A little...(ok it's long) update on the girls.
They turned 20 months this month and I just have to say that the last 4 months or so have been the hardest so far with twins. I don't want to leave out the bad stuff on this blog, I want to remember it along with the good stuff. So hopefully it doesn't come across as complaining, just stating some facts. I thought the newborn stage would be the hardest with having 2 at the same time but in my case I was wrong. These girls are so much fun but they are so much work right now. They have very strong opinions and voice them frequently and wherever we are. They have so much fun together but they fight a lot as well. Aria started hitting, now they both hit, push and Siena is now biting Aria. I'm trying not to freak out over this but it is so frustrating. Time outs don't phase them that often. Many times all 4 of us have to get up and walk out of sacrament meeting because they are screaming/fighting at each other. It's always fun when the whole family has to get up and walk out. They both want to be held at the same time and with me being pregnant I just can't do that anymore and it makes them so mad, and me sad. They both think they have the right to anything and everything they lay their eyes on and if you don't read their mind and give it to them, we have a total meltdown. It's probably intensified with the fact that I'm pregnant and so tired at night with not as much patience as I would like. It makes me stressed that we have a new baby coming to add to this, somehow it will work out though. Ok that's the bad part of this age. Now let me tell you all the cute things they are doing.
Every morning when they wake up Aria lets us know immediately she is awake. She is very vocal about it. We started putting them to bed with a little book hoping that if they woke up early that they would look at books until it was time to get up (7am) So I usually get Aria up first. Well when I walk into Siena's room not knowing if she is even awake I am greeted with her standing at her crib, with both her blankets in hand and her book ready to get up. I have no idea how long she has been standing there waiting for me but it's so cute that she's all ready to go waiting for someone to come get her.
Both girls are getting so good at walking up and down stairs. Siena can go down the stairs without holding on, which makes me nervous. Usually they both hold on to the wall or bannister to go up and down and they think they're so big for doing it.
Aria is so hard to get a smile out of for pictures. She'll smile all the time at me but you pull out a camera and rarely do you get a smile. Siena I think has caught on. Her grandma Glover taught her to smile when you say 'where's your smile?' It's cute and seems to still work. Aria understands that but won't do it if you have the camera out.
Both girls go to nursery at church really well. The last few weeks Aria hasn't cried at all when we've left and Siena has always gone without a problem.
Just this week I think we've made small break throughs with Aria needing me to hold her all the time. She still does when we go places but she's gotten much better at home with me walking out of the room. It's not all the time but definitely better.
Both are finally starting to talk. It's been a long road but both are saying several words. My friend Stacy who has her doctorate in Speech Language Pathology did an evaluation of Siena. She is doing a study so I took her in and had her evaluated. Basically it is what I thought. Her understanding and non-verbal language, playful skills, etc. are all right on track and she's behind in verbal language. Stacy, excuse me, Dr. Shumway, just thinks it will come and to just keep doing what we're doing in getting them to talk. I didn't take Aria in because they were similar enough that I didn't feel it would give me much benefit. So Siena is now saying - ma ma, da da, more, night night, again, yes, the s sound like a snake, dog sounds, cat sounds, and will try to repeat any word we ask her to say. Aria says - ma ma, da da, more, again, the s sound like a snake and repeats some words. She has also started signing sentences, well one sentence. Please more food. You would think we don't feed her but she isn't a great eater so gets hungry and will come up to Shane and ask for food that way. I actually haven't seen it yet but Shane said she's done it twice.
They play really well together (when they aren't fighting) They laugh and giggle at each other all the time and more and more the older they get. Tonight they were wrestling and cracking up at each other. Then Siena kept hiding behind the couch and peering out kind of like peek a boo and she had Aria in a huge fit of laughter. It's really cute to see them interact and make each other laugh.
Their favorite thing to do each morning after breakfast is to get the bags of blocks we have picked up the night before and dump them all over the floor. They stack and build blocks a lot actually.
They still love baby signing time and we've tried other shows and it doesn't keep their interest more then about 10 minutes.
The other thing they like doing now is playing with their dolls. They haven't really been interested in them that much but I thought if I start playing with them that it might help when there is an actual real baby in the house. So we feed them, put their binkies in, change their diapers, etc. Each night I have them put them to bed. A lot of times Siena still just throws hers down. And after she did that one night I watched Aria go pick up Siena's doll and place it next to hers, put both their binkies in and then she was satisfied and could go to bed herself. It was cute.
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