It's My Birthday Too, Yeah

So, the girls turn two years old this weekend. I think the thing I'm looking forward to most about the girls turning two is that now I can stop keeping track of how many freaking months old they are. I can stop keeping track now, right? I can just say they're two years old - I don't have to remember they're 25 or 28 or 31 months anymore, right? Score!

"Happy Birthday" is one of Riley and Leah's favorite songs, but I don't think they have the slightest idea what it means. It's just another song to them. They'll sing it over and over for no particular reason, just substituting different people, animals, or things, like:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear blankie,
Happy birthday to you.

This past week's songs included "Happy birthday dear mommy" and "Happy birthday dear daddy", but also "Happy birthday dear sock" and its exciting sequel, 'Happy birthday dear other sock".

The two year old birthday party is also nice because it's probably the last birthday where the girls will have no idea that they're supposed to get gifts. Meaning that we can totally get away with not giving them anything! Yee-ha! Double-score!

Juuuust kidding. Although since our house is already overflowing with toys and books and stuff, we've told people coming to their birthday party not to bring to gifts. Again, that's probably not something we'll be able to get away with at future birthday parties: "Sorry, children! I know that we bring presents for your friends on their birthdays, but for your birthday we just told everybody that you're not interested in material possessions. That's okay, right?"

And of course, there are the perennial twin birthday dilemmas. Do we sing "Happy Birthday" twice, once for each girl, or do we just sing it once? On the one hand, the ol' Twin Handbook says that you're supposed to treat your twins like special, unique individuals rather than like some kinda two-head alien, which means one Happy Birthday song per child. But on the other hand, who the heck wants to sing that song twice? I mean, it's not that interesting a song - you kinda know where it's going after awhile. And also singing it twice means you have to choose which kid gets the first, enthusiastic rendition of the song and which kid gets the second, awkward, slightly hurried version.

And I know it's wrong to worry about this, but I've been to a couple 2-year-old birthdays now where the kids stare blankly at the cake at the end of the birthday song because they don't know that they're expected to actually blow out the candles. Is it wrong that I really, really want the girls to actually blow the candles out at their birthday party this weekend? It wouldn't be wrong for me to start training them this week to recognize the birthday candles, wait for the end of the birthday song, and then blow those candles out, would it? That wouldn't make me a crazy, overdriven parent, would it? Seriously, would it? Because I've got my practice candles ready.

Based on your silence, I take it that you approve. Girls, training starts tomorrow.

Splish Splash, Volume 2

Kathy and I and the girls took a little mini-"vacation" to New York last week to visit family and friends. Aside from the whole New York family and friends thing, I have to say that our days in New York aren't a whole lot different from our days in San Francisco. Wake up, play, eat breakfast, go to museum or zoo or something, get lunch, take nap, go to playground, get dinner, give girls a bath, put girls to sleep, clean up, collapse in front of TV, sleep, repeat. The only real differences between San Francisco and New York are (a) we get to wear shorts in New York, and (b) the playgrounds in New York kick the San Francisco playgrounds' little butts. Oh also, in New York we get 30 HBO channels instead of zero. Oh also, I always seem to eat tons of bacon when I'm in New York. Not sure why.

Anyway, the girls like warm weather and they like kick-ass playgrounds, so they were as happy as little toddler-sized clams pretty much the whole time. If we could just replace the whole 6-hour plane trip thing with some sort of teleportation ray, man, we'd really be in business.

With the warm weather, New York City in the summer really brings out my girls' favorite pastime, which is playing with water. In New York, this seems to be the norm - all the playgrounds have fountains or cool creek-like water features or these collections of stone animals spitting out water, all beckoning the toddlers of New York to frolic about in the water and ruin their nice dry clothes. And frolic Riley and Leah did. And ruin their clothes they did.

Back from New York this past Saturday, we went to a birthday party for a 2-year-old here in San Francisco. We got the girls dressed up in these nice dresses and went to the party, which was a nice, civilized affair held on our friends' beautiful outdoor deck overlooking the City. Riley and Leah asked for cups of water, which we gave to them without thinking much of it. Then they started scooping ice out of the ice chests holding all the beers and sodas and stuff. Then they started scooping water out of the ice chests. Then they started pouring water from one cup to another. Then they started pouring water into other people's cups. Then they started pouring water on themselves. Ten minutes later, every other 2-year old at the party was following Riley and Leah's lead and was scooping water to and fro, here and there and on to themselves and other kids, all much to the amusement and/or shagrin of the other folks at the party. And our girls with their beautiful little party dresses now were all soaked and muddy, like they had just been hit by some gigantic tidal wave at the beach or something.

At that point, we made a quick getaway, with Leah and Riley leaving a bunch of wet but happy toddlers in their wake. As we left, I cursed myself for forgetting to take a picture so that I could have a nice set of "before and after" pictures. Ah well. I guess you can use your imagination.

Instead, some completely unrelated photos from New York! Yee-hah!