Niblings and nibbling

So me and my brother Jon?  We have babies 11 days apart. They are both girls.  They both have big cheeks and ski-jump noses. They are both utterly loveable rolly-pollies. And, yeah, I think it’s pretty special! What is even more special is that our families got to hang out a couple weeks ago! Jon and Zanna are only a five hour drive away, but we learned our lesson from trying to drive straight to Chicago and stopped for a good while at a rest area to let Charlie get his wiggles out before naptime.  It was fun!

Charlie and Wendy were much more interactive in the car, playing peek-a-boo and ‘talking’ a lot to each other.  Wendy woke up while Charlie was still asleep at one point and proceeded to squawk loudly at him every 30 seconds until he opened his eyes.  He woke up saying “Baby Sister wake up me!”  It was pretty funny! And then we got to see Ziva!  Family resemblance, anyone?Zanna made us a delicious French dinner that night.  ( I still want the recipe, Zanna!)This is a picture of Jonathan contributing to the wine sauce of the said French dinner.  Really, you say?  By rooting through the tool chest?

Yep!  A very creative use for pliers and screw!

After dinner and a delicious Tres Leches Chocolate Cake for dessert, the kids went to bed in opposite order of their age while we waited for Jon to get home from work.This is me being excited to see Jon.  This is tired Jon after a long day at work trying to enjoy his cup of coffee and not knowing I’m taking a picture about how excited I am to see him.  Then we called Erik.  (This is a stock picture of Erik, he was not there.) We called him several times—on all his phones, on all his phones at the same time and then had to settle for leaving a voice mail. It was probably the best group voice mail I’ve ever been a part of leaving. I hope he saved it for posterity.After Erik failed to answer his phone, Jon read aloud to me about preserving liquid manure (urine) from farm animals for use as fertilizer and we laughed so hard we cried.  I think it might have been very late by then.   

The next morning the girls had a good heart-to-heart while Charlie ‘helped’ Aunt Zanna make cheddar cheese and apple scones for breakfast.  YUM!Eeeek!  Those cheeks! (not you Jon) She is so cute!We played lots of games.  Little people games involving object permanence. . . …and gross motor skills.  (“I see you grabbed that egg-plant looking thing over there.  Wanna pass it over here so I can drool on it too?”)Medium-size people games involving shapes and colors.And big people games involving Kinect and a lot of really silly uncle moves.Speaking of silly, your guess is as good as mine: whose baby is whose?   Yeay!  for nibblings, and yummy nibbles and family close enough to drive to!  

Thanks for a wonderful visit, Jon and Zana!