I’m guessing these photos are by Charles.

Unrelated dialog with Sydney:

SYDNEY: I want to be a movie star.
BARRY: Really? Why do you want to do that?
SYDNEY: Because movie stars have fancy dogs with ribbons.
BARRY: Oh. I guess that’s true.
SYDNEY: Some of the dogs wear glasses!
BARRY: They do?
SYDNEY: Fancy movie star glasses!

When I posted a photo of Sydney at work on a drawing, a couple of people requested that I actually post one of her drawings. So here, with Sydney’s rather eager permission, is her drawing of Bride of Frankenstein (also her current choice for this year’s Halloween costume). {As you can see, she signed her name, as she does with a lot of her drawings.)  Enjoy!

Longtime “Alas” readers will recall a long-ago co-blogger, my friend and housemate Bean, who still posts a very occasional comment here, plus I often use Bean’s photos for kid blogging.

Sydney and Maddox were recently flower girls at the wedding of Bean to a lovely, quirky guy named Dan.

Many more pictures — not only of the girls, but also of a few other folks of interest to the “Alas” community — below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s Maddox holding the new arrival, Pumpkin Sweetiebell. (The name was a collaborative effort of Sydney and Maddox.)

Pumpkin is very patient with this sort of treatment. Fortunately.

A closer photo of Pumpkin below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

A real geek in the making! Sydney found Zombies! lying around and became interested in playing it. She lines up the Zombies into groups, usually dividing them by sex. They she’ll play with them; sometimes speaking their dialog, sometimes singing made-up zombie songs.

Sample dialog:

BARRY: “Is this zombie holding a severed head?”
SYDNEY (with a “Barry you’re thick” tone): “No, those are brains.”

The photo below the fold shows the little zombie figures better, in case anyone’s interested. This is from when Sydney announced the zombies were having a ballroom dance and so paired them up by sex. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t realize that they had graduations. Or gowns. Shows what I know. Anyhow, Sydney graduated from nursery school this past Friday. Next up: Kindergarten!

Another photo (also featuring our very messy upstairs hallway!) under the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

Unrelated quote: “Killing animals for meat is kind of goth…goth for kids.” –Sydney Quinn, age 5

Both Sydney and Maddox love dresses and sparkly things and all things princess-y. Photos by Bean.

And Sydney is below the cut…. Click on the photos to see a bigger version. Read the rest of this entry »

Sydney just told me, “People think sharks are cool but they’re not. There’s only one person who doesn’t like sharks, and that’s me.”

Sydney draws exceptionally well for a five year old. You might think that I’m only saying that because I’m her honorary uncle. But her mother thinks her drawings are exceptional, too, so there.

(Another photo after the fold) Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, I’m not sure who the photographer is, Charles or Bean. But I love this photo.

Can’t call it baby blogging anymore. This is kid blogging. (I used to do this regularly, but that was long ago, especially in blog years.)

I love these photos, which I found on the camera’s memory card. My guess is that Bean was the photographer, although it might have been Charles.

Sydney is actually as accomplished and eager a tree climber as Maddox, but I think the pics of Maddox came out a little bit better.

More photos under the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

I started my boys on computers early.  I found it was great way to break the monotony of breastfeeding twins, so once I figured the breastfeeding out, I would sit and read articles on the web while I fed them.  I couldn’t really write much because I needed at least one hand to balance them, but they were able to figure out the keyboard.

In these pictures my Eli was 3 months old, and by this point, I had to stop feeding him (or only do it when he was really tired) while reading on the computer because he loved the computer.  He was obsessed with that screen saver, and as you can see in the third picture he knew how to push the buttons on the touch pad mouse.  It’s amazing what kids can pick up.  Now at 8 months, I can’t let him near the computer he goes crazy and tries to bang the keys and the mouse.

I think we have a future blogger on our hands.

This kid is the master of facial expressions.  I’ve caught him making some of the goofiest faces.  He was making this face over and over again a few weeks ago.  Believe it or not he actually likes the spinach, but he just has a funny way of showing it.

Sydney with Blagojevich (before the arrest).

