Chocolate Faces

We went to a birthday party today. We all had a lot of fun. I think Arya and Eiley's favorite part was the cupcake they each ate. When they got home, they also got to share a monkey shaped chocolate sucker. I may have given them a little help since it was really good chocolate. They ate most of it and kept a little on the side for later.

Peepah Picnic

The kids have a new picnic table. It's in the house right now and they wanted to eat dinner at it tonight. We were having "peepuh". Most people would just call it pizza. Most people also wear pants when they are eating. Arya had just been changed and Cork didn't bother to put her pants back on.

Pacifier Wars

Pacifier wars are in full effect. It's pretty funny to watch one kid pulling while the other kid bites as hard as she can. I was too late in taking my picture and the battle was pretty much over. Eiley had let go, but Arya was still mad.

Bunny

Arya has a new favorite toy. Her grandma and grandpa gave the kids a little bunny for Easter and she's carrying it around everywhere.

Hair

Eiley put lotion in her hair before we left the house this morning. This is a normal occurrence around here. I didn't have time to wash it out, so I put her hair up in a rubber band. She smelled like gardenias during her class at the gym. The lotion must have not been enough because she decided to coat herself in applesauce at lunch. Arya accidentally splashed herself with applesauce and I laughed. Big mistake. Eiley saw this and that's when the fun began.

Pedals

The girls are starting to really enjoy using their tricycles outside. They can't pedal them yet, but they understand how to pedal. They need little extenders so they can reach the pedals and they might actually be able to use the pedals. I love their identical expressions in these pics.

Hoppy Easter

We had great Easter today. We started the day at 5:45 with two kids jumping in their cribs to let us know they were up. We went to the 8:00 am church service, then had brunch and an egg hunt at my sister's house. We brought the kids home and blitzed the house before eating lunch and letting the kids open things in their Easter baskets. They got just little trinkety things like chapstick, socks, sidewalk chalk and bubbles. After a nap, the kids decided that candy and cake made a wonderful dinner. I think they enjoyed having the house full of people they could beg candy off of. We didn't get any good pics of the 2 kids together. I'm not surprised. It's nearly impossible to get either one to stand still. Trying to get 2 very active 20 month olds in one picture, without moving, is not going to happen.

My mom usually makes a lamb shaped cake for Easter. This year, I decided to make a Faith cake instead. It was a lot of fun to make and turned out well for my first attempt.

Zoo Easter

Our local zoo was having a big Easter celebration today. We took the kids and have a great time looking for candy, getting their faces painted, wearing bunny ears and seeing all the animals.

Baking Away

I started making a cake for Easter. Arya won't go anywhere near the mixer beaters. She sees anything that looks like it might be yogurt and she won't touch it. Eiley on the other hand will lick the beaters whenever she gets a hold of them, even if I haven't started mixing anything yet.

Sharing

The girls are hit or miss on sharing right now. They are probably much better than singletons at this age. They love to get things for each other, but they also have screaming outbursts when they don't want to share.

Nina

Eiley has a new word. Nina. Want to take a guess what she's saying?




Here's a hint. I was bathing the girls, washing Arya's bottom and Eiley said that. I cracked up when I realized that she was using an anatomically correct term.


The kids are doing things like that and it cracks me up. All in all though, we are not having a great week.

Eiley Buhbuh and the 40 Thieves

Both kids are masters at finding extra buhbuhs lying around the house. When I see a kid with a pacifier, I take it away and store it next to the microwave. Eiley kept showing up with pacifiers today. There was a chair by the microwave, so I'm not sure if she was silently climbing up and grabbing pacifiers or if she was going upstairs and finding them in her room.

Eiley Likes It

Arya is in an eating slump right now. She doesn't know what she wants and refuses things if they aren't what she wants. I think a lot of it stems from her not being able to tell us specifically what she wants. I also think it's become a game. This is how our food conversations go:
Me: Do you want cheese?
Arya: Eiley
Me: Do you want apple?
Arya: Eiley
Me: Do you want crackers?
Arya: Eiley
Me: Do you want peas?
Arya: Eiley

Her responses mean that I should give it to Eiley instead. She thinks it's hilarious. Eiley on the other hand will eat just about anything right now. She's packing food in left and right. She's got a few months, but unless something changes, I won't be surprised if she's at least 2 lbs heavier than Arya by their 24 month check up...and speaking of that, I can't believe I'm already talking about a 2 year check up.

