Being away from home and in an airplane gives me time to write down observation of the boys and today they are 21 months old.

A few months ago, around that time that my parents left, they stopped taking their second nap. Slowly but surely their first nap is moving a little later. With Lelya Snezha they go to bed around noon, when we're home a little earlier. They still sleep a good two hours, Adrian a little more. When Leo wakes up he is immediately fully awake and wants attention. Adrian takes things easy when he wakes up and we often find him awake but lounging in bed.

Sinterklaas gave them spout-less drinking cups. Another step towards adulthood.

The love their big sister and each other but also are learning ways to hurt each other. Leo has the habit of taking his cup and hitting people with it, mostly Adrian on the head, with the predictable teary-eyed result. They don't really fight, they just accidentally hurt each other. Adrian was biting Leo in his leg yesterday. Leo still has the tendency to try to bite us in our big toes when we are sitting on the sofa. With his cup-hitting, Leo managed to make his 3 year older sibling cry. But most of the times they get along very well, the three of them. They enjoy playing in the empty box of our new printer.

Their vocabulary is expanding, though they don't speak as much yet as Nora did as this age. One of their favorite new words is "eten" (eat) -- when we're ready to serve dinner they'll run to their highchairs and yell "eteeee" or "stoooeel". Other words they know are molen and of course mee! Their Bulgarian has improved a lot in the last few months.

They love their jackets (a present from Ruth). Leo always wears the blue one, Adrian the black one and they don't allow us to mix that up. They often point to each others jackets and say "trekker" (Loe: "ti-tiew") because pretty much all vehicles are "trekker" or "odo".

Time is flying by... 38 already! I celebrated it low-key and that was great. The kids loved seeing the birthday decorations (as did I), and the cake in the evening was a highlight for Nora.

Thank you everybody for the nice gifts and messages.

We were at Bluemont Junction yesterday. Nora had been there once before but she didn't remember it. First time for the boys and they loved the train. Adrian in particular was mesmerized and didn't want to leave the caboose.

When I took their hands and we walked further, Adrian escaped a happily turned around and started walking back to the "trein! trein!".

Walking with the boys is slow so we didn't walk far but they got a good amount of exercise and we had a very nice walk together.