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This journal is about raising identical twins.The Twenty Seventh Month
Previous entriesNote: This page contains Chinese text in Big5 encoding.
Wednesday, Oct 6, 1999 (26m)
The twins are 26 month old today
Thursday, Oct 7, 1999 (26m+1d)
Joanne's coughing continued, she got a runny nose too. We didn't detect any fever though.
Friday, Oct 8, 1999 (26m+2d)
The twins were 2 year, 2 month and 2 day old. Joanne woke up crying tearfully twice in the morning. Then Jasmine cried because she couldn't get a good sleep with Joanne's crying. Though the twins had not started talking in full sentences yet, we could make out some meaning from their broken Cantonese words and gestures. Jasmine was trying to tell us while pointing to the eyes, "姐姐跩跩"(big sister, naughty), "whea, whea"(cry) and many other filler sound and bombast that she made up.Joanne's crying continued through out the day. Though her symptoms were not much worse than what Jasmine went through last week, I insisted she must see the doctor before the doctor office closes for the weekends.
We got a chance to weigh the twins at the doctor's office.
Joanne weighed 20 lb. 6 oz.
Jasmine weighed 20 lb. 12 oz.The doctor said Joanne got ear infection and prescribed a course of antibiotics. Her crying is most likely due to the pain from her infected ear. The infection is most likely because of her runny nose and the fluid congested in her ears.
While we were in the waiting room at the doctor's office, Joanne took a chair and sat in front of the fish tank to watch to fishes. A four years old bully pushed her off the chair and took her seat. Joanne who was already sick broke out in tears because of that. The boy's mother immediately gave the boy a time out, and ordered him to say sorry. The boy obeyed eventually after a lot of resistance and nagging. I don't understand where he learned such aggression. Though the boy got his deserved punishment, he did not seem to show remorse despite being disciplined by his mom. That makes me wonder if such disciplinary method actually works.
This reminds me of criminals in our society who go in and out of jail repeatedly with no remorse and simply wish themselves wouldn't get caught next time, and they never feel a thing for the people whom they victimized. It is scary to read from the news that kids in the U.S. have the most psychological problems among other nations. I heard that many schools don't even teach moral standards and kids simply don't know what is good and what is evil. Add to this working parents who assume the school is solely responsible for their kids' character development, we get a generation of youngsters who believe in violence video games and sexy TV shows. Though I am not a religious person, I guess the Ten Commandments from the Bible at least can set a foundation for a commonly acceptable moral standard for the society. For the least, if people believe in just one commandment "Thou shalt not kill", we won't have as many school yard shootings in the U.S. The sad thing is that the Ten Commandments cannot be taught in public school because of separation of Church and States. In my opinion, the public schools are making a big mistake. Teaching religion can be controversial, because you cannot please all the people at the same time. Picking any one religion to teach will upset all other groups. However, avoiding religion education totally is like throwing out the baby with the bath water. One solution is to provide equal coverage and school curriculum should mandate the students to learn about ALL the major religions in the world. Perhaps after studying other non-Christian and non-Buddhist religions, then we would start to understand why terrorists don't consider killing people such a big deal. After understanding what other people believe then we would understand why moral standards vary so much among different cultures. [ ... stepping down from the soap box. ]
Saturday, Oct 9, 1999 (26m+3d)
Joanne recovered already, she is happy and playful. But she must complete the whole course of antibiotics to avoid allowing the bacteria to become drug resistant.We went shopping at Costco, had lunch and went looking at open houses in Cupertino.
When the twins play in the bathtub, they always ask me to dispense baby lotions into their little palms. I developed a game with them and I would put a dab of lotion on each of their fingertips and asked them to repeat after me when I counted from one to ten. Both of them enthusiastically learn to count and then smear the lotion on each other's back. I alter the game from time to time with English alphabets and Cantonese etc.
The twins follow most of the words we taught them, however, they developed some vocabulary on their own. In the Aug 27 journal entry, I mentioned that the twins called water "doe-doe" and fish "we-we". Recently, they have added "kor-kor" for soup, "Jair-Jair" for stars, "Ba-ga" for pumpkin and "gee-gi" for Hello Kitty. Perhaps "gee-gi" is marginal in the latter case because it sounds like kitty. All the others are nowhere close to the corresponding words in neither Chinese nor English. They would keep using their own words despite our efforts to correct them.
