How can I describe our children to you?  They are so fun and so CRAZY these days!  Whenever I’m not looking, I overhear them giggling like crazy with raucous laughter.  They exchange giggles and babbles as if they are talking to each other (this will make their Auntie Joy happy since she is hoping they take up twinspeak).  I hear them upstairs when it is supposed to be naptime, cracking up and talking and keeping one another awake.  I hear them in the play area when I’ve fenced them in to get a moment to myself… both of them laughing so hard and I’m dying to know what is so funny!  Every time I sneak over to take a peek, they notice that I’m there, immediately clam up and start trying to get my attention instead.  I couldn’t ever catch them… I’d try to get the camera or video camera and sneak up and they would instinctively stop laughing and look around for me.  Yesterday, I finally achieved success.  Do you want to know what makes our children laugh uproariously?

Biting each other and poking each other in the eye.

Hilarious, hmm?  We play this game where we nibble on them and tickle their tummies with kisses.  We swoop them up and make a growling noise that is appropriate for a baby-eating monster, then dive in and nibble them.  Rissa thinks the game is decently fun, but Zach thinks it is the best thing ever, especially when Matt does it.  He giggles and squirms and begs for more.  I’ve noticed that he has been crawling toward me, growling, then chomping my arm/leg/cheek and smiling at me to see if I laugh.  It turns out that he has been doing the same thing to his sister.  And she loves it!  They growl and chomp each other and usually get bitten a bit, but they love it.

The eye poking is even more disturbing.  They sit in the stroller and giggle and reach for each other and try to touch each other’s eyes.  Ew!  I’m constantly saying, “No eyes, be gentle” and screeching, “Zach/Rissa, get your finger out of your sister’s/brother’s eye!”  This explains the string of eye infections they have both been experiencing.  The natural consequences of biting someone or poking them in the eye should be they get mad at you and you realize you hurt them.  And then your mom comes and deals with it.  But our kids think it is fun!  The natural consequences are removed and it’s just me dealing with it.  That’s not convincing enough to make them stop.  In fact, usually, Rissa is done playing together first and wants to go do something else and Zach doesn’t know when to stop so he chomps her a few more times, and then she gets mad.  But not at the chomping!  She’s just mad that he’s still in her space.  I do what I can and separating them is good, but they enjoy each other so much!  It’s quite hilarious.

They have managed to break through the carseat box barriers.  It helps that we installed their new carseats, so now the boxes aren’t heavy and they can slide them around.  I tried to bulk them up by putting a giant box of wipes in each one, but the babies can still push past them.  I find them howling because their little shoulders or hips are stuck between the archway wall and the box and they can’t get through.  Do they back-track and decide to give up?  They do not!  They howl and howl and keep pushing and push on through or wait for me to rescue them.  This morning, I found Rissa howling between the wall and the box and I helped her back to the safety of the play area and told her to go play with her brother.  I glanced around looking for Zach… where is her brother???  Yeah, he escaped first and she was following him and I didn’t even notice!  I found him under the table happily pulling books off the shelf.

As a mom, my superpowers of constant vigilance are well-developed and all, but these two are almost too much to handle!  They are so active and never stop moving, unless it’s to sit and giggle and poke each other.  I’m enjoying them so much but the level of stress around here has heightened to orange alert.  I’m on to them, but it takes every spare second of my time to do it!

This movie is the best I can do to capture the chomping game… usually there would be more giggles and more chomps from Rissa, but she is excited about dangling her teddy over the edge of her crib and is a bit distracted.  They aren’t usually playing the game in a crib, but this is the best setup I could do to entice them to chomp each other on camera!