AUDREY IS A STAR!

Yesterday Audrey actually pulled up on something! For several days now, she has been a push up stander - which has its limitations. Yesterday, I removed the couch cushion so that she would have a lower surface to pull up on. I put Mrs. Noah on the couch and immediately she pulled up! YEAH! She then proceeded to pull up on our coffee table in our "fancy" den (which we never spend any time it.)

As if she could not be any more impressive, she then decided to finally roll from her back to her tummy! We have practiced this maneuver every day for months and months - she has just refused to kick her little leg over. As we started our practice yesterday, she just kicked over and away she went. And every time since then when placed in her heretofore immobilizing position she has rolled over and crawled away. It will be interesting to see if she will do it in her crib ( I kind of hope not cause she is so cute now: rubs her little feet together and then turns her head to the side and stays that way all night!) - regardless I think that we are going to lower it just to be on the safe side.

It was an all star day for Audrey.

ZOO

This past week my friend Erica and I took the kiddos to the zoo. This was the second zoo for the girls but the first time to the National Zoo (which is FREE!!) The weather was perfect - a little cool and breezy but sunny. The girls wore cute little sweaters for the first time!

Enjoying the elephant baths

Unfortunately the day got off to a rocky beginning. It took me forever to get to the zoo and I was trying to get there in time for the elephant baths (which we barely did). Brooke then decided to scream for pretty much the first hour that we were there. And when we got to the gorillas, we realized that Audrey now only had on ONE shoe. Since I am cheap and they are the Robeez not to mention the only pair that she has, I hiked back up the hill (if you have not been to the DC zoo, here is a warning: it is all downhill which is great until you have to LEAVE!) and looked for the missing shoe. No luck.

In front of the prairie dogs - note Brooke is still screaming!

Brooke much happier now that she has a snack.

The girls seemed to look at some of the animals - especially the little armadillo in the small mammal house that just kept running back and forth in its cage. They were not fascinated by the orangutans that the zoo lets travel around. (I even tipped the stroller for them to see them). Erica is disturbed by them as she thinks that one of them could easily lose its grip (say in the middle of a heart palpitation) and come crashing down onto a person.

The orangutans just traveling around overhead - it was adorable!

Audrey seemed to like the sea lion (or maybe seal) demonstration. Though I found it disturbing the number of tricks they had them do just in case of medical issues in the future - like breathing into a little traffic cone in case in the future they needed anesthesia!

Listening to the demonstration

Our last stop of the day was the pandas. A friendly person was holding the door open for us and said "Oh, you must be the little girl who lost her shoe. We saw the shoe in front of the hippos." WHAT?!? Apparently someone had picked up the shoe and placed it on one of the trashcans so it would be easy to find. Though I was actually searching on the ground, but alas I ran to the hippos and rescued the missing shoe!

Brooke "No, the elephants are MY favorite not yours."

STAND BY ME

All of a sudden, Audrey is (sort of) standing. Last weekend, I looked over and there she was with her legs straight. Unfortunately, she is working on her standing from the ground rather than by pulling on something higher which leaves her hands on the floor and so not actually standing upright. Still very exciting.

Brooke is not getting herself into a standing position, but once placed there she is a way better stander than Audrey.

I love this picture! Their little legs are just so cute!!

DON'T FENCE ME IN

Audrey is super cute crawling (she is frequently crawling over obstacles such as me and Brooke) and any day now Brooke is going to get it all together and get her little body off the ground, so we have finally put up a baby gate. Currently the gate is on the playroom on the main level. Eventually we will need to figure out how to gate the stairs...especially the ones going down. As a temporary solution I use the jogging stroller (since we have no garage it is conveniently located in our entry way anyway) which clearly is not really any sort of a solution.

I joined the mothers of multiples group (cleverly named MOM) and they had their giant sale this past weekend. I bought lots of "new" toys and winter outfits. Though I still have no idea what size they will actually be wearing....12 mo or 18 mo...they all seem to vary greatly in fit (some are about 5 inches too long and some are too snug already!) D's favorite thing I bought was this little crawling play thing - that due to its size and the relatively small size of our house - was only up for the weekend.

Lastly, this past weekend we went to an Octoberfest get together at a girl from one of my moms groups. They are actually from Germany and assured us that the "real" fest started in Munich in September. I thought the sausages were great and D says the beer was delicious.

FOOD, FEET, AND OTHER FEATS

New foods: frozen peas (read this in a book that it is good for practicing pinching and easy to eat), rotisserie chicken (love, love, love), and pasta (not really sure of that but another book suggested letting them play with the spaghetti to experience the different texture - which Audrey seemed to find disgusting).

It is amazing how much the girls are doing these days. Brooke is a star at turning off the light switch - usually it only takes one try - with her pointer finger (though confusingly some of our lights have two switches so pushing it down does not always turn it off.) She also continues to take remarkably large bites out of every book we own...I guess it is just extra fiber.

