January 12, 2017 – January 27, 2017

Our little Mina has decided to be a little kid instead of a baby. She’s done with her high chair and is even learning how to use a fork! She’s actualy not bad at all with it. But that’s not pictured here, of course.

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Birthday girl! Here’s Mina dressed up for her party, with her hair in special ponytails.

Mina's first birthday

Linus wanted to sit with us for the singing and blowing out he candles. He’s definitely feeling a lot more jealous lately. If we say that Mina is doing something cute, he immediately has to do it too. Of course, Mina just wants to do what Linus is doing, so it’s a bit of an endless circle.

Mina's first birthday

Linus shared his cake with Co Betty.

Mina's first birthday

Our little party girl wasn’t very ladylike in her dress. Oh well!

By the way, what’s not pictured is her birthday tray. We had to offer it to her three times before she finally made her selection! And then she grabbed it so fast that Yen didn’t really catch it as a video. She chose money, and then ran and hid with it. We found her standing in the corner crinkling it.

Mina's first birthday

One of the items on her tray was a stethoscope. We all listened to each other’s hearts, of course.

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Back at the aquarium! Mina loves the penguins.

New England aquarium

And Linus loves this penny-flattening machine! Notice the bored Mommy in the corner. I’d been standing there a good five minutes when this photo was taken.

New England aquarium

New England aquarium

New England aquarium

New England aquarium

Back at home, Mina finally got her hands on one of Linus’s trucks. Still no interest in stuffed animals or dolls. Just trucks, trucks, trucks.

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Here’s Linus working on his abs! Not that they need any help. Our lanky little guy is in the 70th percentile for height, but only 40th for weight.

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Linus loves to do what he calls “washing dishes.” That means he drags a chair over to the sink and yells at us until we turn a trickle of water on. Then he fills and refills every recepticle in the sink.

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Yen tied strings to several of Linus’s trucks when he was first toddling around. Now Mina takes them out for her truck rallies – just like he always did.

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Getting up close and personal with dinner!

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I guess it isn’t just trucks that Mina is into. She also loves trains! Now when we go downstairs, she pushes the train along the tracks with Linus. He’s not terribly impressed by her technique, though.

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This little engineer. Linus wants more and more to discover how things work. At Story Hour this week, they kids were given little rattles to shake along with the songs. Instead of shaking, Linus spent the time figuring out how it makes noise.

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We’re still trying to get out of the house regularly despite the weather. On this particularly muddy day, we took Linus’s bike to the Battle Road.

Battle Road

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The kids love to eat what they call “ice cream.” It’s actually fruit juice popsicles. Please don’t tell them!

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They’re very generous!

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He’s standing a little far away from the chart, so it looks here as if Linus is shorter than he is. He’s 35 whole inches! Apparently that makes him about the same height as a penguin (can’t remember which type).

Museum of Science

How odd. I didn’t even realize that Mina was making the same gesture as the woman below her! I wonder what they were doing.

Museum of Science

We found a big mirror at the museum. Linus wasn’t impressed by it.

Museum of Science

Museum of Science

I keep hearing on the news that we’re facing an avocado shortage. I hope that’s not really the case, because these kids are addicted to their afternoon shakes!

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Remember this little baby seat! They just won’t stay out of it. I really need to pass it along to another baby.

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Mina loves Rody.

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Check out Linus’s newest toy! He loves it so much. All day, he brings the hook down, then winds it back up. It’s been in the basement closet for a long time, waiting for him along with a few other big trucks. Yen says that Linus goes down there once a day and looks at everything. He says, “When I’m 3, Cha will let me have these.” He’s so sweet.

He ended up with this one because we gave another little boy a big fire truck for Christmas. They played with it here, and then the fire truck had to go home with the other little boy. Linus was devastated. So the next morning, he got to choose one of the trucks from the closet. Sometimes I come home to find the truck upstairs, and sometimes it’s gone and his own fire truck is up here. I guess he switches his selection periodically, and the other goes back in the closet. Works for me!

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