Driving lessons

Ivan and Annie got new cars for Christmas! Here they are in their sweet new rides.



They drove them to the park on Saturday. As you can see, the cars have a big manly engine.





Here we are at the park. Annie and Ivan had a good swing then drove back home. Annie's got a lead foot, but luckily did not get a speeding ticket.

Christmas morning

Scenes from Annie and Ivan's first Christmas morning.

Christmas visitors

Sara and Heather came to visit from Oakland. They took Annie and Ivan for a ride in the wagon Grandi gave them for Christmas.



Annie got a fast ride all by herself, while Ivan looked on.

Early Christmas

Last weekend Annie and Ivan had the first of their first Christmases. This one was with Dad and Andi, also known as Grampy and Grandi, at Sara and Dan's house in San Diego. (We'll have another Christmas with my mom, et al., next week). Ivan was so excited that he threw up all over me. Then both babies went to sleep and Steve and I opened all their presents.

Blueberries

Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Perfect

Our beautiful new nephew

Paul Alexander was born 12/17/08 at 9:25 pm, measuring 5 lbs 14 oz & 18 inches long. He came 3.5 weeks early and by C-Section. Baby and new mommy are doing great.

Walking

Annie is learning to walk.

Nanny

We found a part-time nanny. Her name is Kristy, and she has tons of childcare experience. She's trained in CPR & first aid and studying early childhood development. Her references rave about her. Really, I think she's more qualified to take care of the babies than I am.

The first day she came, though, my stomach was in knots when I went to the office. Steve was working from home, so really there was nothing to worry about, but I just couldn't help myself. All day I sent Steve instant messages--what is Kristy doing now? Are the babies happy? Are they napping? For how long? Did they eat?

Evidently, Kristy did GREAT. Would you like to see an actual excerpt from my chat with Steve that day? Okay, here you go:

me: How is it going?

1:32 PM Stephen: Fine, Kristy ran off with the children. They're gone.

me: Ha ha. I'm serious. Is she doing OK?

Stephen: Yeah, I helped put them down for their nap, she waited and ate her lunch and fixed our bathroom door.

Then she brought them up and fed them lunch. She was very patient while they fussed.

1:33 PM They ate two sweet potatoes and the chunky fruit.

She mixed the chunky fruit with the sweet potatoes because they didn't seem to like the chunks.

Then she asked if they had jackets and took them for a walk.

me: Did they have a good nap? They seemed so tired.

1:34 PM Stephen: Yeah, they slept from 11:00 until 12:30

me: What was wrong with the bathroom door?

Stephen: It was sticking. She sanded the top of it.

She says she watches HGTV.

me: OMG.

You are kidding me.
1:35 PM Stephen: Nope.
See how patiently Steve accommodates my neurosis? He is such a good husband. Also, Kristy is a good nanny. And apparently, quite handy.

Annie and Ivan are such smart, funny little people. Every day they're up to something new, learning more about how the world works and happily getting themselves into absurd predicaments. Earlier this week Annie was working on opening the kitchen drawers and helping Momma unfold all those pesky kitchen towels.



I came home from work yesterday and the moment I walked in the door, my funny little babies dropped their toys and crawled full-speed down the hall to meet me. It was the best thing ever.

Alert the authorities

Have you heard Annie screaming lately? I know what you're thinking: How could I possibly hear her, I live many tens/hundreds/thousands of miles away from your house! The thing is, I think she's THAT LOUD. And why? Because of a diaper change. Every diaper change is now a major ordeal. She twists and turns and screams and tries to hurl herself off the changing table, red-faced and bellowing. God forbid I try to put a new outfit on her--I fully expect to have her halfway into her jammies one night only to be interrupted by child protective services agents, who have heard the commotion and rushed to intervene. The funny thing is that as soon as Annie's able to stand up or crawl on her own, the hysteria instantly ceases and she's her normal busy, relatively happy self.

My mom hears these stories and just laughs and laughs, crying gleefully, "just wait until she's a teenager!" I get the sense she thinks I may be getting my just desserts. Which is funny, because when I was a teenager I thought SHE was the crazy one.

Happy boy, happy boy, I'm a happy boy

A couple weeks ago, Ivan learned to crawl, and now he's just about as pleased as can be. I can't stop taking pictures of him because he's just so dang smiley all the time. See what I mean?

Git the ball! Git it! Git it!!!

A typical scene from a typical day at the Garrick Zimmerbabies' house:

At the farm

Today the babies visited a farm! It was right next to the swap meet, so we stopped in to visit the animals before loading up on cheap tee-shirts and sunglasses. I'm sure Steve's farming relatives would have laughed at what passes as a farm out here in Orange County, but the babies enjoyed it. Here they are looking at the pigs.





