5 Cheers For Health

Paul is back.  Illness sure has been kicking some butt in our family.  It's a reoccurring theme in our house that is just annoying.  Paul had it the worst and the longest with a long lasting double ear infection to the point that I was starting to believe Paul's temperament was whiny and sensitive.  Happy to report that Paul is back....to normal whininess levels.  :)  The stars collided and good health returned to all of us just in time for an amazing Indian summer weekend in Munich.  Besides the amazing weather, enjoying back to back family meals without having to pick up an inconsolable baby has been a dream come true.  Here's to hoping this is the beginning of a real groove for the Mather family.

Here are some recent videos of Paul and Elise and a couple silly pics of our Quatschkopf Lily.

Elise's hardcore head banging


Lily introduced this game and it stuck

Really starting to interact and having some fun together.

Family Snapshot

We've settled back into the "normal" routine as fall has arrived with Lily back in preschool and work is in full swing.  I'm heading off for Belek, Turkey this week for a training conference, so the craziness will be all in Nicole's hands (with the help of our trusty babysitter/mother's helper, of course).  Work travel will keep me on the go for a couple of days per week most weeks through mid-November, then things should taper off a bit, so hopefully Nicole won't have pulled out all her hair by then.  I know I would if roles were reversed... spending all day with the twins and Lily has a way of wearing down all my mental defenses and making me wish for bedtime to arrive ASAP.  So before my oddessy begins, here's a snapshot of what everyone is doing these days.

Paul (twins are 10 months old today) is in the midst of a couple of fun developments.  First is pushing things to walk.  He loves pushing the walker around, sometimes with one of his sisters in it.  And if that isn't in sight he'll go for chairs.  His latest game is to take each chair from the dining room table and push it until it hits something that stops it. So our dining room/dance floor room sometimes has six chairs at random edges of the room.  His other trick is throwing.  Everything.  We enjoy games of catch with just about anything.  The only down side to this is with food... Elise is doing great with finger foods these days but Paul just takes things from his tray and tosses them.  Paul is also a vampire these days, as he's added two lateral incisors on top to go with his central incisors on the bottom.  They've just broken through, so we'll see if you'll actually be able to see them before the central ones come in too.

Elise continues to be our smiley girl.  She and Lily enjoy just sitting and laughing at each other, and she likes to follow Lily around the house.  She is a quick crawler and is still in the "I want to taste everything" phase, so this afternoon I had to fish random paper out of her mouth while trying to avoid getting chomped.  Elise also likes to hang out in our shower stall for some reason, but can't figure out how to get out, so whenever she's tired of being there she just squawks and holds up her arms.  She was also testing her legs this evening, standing on her own with no hands for a few seconds at a time.  Elise and Paul are also starting to interact a bit more and follow each other around the apartment to see what trouble they can get into.

Lily is enjoying being a preschooler, even if her stories about what happened at school that day tend to defy belief ("I jumped out of the window today", "so and so flew into a tree and gave me an apple").  The girl has quite an imagination, and she can really get wrapped up in playing with her Barbies or Playmobil and rehash the recent scenes of her life.  She also likes to join in our grown up conversations, making sure everyone knows what's on her mind.  And she's been accompanying Nicole to her weekly tennis sessions lately and taking a few swings at the end of time.  She's got a nice looking swing but the hand-eye coordination will take some time. 

Nicole has been enjoying getting back into tennis and heading out for dinner with friends after the kids are all down, and I've been enjoying the continued good weather to get out to run and bike.  Of course most of our time is dedicated to our respective work, and I definitely feel like I have the easier job these days.  There's always something to do until the kids are down for the night, but at least we usually have a couple hours of me or us time in the evening to decompress. 

Here are some pics from the last couple of weeks.

The push walker is getting a lot of action these days.

Lily prefers showers these days but once in a while will want to jump in and join her siblings for bath time.

Empty beer bottle case and trash can really can be that much fun apparently.

Checked out a cool Kids fest at the German Chancellory on the Reunification Holiday. Lily getting her daily jumping fix in.

Paul will push anything and anyone.

A perk of Lily in Kindergarten is that the babies can easily play with Lily's toys.

Paul's expression is priceless.

 It's so nice when the babies can entertain themselves on the floor while cooking.  So worth the mess.