Anything else?

Everytime I speak with my parents on the phone, my dad always says "anything else?" as if there is nothing exciting to report here. Well dad, here it is...the BIG one! Tonight we were officially in "lock down" in our own home.

Apparently (unbeknownst to me!) there were cop cars blocking off both ends of our block this evening keeping all traffic (even foot traffic) off of our street. In thinking back, I did notice a man walking down the middle of our street in front of our house. He was sort of checking things out around our house. I just figured perhaps he was with the city and it had something to do with the approval process from the city for our home addition.

Well, Jeff walks in the door and goes immediately to our back door, shuts it, locks it and says we are instructed to not leave the house. I, of course, am a little perplexed. Apparently, when he came home he wasn't able to turn down our street so he parked on a side street and started walking toward our street. A police woman stopped him and was not going to allow him to pass through. For whatever reason (did he look pathetic? or perhaps because he had food in hand because he was getting home late?) she decided to escort him to our house but told him not to leave the house. When he asked her what was going on she said they were "serving a warrant".

Two and one half hours later (and still going strong) and having spotted 7-9 cop cars as well as many handfuls of policemen (including ones in fatigues with bullet proof vests on) followed by a SWAT team marching in unison down our street (oh and did I mention there were police dogs too!?)...I'm pretty sure this is more than an incidence of "serving a warrant".

More details to follow (if I find out anthing more!)...but honestly, you'd think they could be a little more upfront with us! How much danger are we in?!?

Well, all other news of the day will definitely not live up to the above! Today was our regular physical therapy for A. Since the weather has been so nice since last Spring, we've been doing the sessions at the park near our home.

It's so odd because A is completely fearless on this suspension type bridge they have on the "big kid" play structure, but has no desire or tolerance for the slides at the park (although she will go down our slide in the backyard--granted it's only like 4 inches off the ground!! LOL)

A is also going thru this really big nurturing phase. In the mornings when I go to get her out of her crib, we (as in she does this) will spend several minutes gathering up all her bears and stuffed animals and then she'll cover them up with her blankets and says "nigh, nigh" before we can leave the bedroom. It's cute, but it does become rather frustrating when she does this as we are trying to leave the house!

Pictured is her pushing her bear on the "big kid" swing after she just finished getting pushed by me. Special note: this bear was given to her by my grandma when she was born. It used to sit in her incubator at the NICU and it was HUGE in comparison to her. It's hard to think back and remember this was our reality especially when you look at her playing with it today.

L is more into climbing all the "big kid" structures. While a picture of this would have been great to capture, I honestly am too busy spotting him so he doesn't have a tragic fall. However, I did capture him going down his favorite tunnel slide. He will go on this over, and over, and over, and over again. He can't get enough of it!

Today we practiced emotions other than sad. Sad is a very well understood emotion around here. When they were younger our developmental therapist started talking about one of them being sad when they would cry. She said it was important for them to start to understand and identify emotions. Well, what happened is that they totally keyed in on that one (and only that one!). We'll be out in public and someone will be crying...both L&A will start saying "sad, sad" and I'll have to say "yes, she's sad" in order for them to stop saying "sad, sad" over and over again.

So tonight we started to to focus on happy (with big smiles and laughter) and scared (with a shocked expression and a covered open mouth). A did an awesome job duplicating scared. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture a really good one with the camera, but you get the idea ;)

Now, to clear something up...yes, I have now written 2 days in a row...to be clear this is most likely not going to be a regular occurrence!

During this time (now that the kiddos are asleep) I actually had planned on preparing for my class I'm teaching tomorrow night (I know, procrastination is such a bad thing!), but due to the whole "lock down" situation, I'm stuck inside (my craft studio is behind our home). Luckily, my class wasn't tonight! I can only imagine several women trying to come down our street saying they are here for a scrapbooking class. And in our backyard no less---how shady is that!?!?! :)

Instead, I am using this "indoor" time to fill you in on our exciting day. :)

Just wanted to make sure I didn't set expectations too high, early on!

With that, I bid you adieu. All done, all done!