I found it interesting that our twins are more likely to repeat words that we taught them in repetitive syllables. When we lead them with non-repetitive words, they usually just give us a blank stare. They would say BoBo instead of Gymbo, ChuChu instead of Pikachu, MoMo instead of Elmo, Night-Night instead of Good Night and so forth. Among the four teletubbies, they only say the name of Laa-Laa. Jasmine started to say Po's name just very recently. We don't expect them to say Tinky Winky and Dipsy any time soon. I don't know if this tendency is the same for babies in other culture. But at least, there are Choo-choo Train and Boo-Boo (wound) etc. in English.
They are starting to use language to communicate with each other and to us. Though they have not use the language well yet, we can pick out from the broken words what they want to say. I once heard Joanne scold Jasmine with a blast of words. Among the gibberish, I heard the Cantonese words "跌跌"(fall), "跩跩"(naughty), "痛痛"(pain), and "no-no" and a whole bunch of other words we don't know. But from the context, we could guess that she was telling Jasmine not to get too close to the edge of the bed or suffer the consequence. It is fun to listen to this type of baby talk. We just hope it does not develop into their own secret language, which is quite a common problem with twins.
Jasmine recently insists on putting on the pants on her own. She would yell "自己著" (wear it myself) if we tried to help. Sometimes she puts both feet into the same leg of the pants, sometimes she puts the pants on inside out or back as front, sometimes she fails to pull the pant pass her full diaper. Despite that, she just won't let us do it for her. You know, she has her pride in her accomplishment. The real trouble is that she takes off her pants as skillfully. When the pants are off, we really worry about diaper leaks.
This morning, she pointed to her pants and told me "白白"(bak bak), which means white in Cantonese. No wonder, she wore her pants inside out, the pattern was on the other side.
Sunday, Oct 10, 1999 (26m+4d)
We took the twins to Gymboree class in the morning. We bought some take-out food and went to the marina in Alameda. A big dog at the lawn dashed towards Jasmine and made her screamed in fear. The dog owner called the dog back, but Jasmine was already scared. We had our lunch at a bench facing the yachts in the harbor. After lunch, we let the twins chase the geese and water fowls on the lawn into the lagoon.We then went visit Grandma Ling. Mommy and Aunt Jun went shopping in the afternoon, the twins and daddy took their afternoon nap.
Mommy's Cousin Ken and Emily had their baby boy last week, we refrained ourselves from visiting them because we don't want to expose the newborn to the germs we are carrying. Though we have all recovered mostly but I still have a minor cough. Mommy's friend Marianne and Ken also had her baby last week. We shall wait till next week to visit the new babies.
Monday, Oct 11, 1999 (26m+5d)
The twins have very short attention span. They would ask to watch Pokemon by nagging for "Ah Chu" (Pikachu). But as soon as we've started the tape, they would run off for something else in less than a minute. They won't watch it, but they don't want the TV turned off either. The only exception is Elmo on Sesame Street, they glue their eyes to the TV when Elmo is on. Their next favorite is Teletubbies, which they watch with much less concentration.
Wednesday, Oct 13, 1999 (26m+7d)
Jasmine got runny nose and cough again. I thought babies get immunity when recovered from a cold or flu. Perhaps she got a different strand of virus.Jasmine figured out how to open a toy box with a latch. Joanne hands the box to Jasmine when she wants it opened. She does not even bother to learn how to do it herself. One time Jasmine was busy at something, so I offered to open the box for Joanne. She wouldn't let me. She insisted on Jasmine's help.
There is a little footstool in our room, we use it in the tub everyday when we bathe the twins. They now fetch the stool whenever they want to reach for things in high place. We didn't encourage them to do so, but they just figured out the trick themselves.
Friday, Oct 15, 1999 (26m+9d)
Joanne cried non-stop this morning for almost half an hour. We worry that her ear infection is getting worse. On the other hand, Jasmine's symptoms are all gone again.Mommy took the twins to a pumpkin patch in the morning. They rendezvoused with Sunny and Nina and their kids there. When they arrived there, they saw Sharleen and her neighbors with their kids too. They all ended up having lunch together. It was an unplanned big gathering for the kids too. Mommy said there were over 10 adults and 7 kids at the lunch.