Brooke is also making some progress with her crawling. She can get her butt up (and push forward with her face smashed in the carpet) and she can get her arms straight and move (but usually pushing herself backwards). I have a video of her doing her impersonation of crawling that is pretty funny but very long so I will spare you.

Audrey is a crawling machine though frequently her crawling results in Brooke getting mad - takes a toy or uses various parts of Brooke to push off of.

Since we have officially started getting cold(er) weather up here, I have decided that the girls need to start wearing shoes. (no lie - it was 50 degrees this morning and I used my seat warmers in the car...winter is going to be a giant shock!!) So here they are with their very first shoes ever!

THIS AND THAT...

As always, I am behind. I really don't have too much to report but thought that these pictures were cute...and since I take a bajillion, I need to at least share some!

Audrey is explaining to Brooke that she will now be playing with the bunny...as she has just snatched it from Brooke.


I finally got to take a crawling picture of her little berry butt!!


The girls just love Costco...of course the bows did not make it through the whole trip.


Here is Brooke's bed-head! ADORABLE!!


Babies in a Box!

FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES...

Here are some cute pics of the girls with some of their friends:

This is from when the girls (and parents) were babysitting their friend Jack...they are very envious of his hair!


Here are the girls with their friend Spencer...he seems quite pleased to be hanging out with TWINS!!!


Grayer looks concerned that Brooke is trying to grab him and most likely eat him!


The girls are dining at Boston Market with their friend Haley...though they wonder where the food is!

THE BIG 1-0

The girls have reached double digits in age (well at least in months age!) and I am just more amazed by them each and every day. We have truly been doubly blessed with such sweet girls (we shall see if I still feel this way from the ages of 13 - 17...ohh how I dread that!)

Audrey "What? She fell over by herself. I was just helping."

What's new in the exciting lives of A and B?? Well, Audrey can now crawl!! She just started actually moving forward on Sept. 9. She still only goes a few steps at a time, but it is for sure crawling! Here is a video of her...be warned that I am talking in an annoyingly screechy voice that for some reason I thought was cute until hearing it captured on video:



Other movement updates: Brooke continues to roll about. She has just started to lean way forward and get up on her knees a bit, but this just results in her arms and legs flying out and her on her tummy. I am betting that in just a couple of weeks she too will be crawling. Audrey has continued to refuse to roll from her back to belly. That is the secret to immobilizing her - just lay her on her back (each morning she is exactly where we put her the night before!)

Flying Babies!!

In other (relatively) interesting news, the girls continue to eat well. They are much better at eating the chunky # 3 foods..no spontaneous choking or spitting it out. Audrey will now use her hands to feed herself little finger foods. They pretty much love any store bought finger food. I am trying to give them real food as well. So far they have had bananas, waffles, nilla wafers, wheat bread, biscuits, carrots, potatoes, and watermelon (not a fan of the melon at all!!)

"This watermelon is awful...you expect me to eat this??"

"Now, here is something that looks delicious!"

TROPICAL STORM HANNAH

So as you may have seen on the TV, there was lots of bad weather. First Gustav, then Hannah (and Ike is out there too!) Well, I had not been watching the TV and did not know that Hannah was close to the US. I thought it was going to rain here because we were getting the last little remnants of Gustav. As it turns out, that was incorrect. So it rained and rained and rained all day Saturday. Around 2pm our power went out. I called to report the outage and the message said should be restored by 5pm. So we played and waited- see the very dark video.



As it was getting close to dinner and we still had no power, we decided to head out and just hope to find some place with power. As we drove up the street, this is what we saw:

You may not be able to tell, but that tree landed right on a power line...thus the lack of power.Though the girls didn't seemed bothered by it at all!

Fortunately, they had our power back on by noon today. Also fortunate that it was cool here as I was having flashbacks of the heat with Rita!

After this post, I am all caught up! Thanks to D for watching the girls!!

THE CLIP

This past Friday, K and the girls went into DC to visit her friend Erica and her son Spencer (who is several months younger than the girls...they are little cougars!) Here are a couple of pics of the visit:

You can't really tell it, but Audrey is sitting on Spencer.

We got home and for the first time ever Brooke seemed to notice Audrey's little hair clip - which was still in after our visit to E's. I saw her looking at it but not a big deal. They were fine playing. Then K left the room to answer to phone....it was D calling on his way home(I am mentioning this because I am trying to spread around the blame) and we chatted for a little while and I looked something up on the internet (which is not in the playroom.)

When I got back, I immediately noticed that the little clip was MISSING!! I immediately began looking everywhere...surely it must just be on the ground somewhere. Well I couldn't find it but I did decide to confess to D when he got home since both of the girls were obviously fine.

Today the clip appeared....in Brooke's diaper.