Back to Gray, Visit with Cousin Autumn, and Baby Jive

We are back in Mass. and were greeted with gray drizzle and chilly air.  The babies are tired from their travels and so are mommy and daddy.  The pictures from the trip are downloaded for safekeeping.  HOLDING TWINS CHALLENGE UPDATED

We have some new developmental milestones to report.

Zev can do peek-a-boo, at about 1am waiting in the Logan airport for Daddy to drive up in the van, Zev grabbed his blanket and threw it over his face and took it away and laughed at mommy, he did this several times. Orli can do it too, in Arizona at an Italian restaurant she pulled a curtain from behind her and pulled it over her face and did peek-a-boo with the whole table.

The babies also shake their heads, Orli does this when you make a sing-song "ooooooooh" sound. And Zev shakes his head as if to say "no".  He pretends to feed you and then takes it away and shakes his head.  It is so cute.  Although on the plane ride home, he decided to "share" his gooey teething biscuit by jamming it in mommy's mouth, he has bad aim so it went into mommy's cheek, chin, nose.. spit covered cookie all over.

Orli is starting to have more content to her babble.  She will string a bunch of the sounds she can do such as "bebo, da, da ma, do, da bebe, zoo" we think we need a Baby Jive translator.

Here are some remaining pics of our visit.

Babble

The babies are really starting to babble more.  Orli points at everything and seems to say a sound that starts with the letter of the object.  "la la la" for light.  She's recently taken notice of a white orchid plant that is blooming in our dining room.  She gets really excited when you show it to her.  She says "bha bha" and points to it.  

Zev has learned in the last week that he can manipulate the sounds from his mouth by placing his hand over his mouth and releasing it.  He'll sit there and slap his hand over his mouth as he goes "aaaaaaaaa".  Orli tried this but instead she kept hitting the side of her head and laughing.  Zev was making spit bubbles by saying "mah mah mah" with a pool of drool on his chest as these bubbles formed between his lips.  It must have felt interesting to him because he would go into a trance.  

The babies will make raspberry sounds back and forth to one another, then when they get tired of that they click their tongues.  We try inserting "ma ma ma" and "da da" in there, Orli will copy pretty well, Zev mostly says "da da", he will say it loud, but when Aunt Louise was on the phone the other night he would only whisper it softly "dah".

Both of them like to move to music, Orli tilts her little head back and forth when you or the music table sings "A-B-C" she manages to sway her little shoulders too.  Sometimes Zev joins in with his way of hopping to the beat.

Both of them are crawling and most of the time in two different directions, we are usually stomping after one baby or another.  They like to pause, look back at you and laugh really hard and squeal as they turn forward and launch into a scurried crawl as they try to get away from you.  They seem to be inviting the chase, even when you casually approach.

We think Orli will be walking very soon, she managed to take one very wobbly drunken step toward mommy the other day.  We updated the holding both challenge.