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This journal is about raising identical twins.Sixteenth month
Previous entries
Friday, Nov 6, 1998 (15m)
The twins are 15 months old.Daddy got a sore throat, probably caught it from mommy.
Saturday, Nov 7, 1998 (15m+1d)
We went to Poon and Sharleen's baby showers at around noon. In about two weeks, they will be proud parents. Sharleen's four years old niece Chelsea loves babies. She shared her toys and spent most of the day playing with our twins. She probably miss her own two years old sister at home in Virginia. There were few more older kids in the party, but they played among the bigger kids.Among the guests, Susan T. is 16 week and Jane M. is 8 week pregnant. Mommy shared her child bearing experiences with the mothers-to-be.
We stayed for dinner and left after 10pm.
Sunday, Nov 8, 1998 (15m+2d)
I woke up with a terrible headache, sore throat and a runny nose, fortunately I didn't have a fever. I stayed in bed most of the day.Joanne woke up around midnight crying with mucus dripping all over her nose. She didn't catch a cold, the mucus probably resulted from her hard crying. She also woke up Jasmine. Jasmine got back to sleep in a few minutes. But Joanne kept on crying, she probably could not breath well with a stuffed nose. I tried to comfort her for over half an hour with no result. Mommy then took over, so that I could get a good sleep.
Monday, Nov 9, 1998 (15m+3d)
Not much progress in terms of the twins' language development, Grandma Chui said kids who walked before started talking are usually late speakers. With no backing with scientific studies, her observation was purely empirical. However, it makes sense. If their brains are busy perfecting their motor skills, their speech would come late.They understand us very well. They respond correctly when mommy says "get me the bottle", "bring me that toy". Jasmine does not understand the difference between active and passive voice. While Joanne responds correctly to "kiss mommy", "kiss daddy", "kiss your sister" etc., Jasmine responds by offering her forehead to be kissed.
Though they cannot speak, they would bring the TV remote control to us to ask for Teletubbies.
Though they cannot speak, we can tell the twins love to bathe very much. Around bath time every night, the twins will start pulling on their own clothes when they hear mommy preparing the bath water.
Joanne woke up crying again, this time at 3am in the morning. Mommy told me later that it took her over an hour to get her back to sleep.
Thursday, Nov 12, 1998 (15m+6d)
The twins went to the doctor's office for their 15 month checkup. Everything is fine except they are still underweight. In fact, they are getting further below the curve.Joanne weighed 16 lb. 12 oz. naked, measured 29¼ inch
Jasmine weighed 16 lb. 9 oz. naked, measured 29¾ inch
height and head circumference growth are normal, weight is way under the 5th percentile curve.They also had a shot and took the oral polio vaccine, the one that actually cause polio in one out of 32 million vaccinations.
Sunday, 15 Nov, 1998 (15m+9d)
Not much happened this weekend. Beside shopping at Costco, Toys R Us etc., we went shopping at TriCity in Fremont for some winter gears. We plan to spend the Thanksgiving week in snow at South Lake Tahoe and Reno.
Saturday, Nov 21, 1998 (15m+15d)
We took the kids to Aunt Tina's place so that mommy and Aunt Tina could go shopping. Daddy and Uncle Ivan stayed to scan some baby photos into the computer. Mommy bought from the Baby Gap two pairs of silver color ski pants for the twins. The pants go with a matching down jacket, but mommy didn't buy that. We went to Umi Sushi Boat for dinner afterward.
Sunday, Nov 22, 1998 (15m+16d)
I found out the snow chains I had for my Honda Accord do not fit the tires of the minivan. We went to TriCity to buy a new set of chains. We went to Baby Gap again to check out the down jackets. Since they ran out of the jackets in the size and color to match our pants, we decided to return the silvery pants and bought the jackets and pants set in burgundy.
