Hallelujah

Another step forward in health care. Let's see if the Senate follows suit or wimp out. The Senate is generally filled with a bunch of toothless losers, so I have no illusions that this will come to easy closure.

On the home front, the girls are growing rapidly. They're able to put sentences together with words I've never heard from them before. Leia even has very clear statements of her desire: "I like trucks." or "I want soup." Can I get another "Hallelujah!"

So many behaviors about the girls continue to rapidly change. Alisa is in a phase where she wants to sing all the time. She'll say "how about.....", pause, and then name a song. She only knows the title to a handful of songs, so her choices have been limited. Thank goodness she's never asked for a Japanese song from me. Her current favorite seems to be "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". I never sang it to her before she asked for it. So it must have come from day care or her nanny.

Nanny? Yes, nanny. We have a nanny come over six days a week now. On weekdays she picks up the girls at 5pm and stays until 7pm. On Saturday's she's here 10:30am till 7:00pm. She is awesome! She has her own little 12 month old boy, Jerius. He's the cutest little boy and the girls love him. Teresa, the nanny, can easily take care of all three and do the dishes. She even brings her own cooking over sometimes.

Both girls are getting used to the stairs. They constantly try to climb on stairs whenever we go outside, which is as often as possible since the most common word from both of them now is "Outside!" They're definitely getting easier when out, as well. They're more likely to hold our hands. They generally stay together because they want to play with each other. Today they were so well behaved that we were able to drop by a restaurant unplanned for dinner. Not only is it extremely rare to go out for dinner, we did so unplanned. No extra diapers with us. No crackers or other food than what the restaurant served. No toys or distractions. We just ordered the food and ate when the food arrived. Heaven! (Full disclosure, we ate a pizza parlor and the kitchen was open enough to distract the girls while the food was being cooked.)