Here is my mom introducing Sydney to a calf. As you can see, Grandma Sandy has quite a way with animals.



Ivan posed as a farmer girl. Doesn't he look the part?



Here are Annie and me in the barn.



Ivan and Sydney shared some cheerios while they shopped at the swap meet. Few things make Ivan as happy as a big old pile of cheerios. He works very hard to get them in his mouth, but most wind up on the floor, in the high chair, stuck to his clothes, or in the stroller. And this was Sydney's stroller, too, not his. Sorry Sydney.

The irrepressible Annie

Annie is unstoppable. She likes to tip over Newton's water dish and gnaw on his chew bone. She shovels dirt out of the houseplants, into her mouth, and all over the floor. She's nearly succeeded in eating my cellphone. She refuses to sit in the bath, and I have to wash her standing up. She zooms all over the house, yelling as she goes. She is either very happy or very angry or very hungry or very tired, rarely anything in between. And she likes to stick her tongue out, like this.

What to do, what to do . . . .

Our floor is carpeted in cheerios, our coffee table is littered with empty baby bottles, the laundry is piled high with little dirty clothes. Should I clean or just go to bed? Or, should I BLOG???? I pick blog.

I'm starting to get the feeling that we're not paying enough attention to poor Newton the Pug. This is what happened when I was trying to take some photos of Ivan in his new outfit from Nana & Papa:







Also, just FYI, that last post was by Steve masquerading as me. I'd like to think that the missing hyphen gave him away.

Playback from Way Back

Hey folks, I finally got some videos we took a long time ago converted into a user friendly format. This one is my favorite.

Better late than never

These photos are from the end of October. I had them saved in blogger but never got around to posting them. Whatever I had to say about the photos I've long since forgotten, so let's just enjoy them without any further ado, shall we?

By request

Ivan has learned to crawl! For a long time he would just get up on his hands and knees, look around, and cry--poor little guy was frustrated. He was particularly vocal with his complaints if I was sitting there with him, maybe because I would always respond by scooping him up and taking him somewhere more interesting. After a while, though, I noticed that, if I put him down and left the room, when I came back he would be in a different spot. So he must have been crawling a little bit, just not around me. Then my mom came to watch the babies for the afternoon and while I was off working, and OF COURSE Ivan decided to make his big debut. I'm so annoyed. I think he was punishing me for having a job.

Anyway, he's pretty good at crawling now, although he usually gets distracted and stops after a foot or two. I've been trying to get a video (even before a certain someone asked for one), but I just wound up with a bunch of clips of Ivan on his hands and knees, looking at me and crying. Until today! It's not the best, but it will do. Here's our boy, crawling:

So I've been busy

Did I tell you that I have a job? Yes, I do. I wasn't sure, going into this whole having babies thing, whether I would want to stay home with them forever or rush back to the office ASAP. Turns out it's something in the middle. So now I'm working part-time for a public interest law firm. I've found that I appreciate my time with the babies more, now that I'm not with them all the time.

So the job is my excuse for not posting some photos from way back when Sara was visiting. Here she is with Annie and our fountain.



Annie loooooooved the fountain. See! I have a video.

My favorites

Annie at the beach



Ivan against the sky



(Blogger won't let me rotate pictures; you'll just have to turn your head.)

This is fun, let's scream!!!

There must have been something special about the sand at the beach, because they don't get this excited about the sand at the park.

Beach

Yesterday afternoon we went to the beach. It was beautiful out and I was happy that we live in California.

Visitors

Earl came from India to meet his grandbabies. I told Annie and Ivan that their other grandpa was old and worn out so they needed a new one. Ha ha! Grandpa Earl thought that was funny. Grandpa Max didn't.

Grandpa Earl spent the last week helping Ivan walk (he's desperately trying to skip crawling and go straight to two feet) and preventing Annie the crawling tornado from destroying our house. He and Aunt Sara Z.--who is visiting from Oakland--also did a little babysitting while Steve and I had a date. That was pretty rad.

Here are Earl, Sara and Ivan at the farmer's market on Friday.



It was a little strange to see piles of beautiful peaches, tomatoes, and asparagus in the middle of November--particularly when it was sunny and 85 degrees outside. Back in DC, our farmer's market would be down to potatoes and maybe some apples by now. So we stocked up on produce and also picked up some homemade tamales for supper.

So fast

I watched Annie do this today and I thought, my god, how can they be growing so fast? In regular life--before the babies--a year could go by and practically nothing would have changed. And now each month seems like a different existence.



This morning when I got up the babies were already playing with their daddy on the floor. I said, "Good morning, babies!" And they both looked at me with big grins of recognition. I thought I would explode with all the cuteness and loving them so much.

