Follow the leader

Jude has a little shadow. His name is Isaac, and although he may be a little bigger than his younger (by a minute) brother, he thinks his hermanito is the bomb. Watch how he tries to mimic everything Jude does here, from the way he goes down the slide to the way he falls at the bottom, and more:



Yeah, Jude is loving every minute of this right now. But I can just hear him a year or two down the road: "Mo-oom! Isaac is copying me!"

Synchronized divers

Jude just got brave enough to jump into the pool by himself last week, and Isaac couldn't be more excited about it! Check out the new jumping buddies:

On your marks:

Get set:

Go!

Go!

GO!

Here's a short clip of my little synchronized divers in action:



Although the timing on their actual dives may be a little inconsistent, you have to admit that the way they get out of the pool together is picture perfect! Think they could be contenders for the 2024 games?

Rub a dub dub

From the beginning, I have been kind of a wimp about giving my kids a bath. At first—when they were fresh out of the NICU and I was still giving them sponge baths on the kitchen counter—I was scared because they were so, so tiny. As they got bigger, I dreaded baths because it was just so much work to stand at the sink and wash four squirmy little ones in a row. In fact, I disliked bath time so much that the babies were 4 months old before it even occurred to me to take a picture of them in the tub:

My bathing beauties, 4 months old
(clockwise from bottom left: Jude, Isaac, Lucia, and Dahlia)

By the time the kids were 13 months old, we'd moved the baby bathtub from the kitchen to the bathroom, but I was still too nervous to put my slippery babies directly in the big tub for another couple of months. When I finally got brave enough to bathe them two at a time, I'd scrub the girls, and then Ted and I would each take one to dry/diaper/dress before repeating the process with the boys. That remained our mode of operation for almost a year—until yesterday, when I thought it would be fun to change things up:

(left to right) Isaac, Jude, Dahlia, and Lucia at 26 months

Managing four kids in a tub was a lot easier than I thought it would be—probably because they are well past the stage of slipping and sliding all over the place. And since Lucy and Jude are out of diapers, we could easily get them dried and dressed right there in the bathroom while watching the other two.

We probably won't do this every time (logistically, two at a time is still easier for us to handle), but I am glad that we tried it at least once—from the looks of it, it won't be long before they won't all fit in the same tub anymore!