I have not felt like blogging because my broken hand is still in a splint, so typing is a royal pain, but we are still having sleep issues, so I am sitting with my computer in Turtle's room in the dark while he is definitely not sleeping.  I actually have a lot of non-computerish things to do, such as cleaning up the kitchen and assembling the lasagne I will be serving to my mom and her friends tomorrow for lunch, so it is rather inconvenient to be stuck in here.

Otherwise, life is good.  And busy.  I am in physical therapy for my hand, which has been painful, rough, and slow-going, but at least I'm making progress.  I can tell it will be a long while before I can climb again.  I wonder how long it will be until I can type normally?

I've given up the marathon, which has been a bit depressing.  I started running again and then one day I fell again.  I was super lucky and didn't reinjure my finger, but it freaked me out and I'm ready to wait for another year or two or five.

We went on vacation!  It was so fun.  We went to Cancun for 9 days, and my in-laws flew over from Italy to meet us.  We mostly stayed at our resort, ate a lot, swam a lot, slept a lot, and played a lot, and it was a blast for everyone.  I rigged a secondary splint for myself out of athletic tape and drugstore finger splints, so I could go in the water, but my activity was pretty limited.

The kids are fabulous, as always.  They're so smart and funny, every day is awesome, although some days are also long, tiring, and frustrating.  They speak 100% Italian with us at home, although they clearly understand English.  They get into moods, especially Tadpole, where they just talk nonstop, every thought pops into their heads spewing immediately out of their mouths.  It's hilarious.

I try really hard not to gender-stereotype them (except their clothing to some degree, but it's pretty mild), but their toy preferences do seem to skew a bit towards the gender stereotypes.  They actually mostly overlap, but Turtle is slightly more into trucks, fire engines, and tractors, and Tadpole is slightly more into stuffed animals (well, animals in general).  They both like purses and hair bows, pretending to cook, running, jumping, climbing, wrestling, coloring, pushing strollers/shopping carts, reading, music, dancing, etc.

Turtle, as always, has more patience and is more interested in solving problems, such as putting puzzles together.  He likes musical instruments more than Tadpole, too, and plays the harmonica as well as strumming the little cheap guitar we got them in Cancun.  He also loves playing with our box of cars and trucks, and helping us cook, which he can do really well because he is generally patient and can follow directions.  He loves reading, and his favorite books lately are all about cars or tractors.  He is getting picky about his clothes - he likes the color red, or otherwise he wants clothes with a tractor or car or motorcycle on it.  I swear I have not done anything to push motorized vehicles around here!  Maybe he's picking it up at preschool?

Tadpole, on the other hand, is generally very impatient, at least relatively speaking, and while she can follow directions if she wants to, she usually prefers to modify the activity to suit her needs.  Placing sliced carrots into a bowl is much less fun than moving them back and forth from bowl to counter over and over.  She does a lot of role-playing, much more than Turtle.  In any given game, whether she's playing with animals, cars, balls, etc., there's always a mama and a baby, and sometimes a daddy, too, and she has imaginary conversations between all her made-up characters.  She loves to read, but I haven't noticed much in the way of a preference for any particular kind of book.  She's also not super picky about her clothes, at least not yet.  Whew.

Potty training (or "toilet learning", which I don't actually say, but I hate the term "training" used for kids, it sounds like one is talking about a dog) is not going anywhere.  We've been really laid-back and just suggest using the toilet here and there and generally we don't get any interest.  I'm feeling like my husband is ready to start pushing a bit harder (ha), but I don't know.  Turtle actually peed in the potty once, not intending to, and it scared him and now he wants nothing to do with it.  Tadpole is not patient enough to wait for something to happen.  I'm not sure how to gently encourage without being too pushy, since I think being too insistent might result in a lot of resentment and stronger refusal.  I keep hoping for a more natural breakthrough, that they'll give us some indication that they're ready.

Since bedtime has been a bit rough, I've also been thinking about moving them to beds.  Turtle slept in a bed in Mexico, although he fell out the last night.  Yesterday at naptime, I put them both in Turtle's room, with Tadpole in a pack'n'play, and at one point I saw that Turtle was trying to climb out of his crib.  So it might be just about time to make the switch.

And that's my update.  Turtle FINALLY fell asleep and it is 9:40 and I have tons to do, so off I go.