I wish I could put some of their babyness in a bottle, and save it, so I could have a little bit left after they are grown.

New stats!

Today was the babies' 8 month checkup. The doctor says they are doing great! Ivan is 27.5 inches long and weighs 18 lbs; Annie is 26.75 inches long and weighs 20 lbs 2 oz. Big babies!

Happy Halloween!

Yesterday we went down to San Diego for my sister's Halloween/34th birthday party. We were informed that guests without costumes would not be admitted to the festivities, so we all got dressed up: Ivan was a cow, Annie was a bumble bee, Steve was a handyman, and I was farmer.

Here are the babies in their costumes. Annie was overdue for a nap and looking grumpy. (Steve kept calling her the "grumble bee".)









Ivan seemed to like being a cow--maybe because everyone kept looking at him and laughing. Seriously, wouldn't you if confronted with this?



Annie had a little snooze in the back room and was much happier when she woke up. Here she is with her handy-dad.



Here is Ivan with his melon-headed Grandi.



And here's one of all of us. Happy Halloween!

Annie in the swing

This is from last week, but I think it's cute enough to warrant a belated post.

Yesterday at the park

Ivan in the sand.



Annie in the sand.



Sleepy boy on the way home.

There's no stopping her now

Annie is crawling for real. She tries to follow me when I leave the room and scoots up to Ivan to snatch his toys. Yesterday she crawled into the dog bed with Newton.



In typical Annie fashion, though, she's already on to the next thing: standing up. She can get up on her knees by pulling up on something, and she can get all the way to standing with a little help. Staying that way is another story, of course.

Tooth

Ivan just got his first tooth!

Things we did today

Ivan had a cookie.



Annie practiced crawling.



Ivan went around and around.



Annie had a cookie, too.



Everyone played in the exersaucers.

And another!

Annie's getting another tooth! It's just breaking through now. I tried to get a photo but she kept sticking out her tongue, thus obscuring the teeth. I'll try again soon.

Speaking of nothing, there was a MOUNTAIN LION out behind our house last week--which explains why we haven't seen any coyotes lately. Also, we (meaning Steve) killed a bunch of black widow spiders on our patio in one night. And here I thought the biggest danger in Orange County was getting run over by an SUV.

Sticker shock

I've started looking around for part-time work, which means Steve and I have to figure out a plan for the babies. We're hoping to find some balance where I work about two days a week, and the babies can have childcare for two half-days and quality daddy time for two half-days. I called one daycare in the neighborhood (which turned out to be a big scary corporation, but that's another story), and they quoted me $355 a week, per child, for full-time daycare, which was the only kind of daycare they had. Three hundred and fifty five dollars per week. Per child. In case you were wondering, that would be over thirty five thousand dollars a year for day care for our two babies, were I to go back to work full time. Is that totally insane? How do people pay that? It's a good think we had twins because otherwise I'd be too freaked out to ever have a second child.

Yesterday Steve and I went out to celebrate our fourth anniversary. We saw a movie, the first since before I went on bedrest last December, and then we went out to dinner. I only called to check on the babies twice, and the first time I had a good excuse, because we left the directions at home and had to have my sister read them to me over the phone. Annie must have missed us a lot because she got up about five times during the night. Ivan only got up once, but then he decided to talk to himself for an hour as I paced the floor holding him. It would have been really cute if it hadn't been 4 am. So that was a not-so-spectacular end to a lovely evening.

This afternoon we took Annie and Ivan to the beach. Ivan played in the sand, though I had to intervene often to keep him from eating it. Then I stuck his feet in the ocean, which he found perplexing. Annie slept on Steve's chest the whole time, which she needed, as she had been up all night. Steve and I were a little jealous.

Puglife

Last weekend was Pugtoberfest, which was like Octoberfest, except instead of beer there were pugs. Lots and lots and lots of pugs. We thought Annie and Ivan would be REALLY excited to see hundreds of Newton-like animals all in one place, but as it turned out, they were only mildly interested in the spectacle. Oh well.

Here is Ivan trying to get the pugs to eat his fingers.



Foiled!



Here are Ivan/Annie/Sydney watching the pugs in the pug play area. (You have to imagine the pugs, as they are not pictured.)



Annie was more interested in Sydney's crackers than in the pugs. Too bad she can't eat finger foods yet.



Annie pondering the camera.



More pondering of the camera.



Pugtober fest would have been a lot more fun if the announcer hadn't gone on and on about how COLLARS are DEATHTRAPS for PUGS and that ANYONE with a pug on a COLLAR should proceed to the stage IMMEDIATELY for public ridicule and beratement. I think we were the only ones there with our pug on a collar rather than a harness. It was very uncomfortable. For the record, harnesses make Newton's skin bleed. Sheesh.