Caleb and Joshua have invented a new game that sounds something like this…

Joshua: Baby toys
Caleb: Baby toys
Joshua: Baby Mommy
Caleb: Baby Mommy
Joshua: Baby wash your hands
Caleb: Baby wash your hands
Joshua: Baby happy birthday
Caleb: Baby happy birthday
Joshua: Baby fork
Caleb: Baby fork
Joshua: Baby macaroni
Caleb: Baby macaroni

Etc, etc.

They have a special “voice” they use when they play this game. It’s kind of a nasal monotone. They sound a lot like robots, actually. The boys take turns taking the lead, and the other twin is always happy to echo whatever nonsense his brother comes up with. We have no idea how they came up with this game. Maybe it’s all the recent talk about the baby in Mommy’s belly? Who knows. Anyway, it’s always amusing to hear what words or phrases they’ll tack on to the end of “baby” each time they play.

Here is a common conversation we have with Caleb on an almost daily basis:

Caleb: What are you doing, Caleb, Mommy?
Me: What are you doing, Caleb?
Caleb: Are you stickin’ your _____ in the _____?
Me: Caleb, are you stickin’ your _____ in the _____?

That’s right, he prompts me to ask him what he is doing, then insists that I repeat back to him the question asking him what he is stickin’. Fill in the first blank with finger, hand, foot, or some other body part. Fill the second blank with any household object. For whatever reason, stickin’ stuff in various places seems to fascinate Caleb.

This morning he stuck his hands through the bars of the crib (which we never took down after our friends and their baby visited us a couple months ago) and prompted me to ask him if he was stickin’ his wrists in the crib. The other day during dinner he touched his toe to the table and prompted us to ask him if he was stickin’ his foot in the table. He always sports a proud grin whenever he sticks something somewhere.

“Stickin’” is just another quirky phenomenon that occurs all the time in our house, and I felt it deserved a written record before Caleb stops doing it and we forget that he ever did.

The other day while we were at Mimi and Papa’s house, I was sitting at their desktop computer when Joshua stepped up to the computer case. He spoke into the glowing blue power button and air vents, saying in a deliberate monotone voice, “four-piece nuggets”. Hmmm… I think I’ll go hide under a McDonald’s bag while I contemplate making fewer stops at the drive-thru from now on!

Lately Caleb has become very interested in meal preparation. The moment he hears me turn on the stove fan, he comes running, asking to “see the cookens.” Last weekend he and Joshua helped Granny make popcorn, and then this past week I let him “help” me bake apple muffins and spinach lasagna. Caleb has always been the more detail-oriented twin, and seems intensely curious to observe the process of how things are made. He loves to observe eggs frying, water boiling, even bagels toasting. While Joshua sometimes likes to see the “cookens”, too, he is mostly content just to eat them!

After measuring 3 weeks ahead at my last appointment, all suspicions and worries were put to rest yesterday when the ultrasound machine revealed that we are having another boy… just one big one! That’s right, I am officially outnumbered 4 to 1 by the men in this household We are all very excited about the new Wolf cub who will be joining us in early February. Big brothers Caleb and Joshua like to hug and kiss my belly and proclaim their love for the baby, whom they have been known to refer to as “Baby Moses”. We have also trained them to be very conscientious about being gentle with the baby in Mommy’s belly, and now whenever they take a whack at each other, they will scold each other, saying, “Be careful! There’s a baby in there! Don’t hurt the baby!”

As novel as it would have been to have two sets of twins, the news of a singleton has ushered in a sense of peace, lifting a huge weight off of our shoulders. Finally, I will get a taste of the blissful newborn babymoon experience that I often hear other mothers speak so fondly of. I am personally looking forward to the luxury of getting more than 45 minutes of sleep at a time and feeling more like a mommy than a milk machine. Compared to the newborn twins experience, I daresay that taking care of a newborn singleton is going to seem like a vacation!

Last Sunday morning Joshua was trying to engage Caleb in some playful tumbling shortly after they had woken up. Caleb, still groggy, was not quite as chipper and responded to Joshua’s playful romps by kicking him squarely in the face. Time stood still for a few seconds as Joshua formulated his response. Would he kick back or burst out in tears? Neither. Instead, he planted a big kiss on his brother’s offending foot.