PooPoo in the Potty

Arya was taking a bath tonight and told me she had to go "poopoo". We had been talking about poop, but I could tell from what she was saying and doing that she actually had to go. I asked her if she needed to sit on the potty and she said "yeah, poopoo" and pointed to the potty. I plopped her on the potty and sure enough she actually had to go. She got a ton of praise after that one. I think it's awesome she pooped in the toilet when we still aren't trying to potty train and I think it's even better that I didn't have to clean poop out of the tub.

Eiley still has no desire to use the potty, which is usually fine with me. Today, we had a little diaper mishap when Cork didn't make sure he had the liner tucked into the cover of her diaper. I picked her up after her nap, cuddled her and this was the result.

Full Moon

Poor Eiley. Arya destroyed a diaper this morning and I had to run into the laundry room to get a new cover for her. I came back into the living room to find this. Eiley was not happy.

Piggie Tails

I gave the girls piggie tails for the first time today. Eiley pulled one of hers out right before lunch. I should have taken pics of them after their nap because they had both pulled them out at that point and their hair was wild.

Milk Painting

I talked to Cork on the phone for 3 minutes today. I snapped this picture right before I called him.

 

The 3 minutes was obviously too long as far as the girls were concerned. They covered themselves and the floor with coconut milk since I wasn't keeping an eye on them.

After a floor cleaning and a stripping down, they decided to both play on the jumper. Eiley was not as thrilled to be sharing it as Arya was. This is what Arya does just about any time Eiley climbs into the jumper.

20 Month Milestones

The girls are 20 months old today. Here are some things they are up to...

Arya:
-Said her first 3 word sentence today. She just recently started to string 2 words together. I asked Eiley if she had pooped and Arya said "yeah Eiley poopoo". Eiley had not pooped, but Arya was convinced and she started to check Eiley's diaper.
-Loves to go "teetee" on the potty.
-Went to her first organized class at the gym today. She was more interested in playing with the door at first than doing what the other kids were doing.
-Loves music! She knows how to turn our stereo and my clock radio on. She turns them on any second she gets.
-Hates to be put in her carseat. I have to bribe her with "bah" (aka chapstick) to sit down.
-Likes to try new ways to go down the slide and likes to swing on a big kid swing.

Eiley:
-Could sit in the outside swing all day. She likes to swing, but right now she's more interested in doing and undoing the buckle on the seat belt.
-Also went to her first organized class at the gym today. She was really interested in her reflection in the mirror. She kept saying "Arya" at her reflection.
-She loves to look at pictures of people she knows and points out animals in books and makes the animal noises.
-Knows what she wants and isn't afraid to scream about it.
-Loves to drag chairs from the table to the counter.
-Is not safe around soap dispensers.
-Just learned how to empty her dresser.

Friend and Foe

We played outside a lot today. Arya went inside to get water for herself and Eiley. Less than 30 seconds later they were fighting. So goes our life.

Eiley and I were swinging and I was snapping photos. I laughed when I downloaded them and saw Arya's little head tucked between our arms.

Yogurt Woes

Eiley was happily eating yogurt today at the end of lunch. I was cleaning up and Arya kept saying "no" over and over. I looked up to find her hanging on Eiley's chair. Eiley was offering her yogurt and she was very adamantly refusing it.

Shorts and Boots

It's getting harder and harder to make myself do the blog. It's time consuming, but I love to look back at posts from last year and see what A&E are up to. Today is one of those days that I think will be funny to go back to. The girls seem very confused. A couple days ago they were wearing winter boots, not because of snow, but because it was pretty cold out. Today, it was 80 and they were in shorts and short sleeves. The poor kids still wanted to wear their boots. I ran an errand and by the time I got back, both were outside with no shoes or boots on. They must have figured out just how badly their feet were going to sweat.

