The skating while pushing a double jog stroller is going well. It seems to attract a fair amount of attention – but with twins that's nothing new. I skate 4 miles or so twice a week, trying to take advantage of the winter weather. No way am I keeping this up in the summer… I’ll be back to swimming!

I did, however, totally and completely wipe out the other day. The crack in the sidewalk wasn’t just a crack, it was canyon-esque. I ended up on all fours and the boys were wondering why they were suddenly staring straight up at the sky. I had been using the sun-shield to protect them from the nearly mid-day sun and that had impeded my view directly in front of me. (It’s okay, though – I’m preparing them for The Dangerous Book For Boys.)

And speaking of potentially dangerous activities, I found out when writing this brief CARES review that children should not face forward in car seats until they are at least 22 pounds. Um…. oops. Jonah’s been facing forward since age 11 months and he just now reached 22 pounds.

It is usually a mistake to take a nap on a day when Jonathan is absent, since I have a hard enough time sleeping when he’s gone. But I did yesterday. And then I foolishly stayed up interneting-around until nearly midnight. And then, instead of collapsing exhausted into bed, my brain decided to trigger some sort of existential mid-life crisis that kept me mostly awake for the next two hours.

So I was lagging a bit today and wanted to make sure the boys 1) took long naps and 2) went to sleep pronto at 8pm and stayed asleep till at least 7:30am. So here’s what I did – it’s quite simple, really:

1) Out the door by 8:30am to go to the beach

2) Encourage them to walk run most of the way home, stopping by the playground on the way.

3) Read two long books before nap to sufficiently calm them down, then play their favorite CD (we’re still listening to Christmas music over here).

4) Immediately after naps, head out to a different beach, stopping by yet another playground on the way home.

5) Remove them from the stroller and plunk them directly in the bath. Release the bathtub crayons to keep them entertained while I prepare dinner.

6) Feed them dinner in the tub. A tasty dinner with a large fruit dessert to make sure their bellies are full, hoping that will lull them to sleep.

7) Try not to go ballistic when Benjamin pees on the bed for the second night in a row… since that might rile them up a bit.

8) Read two books – old favorites that they’ve memorized.

9) Play their favorite CD (Christmas).

So far, so good. I’ll let you know tomorrow if they made 7:30am, which qualifies as "earlier than I'd like, but tolerable."

[Note:  check out Twinsights this week to see the boys snoozing peacefully.]

We now have two toddler-sized chairs in our sunroom. Well, not really in our sunroom…

We thought it was about time for the boys to have their own chairs to pull up to the erstwhile coffee table that now serves as a “play table” (a euphemism for a flat wooden surface on which to bang toys).

But instead the new favorite activity is push-and-pull-the-chairs-around-the-house. Sometimes you can find them in our bedroom, sometimes in the living room, sometimes next to the toilet in our master bathroom, and – mysteriously – the instant I happen to be using a sharp knife – in the kitchen.

The runner-up Toy of the Month is definitely the bathtub crayon refills my parents brought last week. Once again, the boys’ bathroom is transformed each night into a colorful display of progressive post-modern techniques.

The video of the month is Whistlefritz’s “Los Animales,”  Provided for review by Parent Bloggers Network, it’s one of the boys’ favorites -- and it’s the best Spanish-language video for kids I’ve seen. If you’re interested in exposing your children to Spanish, check out my full review!

Before you assume we are a herd of cattle and/or you should stop eating beef, let me clarify that this was not Foot and Mouth disease.

Benjamin contracted the highly-contagious hand foot mouth virus from another little Benjamin a couple of weeks ago. I actually was clueless – the only symptom I noticed initially was a nasty diaper rash that wouldn’t respond to the usual cream/powder treatment.

Then the other Benjamin’s Mom called to alert me to be on the lookout for Hand Foot Mouth and described her son’s symptoms. I then inspected Benjamin’s feet and he did indeed have a few small blisters on his toes as well as a couple on the callous on his sucking-thumb.

Right as Benjamin’s rash improved a few days later, jonah’s appeared. He had a milder version – just a slight rash and a sore on his lip. Then Jonathan felt a few sores in his mouth. And we both had one sore on a finger.

The boys did, however, pass it along to a friend of theirs, whose immune system is not that strong. He ended up in the ER because his parents couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t stop screaming. His rash was worse and he had sores all inside his mouth and throat – and refused to eat for a week. He has about as much extra body fat as Jonah so that was a little unnerving.

Supposedly hand foot mouth is like chicken pox in that you only get it once, but my friend Samantha’s little girl (Julia Cow, if you remember from Christmas) has had it twice. And she also gave it to Samantha, who said her symptoms was miserably painful.

And I just thought all the whining and carrying on meant we had entered the terrible twos full force!