23 months 8 days

Day 708. Last night it was after 1:30, when I headed to bed. This morning Emmy came around 6 am, as usual. First he lies down on me for a few minutes, then he sits up and starts talking, and then he leaves and starts doing all kinds of stuff. After a while he returns saying "Essen" (food) and gets more and more insistent, until I get up and give them a little milk to drink and a banana, while making their cereal. They barely touch their cereal any more, though, eating more fruit and snacks instead.

After breakfast I took them downstairs, where I turned worship music on, got them their instruments out, and we were worshipping God. And it wasn't long before I gave them their Bibles. Of course each one had to have their own one. They did not want to share one to read with me. Then they wanted to do some drawing, so I set up the table and chairs and got the paper and crayons out. Every time they draw, I see an improvement. Emmy now just goes for it, covering the paper with color, while Tammy does more controlled lines and circles, which is really impressive.

Just after they were done, Randy came with his breakfast, and I left, as always. But that's where the "as always" ended. It was about 7:30 am. I started cleaning up and then doing office work, but there was so much crying downstairs that I checked on them. Tammy was frantic and wanted me to hold her. Daddy did not do, it had to be Mommy. She was clinging to me, and I could not set her down. I tried a few times to tell her I had to go work, but she did not want to let me leave. I finally handed her over to her Daddy and left. But I could hear her continue frantically crying while upstairs. I finally decided it was more important for me to be there for my daugher and went downstairs. She immediately clung to me and stopped crying. Getting up so early makes them tired early as well. I decided to go upstairs with her and lie down, and she quickly fell asleep on me, and so did I.

At 9 am the doorbell rang, as the Mobile Support lady was coming. When I tried to put her on the bed, she woke up, and so I took her downstairs to the others. She seemed fine, so I left, hoping to finally get to work. At first it seemed that they were all happily playing downstairs, but then the crying started again. Just like earlier in the morning. Again I gave up on working and went downstairs. This time both Tammy and Emmy wanted me to hold them, and Daddy didn't do. So I sat down and had a child on each side of my body, and they were both lying on me like they were going to sleep. The Mobile Support lady was playing with Sammy. I was concerned about Tammy's atypical behavior, wondering whether she was hurt in the fall yesterday. And I did not want Emmy to actually sleep, so he would still sleep after lunch. It was Randy who came up with what turned out to solve the problem. He got the tricycles out, and immediately they were up and sat down on them, even though Randy didn't opent he door for them to go outside. I was able to leave, and there was no more crying after that.

But it wasn't long until lunch time. It was Sammy I heard crying at that point, and so I called them up just before 11 am to eat yesterday's leftovers, chicken with rice. This time they ate well, though not as much chicken as expected, but the rice was gone. And then they had their icecream. As soon as I bring the icecream out, Sammy also wants to have his, even though he eats more slowly and is usually not done with the main course. I wanted to weigh him tonight, as it's the beginning of the month, but forgot.

I cleaned up and dressed Emmy and put him straight to bed. He wasn't so happy, and wanted his brother to join him as well, and he came after a while. Randy went downstairs with Tammy. I sat down by their beds to help Emmy fall asleep, and by noon he had finally fallen asleep. And then the doorbell rang. I left to open the door and had a screaming Emmy come running to me. If the guy had come 5 minutes earlier or later, Emmy would have been fine. I picked him up and comforted him and put him back to bed. It took me another 20 minutes for him to fall back asleep. Then I put Tammy to bed. She always needs quite some time to fall asleep, and since Sammy had gone to bed quite a bit earlier, it wasn't long before she had woken him up. And then all I could hear was Tammy and Sammy laughing and laughing. That went on for a long time, until Tammy got quiet because she fell asleep, and Sammy started whining because he wanted out of bed. I got him out and put him in the swing right by Daddy, who went downstairs with him a little while later.

Time was short. Not long before 2 pm Emmy woke up, and I immediately started dressing him, while Randy came back upstairs with Sammy and dressed him. Then I woke up Tammy and dressed her, and we left just after 2 pm, perfectly on time. We took the subway and then the train and then walked to the swimming pool. Emmy had been saying "Sonja" the whole trip, and sometimes he thinks he sees her when people that look like her walk by. When we got to the pool, she was already there, and Emmy's eyes lit up as he said "Sonja, Sonja" and went straight to her. We still had to wait outside, and they have some water to play with there, as they had done last week, and so I took their clothes off for them to play with it again. They had just started having fun, when the teacher already came out, and we went inside. We all got ready for the pool and went inside.

I started with Emmy today, and Sonja and I switched quite a lot between the two. Emmy did better again regarding his fear. He enjoyed jumping into the pool, as did his sister, and got pretty comfortable in the swim ring. They were all having fun, and I once left the water to take a picture. I think he lets us stay in there longer than the class is, as there is no clear beginning or end, with people coming and going. He had them go through a tunnel today that he sat on the steps into the water, so they could simply walk through, and they both did it with no trouble at all.

Then we went to the showers, and Emmy loved them, enjoying the shower so much, while he's scared of it at home. It took us a while to get everyone dressed and be ready to leave. I gave them some snacks, and we started walking to the train station. It was a little cooler today, so we just passed the water coming out of the ground. Thankfully they were not too upset about it. We had to say goodbye to Sonja and got on a train, and then took the subway back home. They always come out of their seats, and Emmy wants to have his own seat, and does not want me to hold him at all or put my hand on him to protect him in case of sudden stops.

We got home at 5 pm. Randy went downstairs with them, but suggested I'd start making their food right away, which was half an hour earlier than usual. And so they came up to eat at 5:30. Today I took a picture of Emmy's and Tammy's plates. They had the leftover chicken on it too, and that's the first thing they both ate. The cantaloupe came next for Tammy, and after that she didn't really want to eat anything. Both of them still had most everything on their plates, when they stopped eating. They did pretty well in the bathtub in terms of eating their food, but didn't eat it all. Sammy, however, finished all his food in the bathtub. And they had lots of fun playing. I could tell Emmy was pretty tired. By 6:30 pm they were in bed, and the boys asleep by 6:45, which is early for them. Sammy hadn't had a long nap. Tammy was tired too, but doing her typical twisting and turning and whining. However, my being with her helped her calm down more quickly, and she was asleep faster than expected. And so I got to go get myself something to eat, while Randy had left for the grocery store. I ate and then went back to work. Now it's only 10 pm, but I'm so very tired that I don't think I can get any more work done tonight besides the cleanup I have to do.