Aria goes up first

As I think I've mentioned before, most of the time Siena is the first to hit a lot of her developmental milestones, at least the physical ones.  Every so often Aria will surprise and pull out a first ahead of Siena.  Well last night we had a first and it was Aria that did it.

Aria has learned to crawl up the stairs.  Up until this point the girls have shown very little interest in the stairs and only recently have been playing with the bottom step.  We haven't even blocked off the stairs going up.  I have not encouraged or discouraged the stairs, we were just in a wait and let them figure it out mode.  Well Saturday Aria put both knees up on the first stair and I knew our time of no stair crawling was coming to a close.  Sure enough, yesterday, Aria put both knees up, moved her hands up and off she went.  She crawled up all the stairs without giving it a second thought...leaving Siena in the dust.  Siena was proud of her but still didn't try to climb them.  I'm sure that won't last long.

Bucket List

A couple months ago my mom told me that she has an item on her 'bucket list' to do with my girls.  My first thought was 'You have a Bucket List??'  My second thought was 'Something with my girls is on your bucket list??'  It all sounded a little strange.  She proceeded to tell me she wants to take my girls to Costco and put them in their basket because they have double seating in their baskets.  And then she wanted to wheel them around and watch everyone look at the girls and comment on them.  Uh, ok, Bucket list is stretching it a little bit I thought, but I told her she could take them whenever she would like.

Well last week my mom and dad took the girls to Costco.  They had a great time.  One reason is because they gave them books from Costco to look at while they got wheeled around so they were probably in heaven.  My mom said it was so they wouldn't pull the clips out of their hair (hey, good idea!)  Then Jennifer met them there and took this picture.  My mom said they got lots of stares and comments and hopefully she feels like her 'bucket list' item has been fulfilled.

Little Lilly

My sister, Michelle, had her baby 2 weeks ago.  Wow, 2 weeks ago already.  Here is Lilly Anne the day after she was born when I met her at the hospital.

She is a good baby, sleeping lots, eating and not being fussy.  Yay for a happy baby.

Yesterday we got a picture of the girl's with their newest cousin.  I'm not sure how they feel about not being the youngest grandkids anymore.

Ok actually, here's how they really feel about it.  Nice!  Look at Lilly's little feet sticking out compared to my girl's feet.  So cute.

We didn't get any really good pictures because the other 5 pictures we snapped had my arms in the pictures trying to keep the girls from grabbing Lilly.  I trusted Lilly next to them for all of 10 seconds, if that long. 

Welcome to the family Little Lilly.

11 months

The countdown has officially begun to their 1 year birthday.  The girls turned 11 months yesterday.

Here is our month in review:

Aria started clapping right after she turned 10 months.  Although she claps with one hand open and one hand in a fist.  It's pretty funny.

Both girls are babbling non stop.  They talk to us, talk to their toys or just talk to hear their voice.
Aria has this high pitched, deafening scream. It's kind of cute, and kind of not.  Siena thinks it's pretty funny when Aria screams and so it only eggs her on that much more.  Siena has this scream that she half whispers.  It's funny and not sure why she doesn't scream louder, but I'm not complaining.

Both girls have gotten super clingy this month.  It's cute when they want me to hold them and it's not cute when I can't walk into the kitchen without one or both of them bursting into tears and crawling, crying trying to find me.

They both like when I read books to them although Aria's attention span lasts a lot longer then Siena's.  Their favorite book to read them is this farm animal book that makes sounds when you press the button.  The love it and I love reading it to them.

Aria's favorite thing to do lately is blow raspberries on the couch, on my leg, on the bathtub wall, or the fireplace hearth. (hearth...that's for you Brigitte, 'please don't stand on my hearth.')  Whatever surface allows her to do it, she is blowing raspberries.  She tried to do it on my jeans the other day and was frustrated that she couldn't do it.

Aria is pulling up to a stand on the couch and is slowly making progress to walking along the couch.  She can get herself down most of the time, but it seems like sometimes she forgets she knows how.  She also learned this month to go from crawling to a sitting position.

Siena is all over the place and is starting to let go when she's standing.  She loves to walk behind the high chair as she pushes it across the kitchen.

Siena started screaming when she wanted more food on her high chair tray.  That didn't go over very well with me for very long so I taught her to sign the word more.  She picked it up the same meal I taught her and it's so cute to watch her sign more.  She does it more like clapping but puts her fingers together instead of a full clap.  All I have to say is 'do you want more, or what do you say' and she signs more.

Siena just this week has started sucking her thumb!!  Hello, she still has her binky but I've found her several times this week with her thumb in her mouth.  This seems very odd to me as she's never done it up until this point and still always has her binky.  Not sure what to think of this.

Aria loves flinging our door stops and Siena has discovered our stairs. Although she has only made it up one.  We'll see how long that lasts.  So far we don't even block the upstairs and she seems to never really care and crawls right past them to her and Aria's favorite room, Shane's office.  They hang out in there all the time and love to explore that room.  They love to pull on the cords of all his computer equipment.  And would bang on his computer (or mine) all day if we let them.