A couple hours later we were sitting in church and Pastor Steve was talking about Pope John Paul II and how he readily forgave his would-be assassin, Ali Agca. He asked the congregation, “How many of you have an Ali Agca in your life?” and Joshua raised his hand. Pastor Steve said, “I see that Joe’s son has an Ali Agca!” Joe turned to me and whispered, “his Ali Agca is Caleb!” Fortunately, at the tender age of 2 and a half, Joshua already seems to understand a great deal about the power and importance of forgiveness.

A couple weeks ago we took the boys to the new waterpark at Massanutten while we were visiting Granny and Babo. After a rocky start, and me fearing that Joe would vow never to attempt such an excursion with the boys ever again, we all ended up having a great time.

The drama began when both boys refused to have anything to do with the wristbands they were supposed to wear as evidence of their paid admission to the park. You would think we were trying to attach tarantulas to their wrists. Actually, they probably would have preferred tarantulas to the wristbands.

We quickly gave up on the wristbands and headed over to the lazy river. The boys were delighted to get in the water, but screamed bloody murder when we attempted to put them in rafts. So, we thought we’d hold off on that for a while and check out the wave pool. The only problem was that they had to wear a floatation vest in the wave pool. We eventually convinced Joshua to wear one, winning him over with the buckle fasteners that resembled the buckles on their car seats which they’re thoroughly obsessed with. Caleb, on the other hand, regarded the vest as an instrument of torture, so Joe gave him a stern lecture on dry land while Joshua and I bounced around in the waves.

Later we all headed back inside, and by this point Caleb decided that the rafts in the lazy river weren’t so bad after all. He and Joe made several circuits while I wrestled with Joshua, who was still under the impression that the raft would eat him alive. Knowing how stubborn the boys can be about something before they actually try it, I was determined to make him realize that the lazy river was actually fun and not the least bit scary. I miracuously managed to contain him on the raft and we made several rounds as one big (mostly) happy family, Caleb giggling merrily the entire time while I held a screaming Joshua in a strangehold to prevent him from jumping off.

Next, we proceeded to the giant water castle, where our same child who was terrified of the lazy river voluntarily embarked down a huge adult-sized waterslide all by himself. Joshua screamed the whole way down, and the look of terror on his precious face as he rounded the first curve–at this point speeding down head-first on his back–will be forever seared into my memory. When he reached the end of the slide–by this point head-first on his belly–Joe rescued him and calmed him down. Naturally, Caleb did not dare follow in his brother’s brave footsteps, and the remainder of the evening was enjoyed in milder aquatic pursuits.

Despite a little drama here and there along the way, we all had a wonderful time and the boys have been asking to go back to the “water paht” at least once a day ever since then!

The boys like to inform us that “it’s dark” when the sun goes behind some clouds or we pass under some thick foliage. The other day we were driving along and the boys were gazing out the car windows when darkness fell, prompting Caleb to announce, “it’s dark!” Keep in mind that when Caleb says “dark” it sounds more like “dahk“. As usual, Joshua felt compelled to immediately correct his brother. “Caleb,” he said, “it’s not a duck, it’s a bird!”

The other day the boys were outside riding their bikes. Caleb zoomed down our neighbor’s driveway in his usual fashion (a little too fast) and tumbled over the handlebars onto the asphalt. Joshua hurried over to survey the damage. He planted his hand on Caleb’s shoulder and said “In Jesus’ name, be healed… be tough! Amen.” Joe and I often tell the boys to “be tough” when they fall and get a boo-boo, so I guess it only seemed natural to Joshua to tack that on to the end of his prayer.

While Joshua is happily kept preoccupied with the usual boyhood interests of trains and cars, Caleb’s interests tend to be much more eclectic. One of his chief obsessions is signs. When we go to the playground, he makes a beeline for the playground rules sign. The swings, slides, and sandbox are all secondary to this glorious sign that evokes such deep passion, causing Caleb’s eyes to widen with wonderment and his limbs to twitch gleefully as he studies it intently. When we are out on a walk, we must stop and examine every sign… crosswalk signs, stop signs, no parking signs, you name it. They all command Caleb’s immediate attention as he demands to know what each sign represents before performing a celebratory prance around the pole. The grocery store is yet another venue offering a plethora of signs for our information-thirsty toddler. The other day we were strolling down an aisle at Whole Foods when Caleb stopped dead in his tracks and exclaimed with grave concern, “Uh oh! The sign is missing!” We looked up, and sure enough the sign that should have been displayed above the yogurt section was absent, leaving only the sign-hanging apparatus dangling lonesomely in its place.