Playtime

"Do they play together?"

That's a question we've been getting for seven or nine months now.

At first, the answer was clearly: "no". Then it was "sort of", and now, it is "yes, sometimes".

"No"
When N was crawling and E was not, the main interaction between the two of them was described in Sharing is Fun.

"Sort of"
Once they were both crawling, I started to notice that, with few exceptions, wherever in the house one of them was, the other was as well. If one of them was in our bedroom, pulling objects off of nightstands, the other was there too. If N was in their room, pulling books off the bookshelf, E would be there pawing at the books. I started to think of this is not-at-all coincidental. That said, it didn't look exactly like a game, or like they were necessarily interacting with each other in a playful way.

"Yes"
Within the past several months, they started to play clear games with each other. Sometimes, they follow each other around a piece of furniture, laughing the whole way. Other times, they play peek-a-boo with each other (sans the words). And after we've left them in their cribs for bedtime, several nights a week we'll here them "talking" to each other and laughing laughing laughing.

It's really beautiful.

Travel!

Ah, to travel. To experience relaxation in the warmth of a tropical sun. To sit:




thusly...

Notice something missing from that picture? Yes! No children!

We took a glorious four-night vacation to Mexico last week, and didn't take the kids. We pushed the limits of their grandparents' generosity and escaped by ourselves.

Not that we didn't imagine what it would have been like to have the kids along, but again, I feel like having more than one made it the hard part. A couple of factors:

• Sleep is vital: Our rituals to get the kids fed and to bed start each evening by 5:45pm, and it is nearly impossible to feed both us and them at such an early hour and then get them to bed before one or more of them overloads. In fact, we have yet to take our kids to dinner with us at a restaurant. However, with just one, we might be more willing to take some risks with sleep patterns, and more able to feed one child while eating dinner at a restaurant ourselves.
• Moving two kids around is work: Our main mode of transportation while we were in Mexico was walking, and the road between our hotel and town was rough and unpaved. I can't imagine our double stroller (which isn't one of those ultra-big-wheeled-sport-utility-jobbies) navigating that road even once. And having each of us constantly carrying a 24+ pound baby around, well, that's just not my idea of a vacation.

That said, we saw plenty of parents with kids, just not kids the age of our kids (pre-walking but post one year). We even saw parents with twins (aged just five months), but those twins barely even turned over, so they mostly lay them on a chaise lounge next to them and let them nap. So while we may return there with them, it won't be until they are older.