Check out Lily's new twittering skills!

Two rugrats decked out in their best Easter garb, flecked with bits of cheerios.

Jen is accusing me of being a conformist for switching the blog layout. It's not an unfounded accusation; this new style does smack of many others that I know of. But I'm sticking with it. The old one was picked in a last-minute hulabaloo of frantic late-night computery, and in time I learned to hate it because:

1. I've never really been comfortable writing on non-white backgrounds.
2. I hated how thin the old one was. This one is wider. Fair enough.

There's not much by way of ready-to-type blog templates to choose from. I did a cursory search for 3rd party templates, and quickly surmised that such a search project would suck counteless minutes away from my life. That I took the time to photoshop a new banner for this one is testament to my dedication.

So: if you see this blog, and you have a blog, and they now look eerily similar, I apologize but I think we are victims of circumstance.

Let's segue this psuedo-techonological topic into something related to toddlers A and B. I'm becoming grimly aware that they may already be more tech-savvy than I am. There will be a day in our hazy future when they will roll their eyes at my incompetence, and this day may come sooner than I thought. Today Lily was playing with my cell phone. It's a flip phone, and I gave it to her closed, and I was warm and fuzzy in my belief that such a situation wouldn't lead to any billed calls to, say, Irkutsk (thank you, Risk). While preoccupied with some other pressing task only seconds later, I was suddenly hip to the fact that:

1. Lily was crawling towards me
2. She had my phone
3. My phone was making sounds I'd never, ever heard before.

Curious, I scooped her and my phone up to find that she'd connected in some manner to the internet. This amazing task had taken her no more than about 52 seconds or so. I quickly snapped the thing shut like it was possessed. Lily found this all amusing beyond belief, and I'm anticipating a $1,209.34 bill from Verizon in a couple weeks. I didn't even know my cell phone could connect to the internet. Maybe I should google her; she might have a competing blog up, scribbling about what it's like to be a twin with two morons for parents.

(I actually did just google both of them, and all the hits were related to the word 'gels', as in plural of 'gel'; a common result when trolling for our surname.)

The interaction of kids and technology fascinates me sometimes. I recall a couple years ago when we had some family over to the house. Everone was outside, and my niece Maya, who was 3 at the time, had borrowed my camera and was taking pictures studiously. I forgot about it. Days later I uploaded the pictures, and found that she had taken a number of very good pictures, and had taken one frame that was nothing but a completely perfect, consistently orange hue. It was a curiosity at first, until I started thinking, "You know, I doubt I could take a photo like that if I tried." Sure enough, after a few tries I couldn't do it. Not even close. I became a bit obsessed trying to figure out how she did it, without ever coming up with a workable hypothesis. And she wasn't talking. It's a magical mystery.

Lately, Abby has been able to make one of our toys - a leapfrog activity center platform deluxe thing-a-whatzit - make some sounds that were totally new to me. She did it once, I thought it was a fluke. Now she can practically do it on command, and even though I've tried many times (you see where this is going, don't you?), I can't do it.

These kids are making fools of me.

I'm actively encouraging them to hone these skills so they can infiltrate our day care provider's computer system and adjust our rates.

Day fifty six.

At what point does "encouraging your newly-crawling toddler" become "asshole-ism"? Right here.

Lily re-enacts the very last 5 seconds of The Blair Witch Project.

Is there any less subtle way of telling me to retire the camera?