Little Mommies

The girls are currently the cutest little mommies to their babies. They love to dress them up (currently in some of their old preemie outfits!), feed them, take them for walks in the stroller, and especially change their diapers. They are obsessed with changing the babies. They put out one of their diapers, put the baby on top and then proceed to wipe and put on diaper cream and pretend to put on a diaper. Audrey will even insist that she does this on the changing table! (as an aside: they are also currently obsessed with their own poop and insist on having a wipe and actually wiping (of course this is after I have taken care of any actual mess) themselves.)

Taking the babies out for a stroll

Feeding the babies some Kix

Selecting outfits for the babies

Monkey See...

The girls are totally into pretending these days....and it is adorable. Here are the girls giving themselves their shots. Every morning they see me give myself 2 shots in my thigh and they have decided that they also need shots (do not worry - there were NO needles involved with their shots!)

Ice Cream Cones

The girls LOVE ice cream...Cold Stone Creamery is part of our every Friday carbo-loading dinner. However, they had never eaten soft-serve ice cream in a cone until this past week at Jason's Deli.

Brooke totally got into the licking and eating the cone

but Audrey (our neater eater) decided that she liked the spoon better.

Art Class

The girls are taking an art class this fall through the parks and recreation service. The age range for the class is 20 mo to 36 mo. I was the one obnoxious parent who brought their camera and insisted on taking pictures - they were so cute in their little smocks. Unfortunately after the class they just wanted to eat snacks rather than pose with their art work - they colored a little cloth kimono and then glued it on a little frame and put some accessories on the kimono. They were very cute and seemed to like it...you will notice they were intently working (I let them do it all and only helped to add more glue to the entire back so that it would stick!)

Coloring the kimono with fabric markers - Brooke ended up with a giant orange mark across her nose!

Painting the glue on the back of the kimono

The girls REALLY wanted snack (how cute are the smocks!!) and Audrey is so hungry that she is attempting to eat her finished product!

Kids Eat Free...

Since IHOP has kids eat free every night some of us decided to take advantage of them. Here is a picture of the event (Brooke is not pictured cause she was at the head of the table)

Way Back

So back in August when we went to Hilton Head, I left out a super fun portion of our trip and just remembered it today when going through some pictures.

While we were there we rented some bikes to go riding with the girls. After a somewhat shaky start by K (in my defense it had been years since being on a bike and I was very nervous about having one of my children also depending on my stability...and that other kid adds about 25 lbs too!) we had a ton of fun. The girls LOVED it!

So here are some pics of the adventures:

22 Months

The girls are 22 months!! That is super crazy...both cause I feel like they were just born and cause apparently I need to plan a birthday party.

Brooke riding in a stroller by herself for the first time. She is being escorted by Audrey, Grayer, his mom Leslie, and Lorelei.

I haven't really done an update post in a while, so that is what this will be. In general they are super adorable and a joy to be around....though they do occasionally have melt down temper tantrums. The kicker with that is that it is almost impossible to tell what will cause it (for instance, one of them may decide that they were the one that should shut the door rather than the other and therefore it is totally unacceptable that the other touched the door and therefore meltdown)

Brooke hanging out at the park

They are really cute with each other - they will copy each other and play with each other and comfort each other when they are upset and give each other unwanted food (though occasionally this does not go well as the receiver does not want the food). They will call out for each other when one of them is "missing" or needs to come do something.

Making worms with the play-doh

Their verbal skills are getting better and better - though I am aware that a lot of it is decipherable only to me and D (eg: boppy is an airplane for both of them). Audrey will read through her little first words book (though train is always choo-choo and the potty is poo-poo). They both have learned the colors pink, purple, blue, green, and yellow (though Brooke is always the first to yell out the answer) They do not acknowledge red or orange - not sure why as "Melmo" is a favorite around the house and he has both red and orange.

Eating a fruit and yogurt parfait at McD's with their friend Lorelei

They are very big into boo-boos and insist that they are kissed (they frequently will kiss each others, ours, or their own) Daily they kiss D's black toenail - one of the many things that they will later be disturbed that they did. Audrey will generally get pretend hurt if Brooke gets an actual boo-boo (so funny to see her tap her knee on something and then run over with pretend crying).

Brooke hearts "noodles"

They have started to try to dress themselves. Brooke insists on putting on her pants (though I have to help her by pulling up the back and making sure that her legs go into different openings) and is very good about looking for the tag to make sure it is in the back. Audrey likes to dress herself but she generally gets clothes out of the hamper and tries to put them on over her clothes. As an aside -today the girls found a unique use of the hamper. They turned it on its side and used it as a trampoline. Needless to say that we will be searching for a new hamper.

Audrey hearts being cute and pretending to eat noodles

They are great little climbers. They climb into their high chairs and into their car seats!! They have just recently started to buckle themselves as well - though this is usually before they are actually seated. And they love to climb on playgrounds - Brooke is the more adventurous of the two while Audrey seems to actually be the more coordinated. Audrey is still a little jumper. She hops around the house and will hop out of the van (fortunately she holds my hand to exit as she totally jumps with both feet from the van!)

Our little monkeys at the park

A funny thing that they have just started to do is to climb onto the potty lid and grunt and strain and say poo-poo. (No actual poop though) Hopefully this will make potty training easier. They are just so cute as they are becoming little people!!

Smithsonian

Last weekend we took the girls into DC to the Smithsonian (this is where I was instead of my fantasy football draft, so hopefully karma will help me out with my lack-luster team!)

The girls LOVED it - it was sort of like a zoo but with all the animals easy to see. I don't know if they realized that the animals weren't real, but they certainly loved to see them. They were not as impressed with the dinosaur bones. But then the trip picked up again when we went to the butterfly house. The girls thought it was quite fun to see all of the butterflies. Though we did have one misfortune when Brooke accidentally stepped on one.

They also were quite excited to ride on the merry-go-round out on the mall. It was the first time for the girls to be on one. Audrey was less sure about the experience (read she clung to me for dear life) but our little daredevil Brooke loved it.

A Day in the Life...

Here are a few pictures of what life is like around here...not pictured are the temper tantrums!

Brooke and Audrey "helping" me make rocky road squares on our new little table....clearly I did not think this through 100% as the girls immediately started eating the chocolate rather than mixing in the nuts and marshmallows!

Every day we go to visit our neighbor dog Phoebe. And when she is not outside the girls declare that she must be taking a nap. They are fascinated with all things animal related and all things nap related.

Audrey wearing her little ballerina skirt and being a lion. Both girls have gotten rather insistent about what they do and do not wear. I think that I am going to need a t-shirt that says "my children dressed themselves"

We spend a huge amount of time outside (thank heavens that the weather has been wonderful up here!) and we found a caterpillar all rolled up into a ball. The girls were anxiously waiting for it to start moving....Unfortunately we had to wait a while as it turned out to be dead. Fortunately the girls have short attention spans.

'You can take the girls out of Texas..." So here are the girls riding around in their little pick-up truck. I am quite pleased with this purchase cause I got the truck for only $10!