Hey, remember when Sydney met Governor Blagojevich? At the time, Sydney’s Aunt Chris said “he’s pretty much a crook like most of the Chicago/Illinois politicians, but he does take a nice picture.”

Anyhow, in light of Governor Blagojevich’s arrest this morning, I thought I’d recycle the photo into a contest. What’s the funniest thought balloon for Sydney in this picture? Or a thought/speech balloon for Blagojevich — either way.

I couldn’t make out a word the speakers said — heck, I couldn’t even see the speakers, I only know they were there because I could hear their amplified voices womp-womp-womping like a grownup in a Peanuts TV special, followed at intervals by the crowd cheering — but the energy was excited and enjoyable, and everyone I spoke to was nice.

There were two demonstrations in Portland today (and around 300 nationwide — Box Turtle Bulletin has lots of links!); the one I attended was on the Portland State University campus. I bused down, Sydney in tow, and we spent a while enjoying the demonstration. Then we went to a toy store, where Sydney fell in love with a truly disgusting chicken doll. (When you squeeze it, a gooey mess with a yolk inside bubbles out of it’s bottom).

Here’s some photos; click to see them bigger.

Proposition 8 protest at PSU, November 15 2008. Photo taken from the library steps.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is baby blogging, but it’s also a post about gender.  As most of you know by know, I have two little boys, and one thing I really like to do is dress them in cute little outfits.  Over the past few months, as I’ve perused the baby departments at numerous stores, I came to the conclusion that I like the clothes made for boys clothes better than I like the clothes made for girls.  It’s not that I don’t like frilly dresses and ruffles.  What I like about boys clothes is the bright primary colors that are more common in clothes marketed for infant and toddler boys and the themes used in both boy clothing and gender neutral clothing.  My favorite themes are usually animal themed clothes, and above all else I like ducks and frogs–probably because yellow and green are my favorite colors.  In my view frogs and ducks are generally androgynous, but many animal themed clothes are marketed for boys.  For example, dogs, dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, and turtles are often found in boys clothing. I’ve also noticed two other common sets of themes that I like in baby boys clothing–occupational themes and activity themes.  As I was looking through my little guys clothes, I noticed several outfits that had themes related to predominantly male (and mostly working class) occupations.  The outfits they are wearing above are firemen themed.  In the first picture, Mark’s shirt has a firetruck on it, and in the second picture Eli’s shirt says, “Chief Fire Dog to the Rescue.”  I’ve also see baby boy clothes with policemen, construction worker, mechanic, pilot, and soldier themes.  Activity themes involve clothes the promote going on safaris, hunting, fishing, eating, playing sports, and one outfit my little guys have promotes making robots (which could also be construed as an engineer’s outfit). 

What strikes me about baby boys clothes is how much they promote activity and paid labor force work.  Even as infants, we start to socialize baby boys into occupations.  You rarely find occupation themed clothes for girls.  Little girls clothes often have flowers, frills, and some animals (i.e. butterflies), but they don’t have occupational themes.  They also rarely have activity themes outside of shopping or cheerleading.  In fact, to me the worst subset of little girls clothes are those that say princess or diva.  Diva is oftten used in a derisive way to indicate that the girl is overly demanding, and unlike the fireman or construction worker a princess doesn’t earn her title–she’s born with it or marries into it.  Princess themed clothes also seem to play up baby girls looks–looking like a princess means looking pretty.  I’ve seen a few shirts that have messages about boys being handsome or cute, but those are much less common.

One of the reasons that baby clothes are so strongly gendered is that babies themselves are often androgynous.  If you put them only in a diaper, it’s often hard to tell what sex the baby is, but that androgyny doesn’t fit well into our gender polarized society, so this is where the clothes come in.  Those clothes have underlying and blatant messages.  Baby boy clothes have subtle and not so subtle messages.  They say–be active, be bold, enjoy the outdoors, and get a paid job.  It doesn’t seem that baby girls clothing has similar messages.

One of the neat things about having infants is that they reach developmental milestones almost daily. My little Mark is really good with his eyes. He loves to follow things, and last week he found someone he really likes….