Saturday, Oct 16, 1999 (26m+10d)
The twins got up very early today. We listened to their activity via the baby monitor. They played with each other in the bed for hours while we wanted to sleep in a little, it's Saturday after all. We didn't get up until they called us. They are very loud when calling daddy and mommy nowadays, we can hear them even without the monitor. Mommy decided to visit the pumpkin patch again today because the kids seem to enjoy it very much. After we had lunch, the twins fell asleep in the car. We used the quiet time to drive around Cupertino looking for open houses too see.After they woke up, we went to the pumpkin patch. It is located on Grant Ave. in Mountain View just a few blocks from El Camino Hospital if you head south. Admission to the patch is free, there are many features to attract the children, including a mini-railroad, and some farm animals such as donkeys, turkeys, bunnies, chicks and peacocks. The twins were not too excited about the donkeys and turkeys, but they liked the bunnies. They even said "bye-bye wabbit" when they left. Wheelbarrows were provided for customers who pick the large and heavy pumpkins. I put the twins in a wheelbarrow and pushed them around for fun. We also rode the mini-train couple of times before we left.
We then went to Stanford Shopping Center to buy some dessert for the dinner party at Peter and Yulin's new home. When we came out, the road was jammed up with traffic from the football home game at Stanford University. We were stuck for almost an hour in traffic. The police was there stopping the regular traffic on the main road to let the sport fans out of the campus. I thought the police was supposed to keep the traffic moving smoothly, but they gave all the priority to the sport fans and caused miles of backup on El Camino Real instead.
When we arrived, Peter's two small dog Al and HuHu came out to greet us. Jasmine was screaming in fear again. Joanne did better, but she also refused to get close to the dogs. As a result, the dogs were exiled to the garage for the night. Peter is the chef of the house, he prepared a very nice dinner for us. Pow, Le and their kids Leland (7) and Myron (3) were in the party too. Leland and Myron were extremely energetic compared to our twins. We left at around 10pm.
Sunday, Oct 17, 1999 (26m+11d)
Ten years ago today, the Loma Prieta earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay area. I still remember the experience quite clearly. Time flies.We went to Gymboree this morning. Then we went to look at open houses in the afternoon. In the late afternoon, we went shopping for a new cell phone. Mommy's cell phone is over 4 years old. The battery is weakening and we had to recharge the phone everyday. Actually the real reason to replace it is that it is out of fashion, its color not matching mommy's clothes. :-)
While mommy was bargaining with the store clerk, the twins discovered a gum ball machine in the store. They opened up the panel behind the machine and found couple of quarters in there. They started putting the quarters in every possible hole they could find. Though they are not old enough to chew gum balls, I have showed them how to operate a gum ball machine before. Those machines in some shopping mall send the gum balls around in roller coaster tracks, then spiraling down a parabolic funnels etc. before reaching the outlet. The twins enjoyed watching the balls going around. We tried our best not to let them know the balls are edible candies. Since our twins don't have the habit to put everything in their mouths, they don't know they can eat those gum balls yet.
They were not happy when they failed to get the balls out. They came to me for help. Since the store clerk didn't seem to mind, I got out couple of gum balls with their "stolen" money. Then I showed them how to shoot the gum balls around on the carpet, just like playing marbles in my childhood. The twins were so excited that they screamed in joy while chasing the balls round. Since mommy took her time picking the model and bargaining for the price, the twins had a long time of fun with daddy. Looks like screaming kids can challenge the store clerk's patience, mommy got a pretty good deal on the phone accessories.
Saturday, Oct 23, 1999 (26m+15d)
The past week was just routine. Mommy took the twins out to some place almost everyday of the week. During one weekday, our twins were invited to a toy selling party hosted by Sharleen's neighbor Sonja. Sonja's friend was showing toy samples in the party and people could order toys from her catalogs. Mommy found the toys expensive compared to similar products available from Toys'R'Us. And with outrageous shipping charges, the toys weren't good deals at all. Sharleen ordered couple of toys for Claire, but mommy didn't buy any. Anyway, it was a fun party for the twins, they got to play with the samples and with other babies in the party.We had lunch with Wil'n'Lil today. Then we went to look at open houses together. Then we had dinner with Hing and Lucy, Lucy bought the twins couple of bean bag toys. One is Pooh dressed up as Tigger, the other is Tigger dressed up as Pooh for the Halloween. Despite the outside appearance of the toys, both kids fought for Pooh in Tigger's clothes. Though the other toy looked like the other Pooh toys they have, they recognized the head is not Pooh's and they just threw it away. Seems to me that they understand clothing is only superficial, they recognize the characters by their heads.
