The Christmas gift to you is that videos are up.  The Christmas gift to me is that the post is bare-bones.  The videos are from October 27 to November 21.

Joseph:

The end of the ABC song.  The full song.  Writing and identifying 332 and 55.  Zahlemonschter (number monster – count up one and say RAWR).  On camera (after Vivienne’s domino-playing video).  5+1=6.  Two zeroes.  “Zwei.”  Joseph and the versatile number.  100 and an addition.  Baa baa, black sheep.  The ABC song again.

Vivienne:

Playing with dominoes.  “Reading.”  Creeping and flopping.  Playing peekaboo.  Tick tock tick tock.  Speed creep.  Blackboard work.

Both:

Hi’bommus Part 1 and Part 2.

Videos from October 5 to October 27.

Vivienne went through a phase where she wrinkled her nose in a cute way.  The wrinkling was ephemeral and unpredictable, which is why we only have imperfect videos.

More an more, the two play together.  Here we have them playing dominoes, with Joseph kissing Vivienne as a bonus.  Sometimes it’s more of a side by side: Vivienne on the sofa, and Joseph in the baby-free nook, or both on the bed at family time.  Dominoes are popular because Joseph can do addition and Vivienne can chuck them around, I think.

Here’s an example of fairly typical dinnertime behavior for Joseph.  Only the “boom-shakalaka” is unusual.

And of course, we have a variety of number-related videos.  Joseph counts by tens to 1000, writes fours on the chalkboard, writing several numbers from 4 to 11, does addition problems with dominoes, .  And when he’s not playing with numbers, the States puzzle will do, too, or a good book.

He’s also started quoting the Book of Common Prayer: here are two examples from the early evening reading, the opening (O gracious light…) and the quote from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (“It is not ourselves that we proclaim…”).  But sometimes he refuses to perform for the camera.

Of Vivienne, we have a laughing video, one of her playing with books, and playing with a board book.

I keep thinking one of these days we’ll actually catch up, but I guess we just take a lot of videos and keeping up with our two-month delay is all we can manage.  These videos are from September 24 to October 1, 2012.

We’ll continue where we last left off: Vivienne rocks.  Joseph can bang building blocks rhythmically and she’ll rock.  Or he can play with them and she’ll join him.

The following videos are from our stay in Ticino, a long weekend in Vernate with Grossvater and Grossmutti.  Vivienne decided she’d try climbing stairs on the steep flight of marble stairs leading to the first floor.  Joseph spent a good amount of time counting with Grossvater, but refused to count without Grossvater.  Here he is counting again.  And again.  But Joseph didn’t only count: he also used Grossmutti’s exercise mat for somersaults.  And while Vivienne watched herself on the camera display – ok, bad example.  The last three clips show Vivienne playing ball with Grossmutti and eating paper, and proving that she doesn’t eat paper the way Bill Clinton smoked marihuana.

With us the only ones missing from the family Thanksgiving gathering, the best we can do is post a few videos of the kids. They’re from September 12 to September 23.

Joseph’s at work completing the US States puzzle (10′ long video), arranging his building blocks, reading the Greek alphabet, exploring his math magic board, playing with his math magic board, counting in French, singing Grandma’s song, quoting from the Book of Common Prayer, reading the BCP with Bappe, quoting it quoting Paul, and quoting the Collect of the early evening reading.

Bappe sings to Vivienne at bedtime.  Vivienne is much more excited about the stairwell.  She gets excited about a number of things and often shows it physically.  Here, she’s rocking to the music from the play cell phone (thank you, Dot!), rocking to the number bug, rocking to the musical instruments bits, rocking to the keyboard – twice – if it has a beat, she’ll rock.

They have begun sometimes playing together.  Here they are both spinning on the office chair, jumping, running and creeping in the bedroom.

And we bring you… Singing Jophé!  He sings the teeth-brushing song, the refrain of “And Can It Be,” and the US States song – all in his underwear.  We’re hoping his choice of stage wear evolves.  But most of today’s videos once again show a counting Jophé: with his number charts (thank you, Grandma), in Russian with Grossvater with the number charts now filed in his discovery binder (thank you, Mommy), in Japanese with his dots book, and just for fun with the height chart.  He continues with the State capitals (which he’s still learning); I suppose it’s only fair to close with a Yay Jophé!

All Vivienne gets to do is cry in the background and wipe her nose on Bappe.

The videos are from September 1 to September 12, 2012.