And we're back!

We apologize to our loyal readers for the gross neglect of the blog.

The boys are growing fast and manage to surprise us all the time. For example, they climb right up the drawers of the changing table, so we have to lock them out of their bedroom. They are tall enough to reach objects the table and kitchen counter. They occasionally succeed in putting on a sock or getting one arm in a sleeve.

They can't talk yet, but they are saying individual words and they are able to repeat what they hear on occasion.

They correctly say a few words: ball, goal, pe (foot), baby, pee-pee, bye,

Then, they are close on some other words like "ish" for fish, "ov" for ovo (egg), al-wah for agua (water),

Then they have their own words they use consistently like "up" to say "more" and "gook" for goldfish.

They don't say many words, but that doesn't stop them from talking - a lot. Adrian is especially long-winded when he's explaining how he hit his head or how Vincent stole his toy. He controls his breathing to string together sounds like "ehhhh-ehh-ehhhhhh-eh" using hand gestures and pointing to get the message across. Then he'll throw in a high-pitched "yip" to indicate impact, to his head for example.

Talking is coming along slowly, but they understand more words than I can list. They follow instructions (when they are so inclined) and they know the names of many objects around the house. They play Simon-says and point to the parts of the body they hear: ear, nose, eye, hair and the same in Portuguese.

Finally, they mimic the animal sounds we make when we see pictures of animals in books like cat (meow), dog , duck, and elephant (they blow hard through their lips, but don't really make much sound).

They fight a lot, but they have their tender moments, when they will hold hands or hug or kiss one another.

I'll wrap up with a funny story: they will find tiny scraps of paper or plastic and bring them to us, hold out their little fist, and say "ehhhhh." One day last month, Elisa was in the kitchen and Adrian entered with something to give her. She reached out and could not believe what he dropped into the palm of her hand: a hard, dry turd (poop)! After the shock wore off, she looked all over the house but [thankfully] could not find any more.