Baybee doll's got religion

More success - Liam is now walking. He started on the day he turned 17 months, at Kindermusik. I guess he got tired of watching his brother and other toddlers walk around the room to more easily find the drums, shakers, and other supplies. It makes a difference when you can see what's on low tabletops. He's now walking most of the time, though if he really needs something that second he crawls very quickly. He can't run yet like his brother, after all.

Speaking of running, it appears that Graeme thinks it's funny to run away from me now. Of course I catch him, but he still laughs. I'm trying to teach them to eat their snacks at their table in the playroom instead of the floor, and they are mostly successful. However, sometimes they must take a cracker or other snack and go to the other side of the room as fast as they can. Testing mommy is fun, evidently. The first signs of the terrible twos, perhaps?

I've now seen one of my sons actually shaking with joy. I decided to try coloring with the boys the other day after a three month hiatus. The first try mostly consisted of me grabbing crayons from their mouths, so I figured I'd wait awhile 'til the next session. This time, I cut a few pages from a coloring book and taped them to the kids' table. I showed them how to color, and gave them each a crayon. After a minute or so of them tapping the crayon on the paper, they got the hang of longer strokes. When he viewed his creation, Liam got so excited that he was shaking, unable to speak, with his little mouth forming an "o" while holding the crayon in his fist. He continued to color for a few minutes more, then put the crayon in his mouth, as did his brother. No surprise there. At least this time I had something to show Sean when he got home from work.

Their latest words include ball, balloon (almost the same sound), go, and up. New activities other than coloring include a strange form of toddler tag, beating their mop and broom together like swords, and rolling around on our new rugs. I took them to Toys R Us two days ago without the stroller and let them walk around with much steering and some hand-holding. Surprisingly they didn't pull everything off the shelves. They were probably too excited by their new foam swords, which hurt much less than the plastic mop and broom.

The cultural funny of the past two weeks goes to Dasem, our Indonesian housekeeper. Dasem is good-natured, and she'll laugh at the boys when they do something hilarious, which is often. She doesn't usually say funny things though, because her English isn't so good. She knows enough to get by with household and childcare tasks, but other than that, not so much. I'll be sending her to English courses this January. Anyway, the boys were playing with bandanas, and she took one and put it around the babydoll's head, holding it underneath the doll's chin, and said, "look, the baby has become Muslim", and then giggled. I laughed for a full minute. Dasem and I had recently talked about the head scarves many Muslim women wear over here. The few Indonesian housekeepers I've met don't wear them, though. I guess Baybee doll is safe from a career of cleaning and cooking for others, as long as she's got the scarf.