Both are eating and sleeping really well.  We are working on sippy cups and they almost have that down.  They love to drink out of them but only tip them part way up.  Both have become little beggars for food we eat.  We can't eat a meal without them begging for bites of our food, even when they've just eaten.  We of course almost always oblige and I think it's good to get them used to more and different foods when they can handle it.

And the cutest thing they both started doing this month.  As soon as I get home from work they both scream and get so excited to see me and come crawling right over as fast as they can.  Sometimes I don't even make it into the family room and just sit down in the kitchen to say hi. I love that they are so excited to see me every time I get home from work.

Worst day of the last 11 months

Seriously, I'll try to keep this short and try not to gross too many people out...but last Sunday we had the worst day of the last 11 months here at our house.  And I do admit that most days haven't been too bad with twins.  We've had our moments and frustration as all parents do but the whole having 2 has gone a lot smoother than I ever anticipated.  That is until Sunday.

Sunday started off just fine.  Woke up, bottle, breakfast (fed them scrambled eggs which they have had many times and love.)  Played, put them down for a nap.  45 mins into the nap Siena woke up crying.  I left her hoping she would go back to sleep.  About a minute later she starts coughing, which was very odd.  I go up there to see what is going on to find her, her crib, and the floor covered in throw up.  I pick her up take her downstairs as she throws up again.  10 minutes later, while throwing up and crying, I hear Aria awake.  Shane goes to get her and finds out that yep, she has thrown up as well.  They both threw up every couple minutes for 45 minutes! They both wanted to be held by their mom (who wouldn't? they were so miserable) and Shane was cleaning up throw up upstairs.  I just sat on the floor with both girls in my lap catching throw up as best I could...finally after 45 mins. both girls finally fell asleep in the family room. 

One more throw up episode after their nap and I thought we might be in the clear.  Oh no, a couple hours later and just 10 minutes apart again, we didn't have throw up, we had diarrhea...bad, like in, trail across the carpet, running down legs bad.  ok TMI, I know.  Just had to throw it out there in case I ever forget my preshy girls were so miserable and disasterous.

2 baths, 3 loads of laundry, 3 change of clothes for me and a long day of miserableness and they were just fine the next day.

2 sick babies at the exact same time is not something I will ever wish upon my worst enemy.  After I got in bed that night all Shane and I could do was laugh at what a nightmare that was.

I still don't know what hit them, food poisoning, random bug but all I know is they got it 10 minutes apart!  I'm grateful it only lasted 1 day though and they're happy and good again.  I was also glad it happened on a day I was home and not while I was at work.  My girls needed their mom.

3M Zoo Day

This week my company had a zoo day where we could all get a 1/2 day off and go to the zoo.  In years past I haven't gone but this year I thought we would give it a go with the girls.  We had lunch with my company and then went and saw the sites of the zoo.  We went on a train ride which the girls liked.  Most the animals they couldn't see.  Either they were too far away or all the other kids would be right up against the glass blocking their view.  I'm pretty sure they thought the kids and people at the zoo were the attraction cuz they did a lot of people watching.

By far however, the hit of the day were the Giraffes.  We got there as they were feeding and brushing them and it just so happened there were only about 4 other people there.  You can get so close to them.  Both just stared at them as they were moving around and then Aria started babbling away at one of the giraffes, talking her head off to him.  It was cute to watch their faces.

It was so hot that day but luckily we made sure they drank a lot and we found a lot of shade as we were walking.  We were only there a total of about 2 1/2 hours but it was plenty long for us and the girls.  They were ready for their naps.  For their first time at the zoo, I thought it was a success and a fun afternoon not spent in the office.

Draper Days 2012

Last weekend was Draper Days.  I had been debating whether or not to even go with the girls or how long to stay because it would be so late for them.  I was pretty sure they wouldn't make it to the end to watch fireworks so I decided we would go and just hang out for a while and when they started getting cranky we would go home and not stay for fireworks this year.

So we headed down earlier in the day and walked around for a bit.  It was sooo hot.  We then left our car down there and walked home.  When we got home we had to give the girls a cool bath because they were so hot. I actually filled our jetted tub in our master bath and they loved the extra room in the tub and played for quite a while.  We then gave them a late nap and after dinner walked back down to the park.  We met up with my sister and her kids and hung out listening to music.

The girls were so happy.  We fed them their night bottle when they would normally go to sleep and they just kept playing and looking around.  Finally about 9:30 you could tell they were so tired but they were still totally happy.  So Jennifer picked up Siena, I took Aria, and within minutes they were sound asleep.  We put them in the stroller and they slept like that until right before the fireworks started at 10:30 (late for fireworks I thought and a lot of families, including my sister, left before the fireworks started.)  The girls were totally mesmerized by the fireworks and just stared at them the whole time.

As soon as they were over we jumped up, ran to our car and were out of there.  We put the girls down and they went right to sleep and then they slept until 8:15 the next morning.  I think it was worth going just for the extra hour of sleep we got that morning.

Honestly, I had no idea how good the girls would do being out late and was very impressed that not only did they make it to the end, they were happy the entire night.

I guess Draper Days is still a tradition that we will continue on with.