More twinny goodness

My nephews are now two and a half weeks old, and seem to only get cuter with each passing day (cuteness runs in the family):


I'm not sure about their dad's side, but on our side of the family, the last identical twins were my great grandmother Josie and her sister Mary, born in 1887! Oddly enough, they had twin brothers too, although the brothers were fraternal, not identical.

Cheap date

Yesterday afternoon I needed to return a couple things at the outlet mall, so all four of us went. As we were strolling from one store to the next, a childcare place caught our eye. Our kids begged and begged to be allowed to go in (they had good toys), and once we discovered their rate was $5/hour for two kids on Saturday nights, we agreed. They even fed them dinner! M and I went to a restaurant at the other end of the mall that had half-price appetizers & drink discounts for happy hour. We shared a plate of calamari & a small pizza, and each had a couple drinks. So for under $50 including childcare, we had date night. At the outlet mall! I'm not proud of that last part, but for $50, you really can't beat it.

Worried about BPA?

Did you do what I did a couple years ago? Look for that #7 on the bottom of your water bottles, and discover that nearly every one had it? We ended up buying aluminum bottles from SIGG for everyone in the family. Well, now it's come to light that SIGG bottles also contain BPA. It's in the lining put in all bottles made before August 2008. You can tell when your bottle was made by looking at the lining. If it's a shiny copper, you've got a pre-August 2008 bottle. If it's a dull yellowish color, you're OK.

I'm feeling very irritated about this. Those bottles are expensive! Buying them for a family of four comes close to $100. While SIGG may not have done anything that's actually illegal, like specifically claiming that their bottles were BPA-free, they had to know that the reason their sales shot up suddenly was because people believed this. It feels dishonest to me that they are just now admitting the truth. We bought ours from a co-op with a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee, so I think we're going to try to exchange them all this weekend.

Read the letter from the CEO of SIGG for yourself.

Some pictures

because I know a few people are starting to get the shakes from my lack of posting lately. (Oh yeah, you know who you are!) I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment with Z deep into potty-training resistance (that girl will sit in her own poop for an entire day rather than admit she has to go), being snack mom for 30 kindergarteners in the first full week of kindergarten, trying to figure out my schedule when I have to pick up the kids at two different schools, chronic insomnia (it's my dad's fault) and I forget what-all else. So mostly pictures today!

These are pictures from Miranda's 5th birthday party a couple weeks ago. It was a gymnastics party, and grownups were invited to play too. We did, as you can see. Actually, it looks like only M played, but that's only because I had possession of the camera most of the time. I played too, trust me! You can't keep me off a trampoline!

Both kids in the foam pit -- you ran down a long skinny trampoline then bounced into this. It was awesome, although I have to say it was a lot harder for us grownups to get out of the foam pit than it was for the little monkeys -- they sort of floated on top while we sank to the bottom.

That's the birthday girl in purple:

I busted Z getting into Miranda's makeup after the party: she looks awfully pleased with herself, doesn't she?

Universal health care: a first-hand account

This is a post by a friend-of-a-friend, an American living in Germany. She describes in detail the universal health care available there, and makes some interesting comparisons between the state of health care in Germany and the U.S. It's a good read and should dispel some of the unfounded fears about universal health care that seem to be floating around.

While we're at it, this is a good place to find out whether all the rumors floating around about the proposed government option are true or not. Politifact.com is run by the St. Petersburg Times and won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its investigative reporting in the 2008 election. They do a bang-up job of ferreting out the truth, half-truth and lies in what all sorts of politicians and talking-heads say, and they are completely nonpartisan. They rip President Obama just as often as Sarah Palin!

B's first day of kindergarten

I dropped B off for his first full day of kindergarten this morning, and it was awful. He was fine right up until he had to go through the door of his classroom, and then he started crying and clinging to me. He had to be literally pulled off me and taken into the room. Of course, all this made me cry too, but I think B was too miserable to notice.

Z and I went down to the parent lounge to wait a few minutes, then went back to peek in to see if he was doing better. He wasn't. All the kids were sitting in a circle, playing a name game, and B was at a table in the back of the room with his head down on his arms, with the head of school talking to him. I waited around until she came out, and she told me that she'd promised him she'd go back later in the morning, and if he was still having a hard time, she'd take him for a walk outside.

He went yesterday for just about two and a half hours, and I guess he cried a little bit then too, but he called me afterward (I was at work) to tell me he "LOVED kindergarten!" I'm hoping today goes the same way.

Poor little dude. Change is hard.

Sunflowers

The kids and I spotted this from the highway on the way up to my mom & dad's last weekend. We had to drive all the way around it, keeping it in view the whole way, in order to get close enough to take a picture without trespassing.


There is nowhere in the world I'd rather be at this time of the year than Colorado.