We've been playing outside a lot lately and both kids want to drag all their inside toys out into the yard. Today, Arya was dragging her Crayola drawing pad around by the pen string.

Hot Sauce

Both girls have decided they like hot sauce. Mmmm. Tonight, they were dipping sweet potato fries into Tapatio.

Quiet Times

When I was little, my family used to go out for pizza at this local pizza place. As a treat, we sometimes got a pitcher of soda to share. The kids would always argue about what flavor of soda should be in the pitcher. My dad's solution was to let us all pick a flavor and a little of each would go into the pitcher. I don't know for sure, but I think he thought this would help us make a decision. Instead, we decided we liked the sodas mixed together.

Today, A&E were fighting over shoes. My solution was to put one of each pair on each kid. Both were perfectly happy to walk around like this and they stopped fighting about the shoes. Thanks Dad for the solution to this.

I was finishing up dinner tonight and realized both kids had gotten very quiet. I looked over to find them with their fingers dipped into a bottle of lotion. They were happily decorating their faces.

I don't have pictures of this, but the kids have discovered the joys of throwing things down the stairs. They love our vacuum and usually follow me while I'm vacuuming. We have these Bjorn brand stools that stay in our bathroom. Cork and I sit on them when we give A&E a bath, and later, the girls will be able to stand on them to wash their hands at the sink. Today, while I vacuumed, the kids were busy throwing the stools down the stairs and carrying them back up again. It was really hard not to laugh and I explained to them why we don't do that, but they just kept on doing it.

Drinking Problem

The kids asked to drink from these tiny Tupperware containers today. Arya did great, Eiley, not so much.

Potty Dance

Eiley has started hanging out at this baby gate. She tells me that she has to go pee. Nope, she doesn't have any interest in sitting on the potty. She just wants free range of the bathroom, laundry room and office. There are just so many wonderful things she can get into back there.

Proud to be Backwards

We had a really long day today. Neither baby was sick nor teething, but both were ultra cranky. I hate days like today. The girls are extremely challenging on days like this and both want me to themselves. The entire day was filled with screaming and crying. There were very few quiet moments.

One of our few quiet moments was in the car. I love this picture because it shows that A&E are still rear facing at 19 months. Within the last month or so, the American Academy of Pediatrics changed it's recommendation for rear facing. They used to say a child could be changed to forward facing at one year as long as that child was 20 lbs. Now, they recommend that children are rear facing until they are two. We never switched A&E to forward facing. Neither was 20 lbs at 1 year, but we would not have turned them around even if they had been. The rate of infant death in serious car accidents is so much lower with extended rear facing. If you look at pictures of a 1 year old vs a 5 year olds spine, the difference is amazing. So many parents are sad about how fast their babies grow up. I don't understand why they can be sad about seeing their child grow, yet look forward to doing something like switching them to ride forward as soon as the baby reaches a year. Of all the milestones to push, this is not one of them. Keep your babies safe and keep them rear facing.

Blueberry Vampire

This was Eiley's view from her high chair during snack time today. She kept saying "no" over and over.

I really doubt that Sikozu was interested in her blueberries. She looked like a blueberry vampire with purple all over her face and hands.

And to show that Arya really does check E's diaper over and over.

"Tee Tee" on the Potty

Arya has a new trick. She did it yesterday for the first time and I thought it was a fluke, but then she did it again today. She lifts Eiley's shirt, pulls on her diaper, sniffs and says "uh oh, poo poo". I couldn't stop laughing the first time she did it. I'm sure the laughs she got were encouragement for her to do it again. Eiley had not pooped any of the times Arya has done this, but it's still funny.

Arya went "tee tee" on the potty for the first time today. She told me she had to go and ran to the bathroom. I put her on and sure enough, she actually had to pee. She was so proud of herself. We are really not trying to potty train, but I do talk to them about going on the potty and as I've said before, they go into the bathroom with me all the time since they are destructive around the house if they are free. I was pretty impressed that she took the initiative in this. She sat on the potty 2 other times today and did not do anything. She really just thinks it is fun, so I don't expect that she will actually self potty train any time soon.