Monday, Nov 23, 1998 (15m+17d)
We figured, we should not leave the van doors open for too long in cold weather. So we removed the middle two seats from the minivan. That leaves a roomy staging area for us to dress the babies or strapped them in. We pushed the back bench seat forward a foot or so, that made a lot of room in the cargo area for the luggage.We headed up the High Sierra Mountain at around 10am. We arrived at South Lake Tahoe at around 4pm. It was snowing when we arrived. We stopped by the local AAA office to get some local street maps and touring advices. We checked in at the WorldMark Club resort and it was dark before we settled down. The place we stayed at had 2 bedrooms, 2 full baths, living room with fireplace and a full kitchen. We prepared our own dinner for the night.
Tuesday, Nov 24, 1998 (15m+18d)
We woke up to beautiful new snow on the ground outside. Since we were on vacation, we did not want to rush ourselves. It took us the whole morning to feed the twins and got them ready. It was almost noon when we went out to the snow. We took the twins to a small incline next to the parking lot and played with the toboggan. Jasmine was very happy and sledded down the incline with a grin on her face. Joanne was scared, probably not of the sledding but of the other people on the slope.We met a Chinese family from Alviso on the slope. The father is from Malaysia and the mother and grandma is from Hong Kong. They have a pair of 5(?) years old identical twin girls and a 7(?) year old son. We took some pictures with them and the two mommies spent a lot of time taking about raising twins. The twins were tired and bored, Joanne fell asleep on mommy's shoulder while mommy were still chatting to the other mom. Mommy took the twins back to the room for a nap while I dusted the snow off the hood, scratched the ice off the windshield and shuffled away the pile of snow behind our minivan. We later had lunch at Marie Calendar's.
We cooked our own dinner in the resort, rented the movie "Air Force One" (DVD|VHS) for the night.
Wednesday, Nov 25, 1998 (15m+19d)
Again we spent the morning in the room. The new snow from the day before was mostly gone. We spent some time in the afternoon driving around to look for another sledding site. We drove to a higher elevation and sledded down a closed-off dirt road. Joanne was asleep in the car, so we sledded with Jasmine first. She really had fun with giggles and laughters. When Joanne woke up, we had couple more runs with both twins. Unlike the day before, Joanne enjoyed the sled runs this time.We then took the twins to a city park but the snow was too thin and dirty for building a snowman. We instead dragged the twins around the park in the toboggan and let the twins play in the park's playground. It was late afternoon and the temperature was dropping, we left after about half an hour.
We went to Caesar's Palace casino, strolled around and did some shopping. We later had dinner at Lakeside Inn casino.
(video clip of Jasmine playing with a drawer. [2.4 Mbytes])
Thursday, Nov 26, 1998 (15m+20d)
Today is the Thanksgiving Day.We checked out in the morning and headed for Reno. We checked in to Silver Legacy Hotel/Casino around noon. We had lunch at Sweetwater Cafe in the hotel, we were surprised that the menu includes a decent list of Chinese food.
In the hotel lobby, we met a Chinese lady with two twin boys. She said her boys were borned at 2½ lb. They live in Oakland.
We had a five course thanksgiving dinner at "Top of the Hilton", the only roof top restaurant in Reno. It was a quiet and enjoyable dinner for us, because, in addition to a free glass of champaign, live ambient music and a great view of the city, both twins slept through the dinner.
Friday, Nov 27, 1998 (15m+21d)
We followed the American tradition and went shopping after Thanksgiving.We went to Toys R Us, looking for on-sale items and we ended up buying a toy chest for the twins. We could only find the blue one in the Bay Area and when we saw the pink one, we just bought it without much thought even though we needed to haul it from Nevada to California. The toy chest came in handy as an extra luggage trunk in the minivan. We had lunch at Chuck E. Cheese's and we spent some time playing in the game room with the twins. We met a Hispanic lady with 4 kids at Chuck E. Cheese's and two of her kids were identical twin girls.
We went back to the hotel for dinner. The place was packed with people. There were long lines outside every buffet and restaurants, some accepted reservations for two hours into the evening. We were hungry and walked around the casino to look for a place for dinner. Since the three hotels, Eldorado, Silver Legacy and Circus Circus are joined at the lobby level. There were many restaurants to choose from without walking outdoors. We found a place called Bistro Roxy in Eldorado Hotel Casino. It was not crowded, but expensive. Mommy had an Australian lobster. The bill added up more than the thanksgiving dinner we had the night before.
