Elijah (on the left) and William are endlessly amused by each other:
Eric gave them haircuts last week, and now they’re looking extra-identical again, even to us. This is compounded by the fact that neither of the boys are quick to correct us if we call them by the wrong name; you’d think it would matter to them if we mix them up, but most of the time they shrug it off. Not to say that they’re difficult to distinguish, most of the time! Elijah is currently obsessed with the CD player and requests endless repetition of specific songs (“Momma’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow” by Raffi is the latest craze). He is gentle with the pets but nervous around bugs, and adores Spiderman and Buzz Lightyear, as well as various other little plastic figurines which are scattered around the house. Here, he’s propped up a couple of his ‘guys’ so they can look out the window while he’s at daycare:
William is a much more rough-and-tumble kid than Elijah; he’s often covered with dirt or food, and is far more likely to poke or touch something disgusting to investigate it (such as the giant dead cicada we found on the sidewalk recently). William walks around singing all the time, loves playdough and cars and trucks, and tends to play by throwing or bashing things. Will also follows his big sister Charlotte around, and is happy to be directed by her imagination, so he winds up pretending to be a puppy, or a hatching dragon, or a put-upon husband, or a superhero, depending on her mood and inspiration for the day. Here’s Will snuggled up with Charlie, looking at a book:
I’ve been accompanying the boys to their weekly swimming class with their daycare, and it’s actually been quite fun to get in the water and swim with them and their classmates. Here’s a picture their teacher took of the three of us on Wednesday, although of course neither of the boys is sitting still:
Charlie’s just finished a two-week session of a camp held at her school, run by McGill; it was fairly structured, and basically involved each group investigating a theme, then creating a presentation for the parents on the last day. Charlotte’s group (which was composed of 17 boys and only 2 girls, with the other girl absent today!) studied ancient Egypt, so she learned all about mummies and pyramids and Egyptian mythology. The class created a giant, textured map of Egypt, put on a play about the gods (Charlie played Isis), wrote messages in hieroglyphics and built model pyramids, mummies and canopic jars. Charlotte was very excited to share her new knowledge and skills with us! You can see her here in the top left corner, behind the map of Egypt, wearing her ‘Isis’ mask on her forehead as she gets ready to present to the parents with the other kids:
The kids also attended music, gym and science “classes”, and we got to listen to them sing in a musical presentation about clowns (which I won’t post here, since it was high on the enthusiasm scale but a little low on the production value). In their science groups, they learned about simple machines, and did all sorts of experiments to investigate the properties of wheels, inclined planes, levers, pulleys, screws, etc. Here’s Charlie demonstrating the principle behind different types of screws:
The house is awfully quiet during the day while the kids are off at camp and daycare, and that’s just the way we like it! Eric’s working hard to complete his PhD comps, which are due at the end of July, so he’s focussed on that most of the time. I’ve gone from being on summer vacation to being in job-hunting mode since I found out last week that my school isn’t renewing my contract, so I’m not relaxing as much as I’d anticipated. I’m doing my best to use my network of contacts and get in touch with different people who might be able to use my particular skill-set, because I’d really like to stay in the same field. Basically this means working with kids or adolescents with learning disabilities, teaching them various skills and strategies to help improve their reading, writing, math, organization, studying and learning in general. I’m looking at cegeps and tutoring centres as well as public and private schools, so hopefully something with work out before too long.
In the meantime, I’m doing my best to enjoy the summer and stay positive and busy. Yesterday we got our second basket from our CSA (ie Community Supported Agriculture; we paid a lump sum for a share in an organic farm’s produce, and every other week we get an enormous quantity of beautiful vegetables), and now we’ve got tons of zucchini, green onions, beets, kale, turnips, broccoli, lettuce, sugar-snap peas and cucumbers. I have to be fairly creative to use up all the veggies (especially since the boys are super picky about new foods), but I’ve just baked a couple of loaves of zucchini bread, which I’m sure everyone will eat. I also baked the kale with olive oil and sea salt to make “kale chips” (which Eric actually likes), and I’m going to roast a bunch of the root veggies for our dinner tonight, along with a nice roast chicken. Yum! Last time, I was faced with a huge amount of garlic scapes, so I went online and found an amazing recipe for “garlic scape pesto” – it turned out to be delicious on pasta! Here’s a picture of the finished product, along with some leftover scapes – some of the pesto went in the freezer, so we’ll be enjoying it again soon:
life after twins? 