The weather’s been nice enough the last few days for me to load the babies into their little red wagon and pull them through the neighborhood most days before lunch. They look so cute in their little hats, facing each other and checking out the ‘hood. Looks are deceiving, though. More than once, I’ve turned around to find that Alex is pulling on Avery’s chinstrap for her sun hat, or she has yanked his baseball cap off by the brim. Alex also likes to see where he’s going, so he has to be in the back seat or else he twists himself around and half out of the seatbelt to face forward. I’ve been putting toys in the wagon as well, so they have things to chew on and play with, but I’m finding that they aren’t using them for the intended purposes. As I’m walking, I’ll hear a telltale thunk behind me. When I turn and look, I see a trail halfway back down the road of toys, clothes, stuffed animals, and cheerios. It’s not so bad when they throw a rattle or something that makes noise when it hits, but binkies and hats and stuffed Peeps tend to fall silently. Yesterday I think I must have walked 2 miles on the 1 mile walk because I turned around so many times to pick things up. Today I just let them drop it all on the way down the road and I stopped and picked the things up as we came to them on the way back. Much faster that way. “Gretel” came home a few days ago wearing one pink sock…she had two on when we left the house. And yesterday, Don found her pink hat hanging from our mailbox. I guess some kind neighbor found it in the road and returned it.

What else is new? Alex has one top tooth fully through and the second one has the tiniest little bit through and seems to be bugging him tonight, so it must be on the move. Avery has been drooling and gnawing on her fingers, so she can’t be far behind. Alex is cruising along furniture and managed to climb one basement step yesterday. He was pretty impressed with himself over that. Avery is a speedy crawler now and her favorite new trick is that she can go from laying to sitting, so she’s always sitting up in the crib when I go to get her from naps now. It’s funny, she learned how to do that within weeks of learning to crawl, but it took Alex months because he just started to do it too. So now the only thing he can do that she can’t is pull up to standing, and she waves hello but he doesn’t.

Don was away for his work’s annual convention in Kansas City last weekend. I was so glad to see him Sunday when he got home. Pop and Grandma and Aunt Jen all came to visit the twins and help out, but we seem to be smack in the middle of stranger anxiety. Alex warmed up eventually, but Avery just was clingy and cried anytime I left the room. It was hard and made me appreciate all over again how amazing Don is as a dad. I feel like I need to try harder to have the babies be with people other than Don and me much more often.