Holidays

With some nervousness, we embarked on our summer holiday in june. Since work is our holiday these days, we had mixed feelings about 2 weeks of 24/7 toddler twins. We went to Youghal in Co. Cork. That was about as far as we could muster and in the end it was lovely. We spent the days at the seaside, in the swimming pool and in the playground. The weather was bit patchy, but all in all it was a pretty successful family holiday. Youghal this year, Spain next year? Here's some pics...

Sentences

About 2 days after their 18th month birthday, Lucy started putting words together. Her first official sentence is..."shoes on Mammy" when we're going out the door. She also has bye bye mammy, hi daddy, Mammy's coat and can get as far as "wool" in her rendition of ba ba black sheep.

And here is her rendition of a classic...can anyone guess?

Words

On their 18th month birthday Clo and I wrote down all the words the babies were saying at that stage, for posterity, (apparently they'll be interested when they are 4) so here they are in no particular order...

Lucy
Mammy, Dada, coat, more, teddy, ba ba black sheep, heidi, fruit, strawberry, car, bike, elmo, ssh, big bird, cookie, grover, abbie, ball, shoe, doggie, bath, cake, apple, happy, oh no, rabbit, fish (sounds like sh*t), duck, two, three, eight, nine, baby, eyes, ah ah, sausage, whats that, no, now, look, go, santa, cheese, up, down, sock, card, bus, frog, quick, snack...and all the animal noises: moo, ba, quack, rar, woof, hoot, etc.

Ronan
Please, more, mama, dada, teddy, Abcd, ta ta, heidi, bye, hello, car, elmo, cookie, grover, abbie, ssh, ball, shoe, doggie, bath, apple, happy, oh no, two, three, baby, eyes, ah ah, that, this, no, now, look, go, santa, cheese, up, down, peas, fruit, seesaw, snack...and all the animal noises too.

Geniuses, obviously!

Christmas in general

One last blog about Christmas in general...Sean and I had been a little apprehensive about spending over a week locked indoors in the company of 2 x 18 month olds for 24 hours a day, with no escape. Work is our holidays these days, so we were pretty nervous by the time Christmas eve came around.

Overall, I'm pleased to announce that the Christmas holidays were a pleasant surprise, for me at least. This was partly due to Sean giving me lie-ins pretty much every morning! We also made the big leap of sleeping the twins in travel cots in Oola on Xmas eve and Castleconnell on Stephens day. This was the first time they ever slept away from home and it was a great success. Things looked dodgy there for a minute when we discovered that Sean had forgotten their musical seahorse night lights, but it turned out that they slept perfectly without them, so we discovered they don't need them anymore...yeah Sean.

Over the period of december we also ditched both bottles and formula...hoorah. We're now on beakers and regular milk. I actually felt a momentary pang of loss when I was scouping and scraping for the last bottles of formula...it didn't last long though!

Christmas day

We'd a lovely Christmas day. As usual, I was keeping my expectations low when it came to the day and was preparing myself and Sean for the worst case scenario involving colds, teething, whinging and general bad temper. Since none of these transpired, I spent the day marvelling at what a lovely day we were having.

Santa brought smart trikes which the lads loved. Mammy and Daddy were also delighted since it gave us another activity to get us out of the house during the holidays. We went to the playground in Castleconnell in the morning and met up with Auntie Clo, Uncle Col and Gran. We cooked the dinner during the afternoon nap (I also used nap time to have a Christmas day g&t...mmmmm) and we'd our dinner around 6. It was all lovely, everyone was in great form and we'd loads of fun all day opening present after present. Sean and I spent the evening watching movies, eating trifle and drinking wine (just me for the wine, Sean's been off it for a year!). All in all, a perfect day.

Santa

I've been told off by the US and Finnish delegation for being so crap at my blogs lately, so my new year's resolution is to blog more (with photos)...I promise. So there now follows a number of postings all about Christmas.

I've to go back a few weeks though, to our first Santa visit. It was all very unplanned, and as a consequence very unstressful. Santa was free in Superquinn and there was no queue. We briefly tried the lap thing, but Lucy seemed to know what we were up to before we did and roared her head off. Ronan wimpered rather than roared, but it had the same effect. So in the photo, the only one sitting on poor Santa's lap is a little snowman that he gave the lads as their present.