Unknowingly, we walked into Santa's winter wonderland in the hotel, the Santa helpers took free polaroid pictures for hotel guests with Santa. Both twins, especially Joanne, were scared of Santa when we tried to put them in his lap. We had to calm them down and turn them away from Santa to get a decent picture.
Saturday, Nov 28, 1998 (15m+22d)
We had an American style lunch at Sweetwater Cafe. Daddy and mommy had a fight on whose turn to change the diapers. Mommy was mad and took off with the minivan after changing the diapers. Daddy spent the afternoon stranded in the hotel room. Babies and daddy took a long afternoon nap. Mommy came back in the early evening after a $500+ shopping spree. Guest who won this time? :-(We had dinner at the Victorian Buffet in Silver Legacy Hotel. After dinner, we went to the Santa's wonderland again. This time, we brought our own camera, hoping that we can make more prints if the pictures come out nice. Learning from experience, we kept the twins away from Santa. They were not scared as much this time.
Sunday, Nov 29, 1998 (15m+23d)
We checked out from the hotel, had lunch at Sweetwater Cafe again. On the way to South Tahoe, we stopped by the Meadowwood mall in Reno for some shopping. We were back in South Tahoe after an hour drive. It was snowing in Tahoe. The weather was clear in Reno probably because it is in a desert and the storm was blocked by the High Sierra mountain. We checked back into the WorldMark Resort. We had dinner at Chart House. This restaurant is similar to the Chart House in Sausalito, but this one is so quiet that it is served by one waitress and several other helpers. Despite its advertisement, you cannot really see the entire lake from the restaurant, most of the view is blocked by trees. We rented the movie "Con Air" (DVD|VHS) for the night.
Monday, Nov 30, 1998 (15m+24d)
It continued to snow till the morning. The sky cleared a little when we checked out from the resort. We stopped by the AAA and the California Department of Forestry office in Tahoe to get some Sno-Park information. We purchased a sno-park permit ($5) and headed up the mountain for the Echo Summit Sno-Park. It was snowing quite hard with steady mild wind when we reached Echo Summit. The temperature was around 32°F and the snow flakes melted immediately when they touched our clothes. Since our clothes were waterproof, we didn't get soaked. The snow at the park was very thick and powdery, our feet went in shin deep when we climbed the slope. We towed the twins up the slope in the toboggan. They were quite excited about the falling snow. (See video clip of twins sledding [1.2 Mbytes]) We sledded several runs and gave up because we were too exhausted after climbing the slope in deep snow. We couldn't catch our breaths due to the thin air at high elevation (7500 ft. about sea level.) Besides, the wind picked up and the twins' cheeks were bright red due to wind burns. We spent about an hour in the park including dressing and undressing the kids. We packed up and went down the mountain back to the Bay Area.We stopped by Stoneridge mall in Pleasanton at the junction of highway I-680 and I-580. We did some shopping, let the twins walk around a little, changed their diapers etc. We got home at around 7pm.
Friday, Dec 4, 1998 (15m+28d)
Mommy took the twins shopping by herself. She put the twins and the keys in the minivan and went to the back of the van to put the stuff in the truck. Just seconds after she lifted the tailgate, Jasmine picked up the car keys and press the button on the car alarm remote control. The doors were locked and the alarm armed. Fortunately, the tailgate was open and mommy could climb into the van over the rear seats to retrieve the keys. If Jasmine pressed the button a few seconds earlier, she would have locked mommy out. I cannot imagine what a mess it would be to have two babies locking themselves inside a car.
Saturday, Dec 5, 1998 (15m+29d)
We had a Taiwanese lunch with Michelle and Simon, we went shopping at Valley Fair Mall afterward. We had dinner at Umi Sushi Boat. It was pouring when we left the restaurant.
Sunday, Dec 6, 1998 (16m)
The twins are 16 months old.
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