Sunday, Oct 24, 1999 (26m+16d)
We went to Gymboree again in the morning. The twins have always called the clown Gymbo as Bobo. We tried many times to correct them. We have tried to say Gym-Gym-Gym-Gymbo, but they simply repeat Bobo. Somehow, we heard Jasmine said Geebo today, we gave her a lot of praises, then she started calling Geebo. Though it is still not Gymbo, it is a step in improvement. It is funny because when we asked her to repeat that again and again, she caught herself starting to say Bo several times, then she struggled a little bit and said Geebo. I believe it is not easy for her to break a habit she formed in the past three months.We had lunch with Jenny in Oakland. Jenny's friend Amy joined us too. The twins had lunch with Jenny just few days ago, so they were okay with her. Joanne refused to sit down at the table because Amy was a stranger to her. I had to switch place with her so that she did not see Amy from where she sat.
After lunch we went visit Marianne's three week old daughter. Her baby was three weeks premature, over 5 lb. at birth. She also got the preemies characteristics such as furry hair on her back. She reminds us a lot of our twins' early days. From her weight and length, we can tell that she is a little bigger than how our twins used to be. However, we could not recall how small our twins were until we looked at another premature baby. It is amazing how memory fades away. I am glad we had pictures and video taken two years ago.
Today is great-grandma's birthday. Mommy's family had a big reunion dinner. Mommy's Cousin Ken and Emily brought their three week old son Matthew to the restaurant too. We got to see Matthew for the first time because we were all sick couple weeks back and we refrained ourselves from visiting them earlier. The twins were interested too, they asked great-grandma and Grandma Ling to take them to look over the little baby.
Jasmine had a very good appetite at dinner. She stuffed a lot in her mouth. We didn't keep track of how much she ate, and it was a big mistake. Jasmine fell asleep before we left the restaurant. She slept all the way home in the car. When we arrived home, she woke up and puked. I believed she ate too much and after sleeping in the car seat for over an hour, the gas built up in her stomach caused her to throw up. If she had belched, we would have avoided a stinky mess to clean up. Jasmine was kind of dazed through out the night after the puking. At bedtime, mommy asked Jasmine if she likes mommy to sleep next to her because she may need some extra comfort after the traumatic experience. She shook her head. She is a brave baby.
Monday, Oct 25, 1999 (26m+19d)
Jasmine woke up a happy baby. That ruled out the worry that she might have eaten something bad during dinner.Mommy asked Jasmine to teach Joanne to said Gymbo. When Jasmine said Geebo to Joanne, Joanne still repeated Bobo. So Jasmine grabbed her shoulder, got really close, just inches from Joanne's face and slowly whispered "Gee-bo". That was how we did it when we tried to get Jasmine to pay attention to our pronunciation. It was so funny when the kid mimicked what we did.
Wednesday, Oct 27, 1999 (26m+21d)
Got another roll of film developed today. Still need to find time to scan some new pictures for this web site. Haven't updated the photo album for almost half a year now.On the other day, Joanne stacked up all her bath toys before she left the tub. Then the next day, Jasmine followed suit. I just hope they would form a habit so that we don't need to clean up after them.
Thursday, Oct 28, 1999 (26m+22d)
The twins like to "fly" around the room like Superman, of course, with the help of daddy's sore muscles. I want them to say "飛"(fay), FLY in Cantonese, before I flex my muscles for them. Jasmine still has trouble with the F sound, she kept saying "bay" or "way", but Joanne managed to say it correctly right away. She gave herself an applause too.Jasmine was following me around for the flight, but I told her not till she say "fay" correctly. When I bent down and waited patiently for the word, she said "Geebo"! :-) I broke out laughing. She remembers that we praised her when she successfully broke her habit of calling Gymbo as Bobo. I believe she already knows the concept of trade-off and compromise, she tried to substitute the difficult word with something that she can say well. Well, I gave her her flight just because of her creative effort. She may grow up to be a good businesswoman.
