius videos on OnDemand for the girls, and they seem to be more interested in them now than they were when we tried Baby Einstein a few months ago. Based on the random tunes I hear Kris humming when I get home from work, I'm not sure who's enjoying those videos more, her or the girls! Other than that, the girls aren't really that interested in the TV when it's on. The Baby Genius videos tend to hold their attention, but nothing else really does (which is a good thing)... They must not find MSNBC's presidential election coverage very interesting because I think that's about all we ever watch. Although, Kris claims a particular Ethan Allen commercial ALWAYS draws attention from the girls. She says they stop whatever they're doing whenever they hear that commercial come on, and watch it. Must be something about the crazy drumming music the commercial uses.

This week, we tried something new which has kinda worked out. We decided to eliminate the late night feeding. Our usual nightly routine involved feeding them around 7-7:30, and then putting them to sleep... Then, we would wake them up around 11:30 to feed them one final time, and put them right back to sleep. This had worked GREAT for us for months, as the girls generally didn't wake until about 8am. So this week, we cut out that 11:30 feeding, and the first morning after doing so, Karina woke up at 5:30am. That wasn't fun. We thought we'd try it one more time the next night, and lo and behold, they didn't wake until 8ish the next morning! Huzzah! But then the next morning, Karina was up at 6 something... basically, it's been touch and go for the week... The past couple nights we've been giving her the late night feeding again. I think it kinda depends on how much Karina has had to eat that day. She's not the greatest eater, so days when she eats more than usual, she does better. So we're playing this new routine by ear. We don't necessarily wake Kathryn, since she's doing great as far as eating and sleeping goes. She handled the loss of that last feeding very well, and never once woke early.

Finally, yesterday we had our friends, the Kings and Lauren, over to just hang out. I cooked up some good eats on the grill and we all just enjoyed ourselves. Mostly, we just watched the girls play with each other. They always have a good time when Grace comes over. Kath usually tries to pull Grace's bow out of her hair, but yesterday she was well behaved and instead only stole Grace's book and proceeded to eat it. Luckily, it was a pretty neat book that was made of a foamy material that's washable!! We need one of those! Thanks Grace, for lettin' our girls "read" your book and try to eat it

[Week 39 Photos]
[The Kings and Lauren Visit]

Week 34

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:15:00 -0600

Week 34 of the girls' lives brings new accomplishments and advances both in their lives and in the house. I found some dimmable energy bulbs at Home Depot and replaced the rest of the lights in the great room. I'm really happy about that, since that's the room that has the lights on the most. Now that the entire house is running on energy bulbs, let's see how that electric bill looks next month We also got the kitchen painted, which we're thrilled about because it means no more painting. We both loathe painting. We also replaced the fridge and dishwasher, since the ones that were left here weren't really functioning all that well. Finally, Kris and I put together a new patio swing my parents bought me for an early birthday gift. The instructions actually said the assembly time is 30 minutes. It took us about 2 hours! We're not idiots, but it's just time consuming to do! I have NO idea how they estimated 30 minutes to put that thing together... We saw that and thought it would be ok to start putting it together Friday evening, but next thing we knew the sun was going away! So we had to finish it up Saturday morning.

Kathryn made a pretty big advancement this week... she started crawling "legitimately"!! I say legitimately, because as you may know she has been doing this semi-crawl for a couple weeks now, but now she's actually crawling without lunging forward to get forward motion. She's not li'l miss speedy yet, but she gets around. She'll now spot something across the room that she wants (usually something that is not a toy and something that she should not be playing with) and will start her crawl towards it and won't stop until she gets it. She's unstoppable now and gets very cranky if you get in her way or stop her from crawling. Here's a video of her crawling to get things that she can play with...

Kathryn crawls for the first time

While Karina is not yet mobile, she is quite vocal. She loves to "talk", and does it often. She continues to say "dah dah dah dah", but now also says three new words! She now says the letter 'A' (I'll count that as a word), which is a great start to learning the alphabet. She says "'Ey!", as in Hey!, but perhaps how a Brit might say it, leaving out the 'h' sound. Finally, she says "eh" as in how Canadians end sentences... That's a lotta new words she can say, eh? A couple of times this week, Karina got carried away with her babbling and got pretty loud... so loud in fact that she scared Kathryn, who started to cry. Fortunately Kathryn seemed to quickly realize that Karina wasn't meaning to yell at her, and calmed down. Here's another video of li'l miss chatty saying "dah dah dah dah" again...

Karina says dada 2

While Kathryn is still not quite as vocal as Karina, she has started to say "Ma ma ma ma." We're sure she'll be talking as much as Karina in no time.

On Wednesday, the girls had carrots for the first time and they enjoyed it. So far they've liked everything they've had except sweet peas. The list of foods eaten now includes bananas, apples, pears, sweet potatoes, and carrots. They're also still eating the oatmeal cereal and rice cereal.

Thursday, Auntie Roe and Lexi (Kristen's aunt and her cousin Karen's daughter) came by to visit along with Grammy. Kathryn seemed to really take to Lexi and kept crawling over and sitting next to her. Now that she's so mobile, she can just "up and go" sit next to whoever she wants!

Karina's new thing is to crook her head and look at you all cute-like. We're not sure where she learned to do this, but she does it pretty often now. Even when she's laying on her tummy. It looks really funny when she does it laying on her tummy. Most times, if you crook your head at her, she'll smile and copy you.

Finally, we wrapped up the week with our first cookout on Saturday. We had most of Kris' college friends over, hubbies and babies included! There were FIVE babies and an almost 4 year old. I think cookouts will never be the same again, they'll always have kids now. That's not a bad thing though, because it was a lotta fun with them around. Luckily the weather was great after a week of torrential downpours in the area. We had a great time as did the babies. The twins had new friends and new toys to play with, although Kathryn was quite cranky for the first half of the day, but after a nap she lightened up. At the end of the day, we tried to get all the babies together for a group photo, but as the video below can show you, it was a futile effort. They're all so mobile now, it's impossible to get them to stay put in one spot.

Regis Babies

[Regis Cookout Photos]
[Week 34 Photos]

Breaking Baby News!!!

nospam@example.com (Kristen) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:50:00 -0600

We are thrilled to report that our good friends Jen and Steve received their adoption referral today! The beautiful girl pictured to the right is their daughter, Grace! Jen and Steve will be traveling to China in May to bring Grace home. They have waited a long time for her and Biren and I are so happy for them! I'm already looking forward to many baby girl playdates since Jen and I will both be stay at home Moms for a while. Jen has become like a sister to me over the years so I'm very excited that our daughters are so close in age and will grow up together! Congrats guys!