Yes, he found himself. He doesn’t know that baby in the mirror is Mark, but he sure likes to look at that baby. Actually, he likes to look at the baby until the baby frowns then he gets mad and starts crying.

My little Eli is really growing fast. He’s been making talking sounds for a long time, and he tries to imitate people who talk to him. He kept saying some word that sounded like okra, so we tried to get him to make a long O sound. Here’s a youtube video of my husband trying to get him to say Obama. He comes pretty close to saying it. Of course, according to my mommy ears he actually said Obama. He also likes to say uncle, good, and his favorite made up word is “enguh.”

Over the past 2 months I’ve been inundated with baby care. My life has revolved mainly around feeding and diapering 2 little ones, so needless to say I haven’t had much time to blog, but I promise I haven’t given up blogging. I haven’t checked my email or my site, so if you wrote me, I’m just now getting it.

A few weeks after the little guys were born I pledged that I would get back to blogging when they started sleeping through the night–that hasn’t happened yet. But I figure I can put up a couple posts a week until they actually sleep more than 3 hours at a time.

In the meanwhile, here are a few pictures from their first week. The first picture is of Eli in the hospital. We spiked his hair. I think it helps to get a perspective of how big/small they where when you look at them next to their Daddy’s hands. Like most babies, they lost weight in the first few days of life, but what’s more amazing is how much they have grown since then. In this picture, Eli weighed around 7 lbs, and in the picture at the bottom Mark weighs a little less than 6lbs. They were really big for twins, and I admittedly was really happy when I looked at them in the nursery and they didn’t look any different from the singleton babies. That was a great relief for me, because, being a mom of twins, I was at a greater risk for pregnancy related complications, which lingered in the back of my mind throughout the whole pregnancy. I was very fortunate to give birth at 38 weeks and have two big boys. I’ll add more recent pictures over the next few weeks.

And finally, Daddy, Babies, and Mommy want to thank everyone for their well wishes.

We welcomed our twins into the world last Friday via C-section. Eli arrived weighing 7lbs. 3oz., at 8:16 AM. He was 19 inches long. His Nigerian name is Emeka. Mark arrived weighing 6lbs. 5oz., at 8:18 AM. He was 18 inches long. His Nigerian name is Akholisa.

We made a video of their arrival. They may have broken the recorded for the loudest birth. The doctors and nurses were all laughing as were Dad and I. They screamed like this for the entire time it took to repair my my incision–I’m guessing about 30 minutes.

Hey folks it’s Rachel.  I figured I’d give everyone an update.

Yes, my posting has been limited lately. I’m slowly getting prepared for the babies, and then we had some computer trouble last week, so needless to say I’ve been preoccupied with other things.

I’ve been really lucky because I haven’t had any major problems. I’ve also had a total of zero contractions, no high blood pressure, no diabetes, and no other common pregnancy problems. My doctor did suggest taking time off from work at 34 weeks. I think that is fairly standard with twins since twin pregnancies are generally more taxing on the body than singleton pregnancies. Fortunately, my semester ended right at that time, so I didn’t have to worry about going to my job. It was just the right time to stop because I really can’t be on my feet for more than 10-15 minutes without having back, hip, and buttock pain.

The babies are doing well. Since “discordance,” which is basically large differences in size or growth of multiples, is a potential problem I have to get them measured every 3 weeks. I get an ultrasound, and the neonatalogist and ultrasound tech measure their size, heart rate, amniotic fluid, and several other measures of health and growth. At 33 weeks and a half weeks, they weighed 5lbs. 1oz. each. I was happy to see that their sizes are the same because baby A was getting ahead of baby B, but B finally caught up. At this rate, I may have two 7lb. babies. That’s not big for a single baby, but it’s pretty big for twins–I just keeping thinking, “My body will likely be carrying 14lbs. of baby.” The seem to be dropping, and right now they have their heads down, so I may be able to push both of them out without a C-section.

Unless they want to come sooner, I’ll probably be delivering them at 38 weeks.