Haven't updated here in a long time. Life has continued, one way or another, despite my never getting around to chronicling it. The boys are talking up a storm, and have more and more ways of telling us what they like and don't want. They tell us more of what they're thinking, what they see and what strikes their fancy in the world. They notice birds in the sky, wind, the moon in the sky at night and in the day, even when it's a very faint crescent tucked away in a cloud.

This year I wimped out on making Halloween costumes for the boys and instead improvised with safari outfits from the San Diego Wild Animal Park that their grandpa had sent for them a while back. Since we recently got a DVD with the Crocodile Hunter and the Wiggles together on it, the boys have been crazy about crocodiles (and Wiggles too, but that's another story). So with two realistic plastic crocodiles from Toys'R'Us, I figured they could go as little blond replicas of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter from Animal Planet. He's blond too. You can see the results in the photos. We had fun with it. Riley wants to wear his 'crocodile boots' all the time, and I don't know if we'll ever take the 'leashes' off of the poor crocodiles since Riley at least seems to enjoy occasional bouts of wearing his crocodile.

Last weekend we went to a Moms of Twins gathering for Halloween, which is when we first tried out the Crocodile Hunter costumes. It was my first try at organizing an event, and while the idea was fine in thoery (we meet up, go to the Ghost House's costume parade and contest for little kids, then people could go to the Ghost House and play at the carnival booths) it didn't work as well in reality for little kids, as there was an inevitable amount of waiting around. Little kids aren't usually good at waiting around in 90 degree heat. Multiply it by multiple sets of multiples and you get, well, chaos and cranky bored kids. Perhaps it was inevitable. The outing could have gone better, but it was still fun to see all the twins and triplets dressed up for Halloween.

Trick or treating was fun this year, as the boys understood a bit more and got into the spirit of it more. Going door to door was an adventure; a lot of houses in our neighborhood really decorated for Halloween. When you're only three feet tall or so making your way up a strange walkway to a door with giant spiders, lots of carved pumpkins and so on can be quite a trek. The boys braved it out for the loot though, and got very good at "twick or tweat' and "tankoo" after people piled loot in their pumpkin buckets. Riley finally got past the idea that if someone had opened their door and greeted him, of course he was going to just invite himself inside. He began to settle for candy and the occasional conversation instead. He asked our next door neighbor about his dog, and told him "open the door" so he could see better. Then he wanted to meet their dog Casper, who is a very large great dane/pit bull mix. Our neighbor very kindly told him maybe he could meet Casper in a few years. I appreciated that since Casper outweighs Riley by about 5 times his body-weight.

It was very hard for them to keep walking to another house when they were totally distracted with examining all the new goodies people had piled in their buckets, but eventually they would soldier on through another house's gauntlet to receive more goodies. I think our neighborhood was extrordinarily generous with the goodies; after the rounds of maybe 15 houses, their buckets were overflowing with loot, and they were having trouble carrying the heavy load, so we headed back home. I think we missed out on most of the trick-or-treaters who came to our house while we were out with the boys.So much leftover candy! Oh well, we'll try to bear up.

We've been letting the boys have a go at their buckets of candy during various times last night and today, but we're limiting it to picking out one piece of candy at a go. So far lollipops are the hands-down favorite, but I'm sure they'll get around to the rest. Eventually. At this rate they'll have candy until Christmas...

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