Friday, Oct 29, 1999 (26m+23d)
The twins were invited to the annual NICU graduate Halloween party at El Camino Hospital. The party is a reunion for the premature babies who stayed at the NICU before. Since twins are usually born premature, there were several sets of twins in the party. Somehow I had an impression that there were much fewer twins in this party than last year. Sharleen's neighbor Sonja and her baby Lauren were in the party too. Lauren was 8 week premature. We didn't see any nurse who took care of our twins before.Our twins were dressed as Winnie the Pooh. Pooh was quite popular, at least 4 to 5 other Pooh bears were in the party. Several kids love Pooh bear so much that they came over to our twins and wanted to touch the famous cartoon character. Or did they come because our twins were each sucking a lollipop? One kid dressed as Eeyore was so excited that he ran like a donkey towards Joanne and almost knocked her down.
We attempted to get a face painting for the twins, Jasmine refused to do it at the last minute. When the brave one retreated, it was a waste effort to try Joanne. A balloon artist was there to make balloon sculptures for the kids. Our twins got a pair of balloon pumpkins.
Saturday, Oct 30, 1999 (26m+24d)
Pat was visiting from LA. We got two tables full of friends gathering for lunch. After lunch we went to Siu-ling's home in San Mateo to look at her newly remodeled kitchen.Then Denis' and our family went up to San Francisco together to visit the SONY Metreon. It is a good place for young people to hang out. According to the web site, it is an entertainment center designed for people from age 5 to 95. Our twins are too young to enjoy any of the facility. We may visit again in three years.
We then had dinner with Jane, Denis, Jin, Edwin and ChinLi. ChinLi is a flight engineer with the Air Force Reserve. He had to fly around the country on a cargo plane recently. He barely made it to the dinner gathering.
Sunday, Oct 31, 1999 (26m+25d)
Today is the last day of our Gymboree Class. We don't plan to renew the enrollment. Firstly, the class is quite expensive for two kids. After doing the same thing week after week for three months, the twins are not as enthusiastic about the class anymore. Besides, as the winter and rainy season approaches, we don't feel committed to attend class every week. Surprisingly, our twins were the only kids to wear costume to the class. Two little Pooh bears drew quite a lot of attention by running around the classroom.We went to trick-or-treat in San Francisco in the afternoon. We went to some major toy stores such as FAO Schwarz, Disney's, Sanrio etc. The twins got some goodies like stickers and small toys in addition to candies. At FAO Schwarz, we bought a battery-powered puppy for the twins. The twins are always scared of dogs, so we try to desensitize them with a mechanical toy puppy.
We had to cancel our original plan for a more traditional trick-or-treating in the evening because we needed to attend the "month old" celebration banquet for Matthew. Matthew is the twins' second cousin, the son of mommy's Cousin Ken. Matthew was dressed as a brown teddy bear. With our two Pooh bears, they could form a Chinese cubs club.
When we were home, we turned on the electric puppy for the twins. Joanne loved it, but Jasmine just didn't care. Joanne would hug it and play with it, she even tried to feed it. When it was bedtime, we told her puppy needed to sleep too. She switched it off, laid it down side way and said "nite-nite" to it.
Wednesday, Nov 3, 1999 (26m+28d)
Mommy took the twins to Bamboola, a playplace for kids for an admission fee. They went with Debbie, another mommy they met at Gymboree. The twins seemed to enjoy the place and they played there for almost three hours.Joanne developed a fever of 101°F in the evening. We gave her some Tynanol. Mommy said there was a kid with runny nose at Bamboola. Perhaps she was spreading the germs at the place.
Thursday, Nov 4, 1999 (26m+29d)
Joanne's fever rose to 103°F. We took her to the doctor, but the resident nurse there told us that 103°F is not considered serious among children. We don't need to be too worried unless it gets up to 106°F. I thought 103°F and above can easily kill an adult, but children are more resilient.We reminded the nurse that Joanne just had a course of antibiotics several weeks ago for her ear infection. We were worried that the infection had come back. When the nurse wanted to look into Joanne's ears with her scope, Joanne screamed and cried hysterically. She couldn't get a clear look because Joanne had wax in her ear canal. So she asked another nurse to flush Joanne's ears with water. The procedure was quite effective because we could see several chunks of wax collected in the bucket. The nurse checked the cleared ears and said there was no sign of infection.
Joanne didn't take the procedure lightly, she was struggling and screaming in panic mode. We tried to calm her down, but she was really scared by strangers working on her ears. To make the matter worse, Jasmine decided to show her support for Joanne. No one touched Jasmine, but she actually cried harder than Joanne.
Saturday, Nov 6, 1999 (27m)
The twins are 27 months old today.
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started on Nov 19, 1999