Internet OMG WTF BBQ

On Sunday we went to a big OMG WTF BBQ with a bunch of families from an internet message board I frequent. There are so many great ladies in our group - many of whom I have become friends with in real life. The bbq was at a friends' house in the mountains. She has an amazing view from her backyard which you can't really see through the clouds. It was cloudy and thundered a lot, but we were lucky enough to avoid getting rained out. We were able to get a few family pictures and I tried to get a photo for the monkeys' 1st birthday invitation. As you can see below, it didn't go very well. Caitlin was just not happy with the location I chose for the pictures. Isabella thought it was a fun spot though.

Swim time!

I bought a pool for the monkeys that is a little big for them now, but next year it will be perfect. I wanted one that was bigger than a baby pool so I could get in and enjoy it with them. We had some friends over for a little pool play date on Friday. The pool was perfect for a handful of babies and a couple of mommas. The monkeys are really enjoying their swim time. I hope they enjoy it as much when we are finally able to go swimming in a big pool.

Momma we're bored. Can we get in the pool yet?

Silly monkeys making silly faces.

Let's see who can make the biggest splash!

My poor nose!

The girls started giving wonderful baby kisses a few weeks ago. I LOVE baby kisses!! Sometimes they like to do a big wet open mouth kiss to the nose. It always kind of freaked me out not knowing if they were going to bite my nose or not. Yeah, that concern was sooo valid. Tonight they both bit my nose. It hurt so freaking bad when Isabella did it because she has teeth on the bottom and the top. Guess I won't be letting them give me anymore of those weird but fun kisses!

Father's Day

The monkeys enjoyed their first Father's Day. They gave their daddy a cute card and a couple of DVD series that he wanted. Their mommy dropped the ball and forgot to get the food to make their daddy's breakfast. Oops! I felt really bad about it. The monkeys' favorite part of the day was playing in the tissue paper.

Pool Time!

We had a pool play date at a friend's house on Thursday. It was the monkeys' first time in the pool. They loved it! I discovered that with two infants you can't look away for more than a couple of seconds. I think every time I looked away one of them fell over into the water or was trying to eat the floating grass. Maybe Isabella is trying to tell me she wants more roughage in her diet.

If you look at the middle picture you will see my friend's son getting cozy in Caitlin's lap. She was just fine with it until he tried to take one of the measuring cups she was playing with. She wasn't having any of that! The last time he tried to grab one she jerked it back so hard that she fell over. The result of the tug of war is the bottom picture.

Caitlin

Caitlin is such a little sweetheart. She would be happy if her mommy just sat and held her all day. Not in a cuddly way though. She wants to be close, but she usually isn't much of a snuggler. She has so much anxiety. Separation anxiety is still an issue for her. She doesn't like it when I get out of eyesight. Fortunately, she relaxes after a few minutes. Her issues in the car are mostly resolved. Now when she does get upset in the car, she cries but it's not the hysterical cries we were having a problem with. She has learned to clap in the last week. Her cute little style is to hit the back of one hand with the palm of the other. She always has a big smile when she does it. She still only has one tooth, but she has her two canines coming through. It has really disrupted her sleep, particularly around 3 am.

Caitlin reaching for the camera.

She is still so fascinated by the camera and tries to grab it anytime I get close to her. She is really trying to learn to crawl. She gets up on all fours with her head in the air. Then she lowers her head to the floor and uses it for support while she moves her arms and legs. She is so close to perfecting it, that I'm sure she will be crawling soon.

Caitlin playing her favorite blanket over the head game.

My mom usually takes each of the girls outside for a little bit every evening. Caitlin loves being outside so much that as soon as mom picks her up she immediately looks toward the door and doesn't stop until mom takes her out. I love her interest in being outside. Hopefully it will continue throughout her life. We have a big camping trip coming up and I am curious to see how much she enjoys being outside all of the time.

I know this was a random, all over the place post. I just wanted to take a few minutes to catch you all up on what is going on in Caitlin's world. I will try to get an Isabella post up later today.

I am so far behind.

I know I am slacking with my posts this week. It has been a really hectic week. I officially received my real estate broker's license. So happy about that! Now I just have a lot of work to do to get started. I might have my first client already which is so exciting! I went out on Thursday night for a girls night out. We had dinner and drinks then we went to Rent. It was such a fun night! I need to do a girls night out more often. On Friday we had a play date with a friend and her little girl. The monkeys had a good time, but we are going to have to work on them sharing their toys.

There is a bunch of monkey news to catch up on. I will do a Caitlin post and an Isabella post. Hopefully I will be able to do them tomorrow. We have had a lot of sporadic sleeping issues lately. Between the teething and the milestones they have had a lot of distractions. Here are a couple of pictures of them getting some sleep. Good night!

I passed!

I took the state licensing exam for my real estate license and passed! Woohoo! I am so excited to be done! Now, if the state will process my license application quickly, I can finally say I have a new career. If all goes well, I will never be chained to a desk from 8 to 5 again. Of course my two adorable monkeys are all of the motivation I need to make my new career a success :)

My daughter the criminal mastermind.

I've been meaning to make this post for a couple of weeks. The monkeys are always stealing toys from each other. Whatever toy the other twin has is always the best one. Caitlin is not only an excellent toy thief, she is also a hoarder. Anytime she is close enough to Isabella she takes the toy Isabella is playing with and puts it in a pile out of Isabella's reach. When Isabella picks up another toy, Caitlin takes it as well. This goes on and on until Isabella doesn't have any more toys in reach and gets upset. Caitlin doesn't take the toys to play with them. She just wants to pile them up next to her. I think she likes having the power to take something from her sister.

So a couple of weeks ago the monkeys are laying on their boppies drinking from their bottles. After a few minutes Caitlin reached over to Isabella to touch her hand. It was so cute because it looked like she was trying to have a special bonding moment with Isabella. She touched Isabella's hand a few more times and then held it for a minute. I was watching and having one of those awww, they are so darn cute and I love having twins moments. Then, Caitlin suddenly took her hand off of Isabella's and stole her bottle right out of her mouth. As soon as she had it, she turned away from Isabella and started playing with the bottle. The whole sisterly bonding thing was just a ploy to steal Isabella's bottle.

I think instead of trying to teach Caitlin to say I love you mommy, I should start focusing on teaching her to use her intelligence for good and not evil.

The dangling carrot.

We have all heard that you can get a horse or a rabbit to come to you if you dangle a carrot in front of it. Apparently, it also works with Isabella. This afternoon I put Caitlin in the jumperoo and Isabella in one of the exersaucers to play while I had some lunch. They weren't far apart, but there was a good foot or so between them I thought. I guess I was paying too much attention to my food and not enough to them, because I looked up at them to see Isabella moving closer to Caitlin.

Somehow Isabella had managed to get herself far enough over the edge of the exersaucer to reach one of the support posts on the jumperoo. She was using the post to pull herself and the exersaucer closer to Caitlin. At first I thought Caitlin was her goal. Nope. The carrot that is attached to the jumperoo was hanging off of the side and she was trying to reach it. When she still couldn't quite reach her goal, she grabbed the post with both hands and angled herself while she pulled to maneuver the exersaucer into the right position.

I was blown away watching her do it. First of all, I had no idea she was strong enough. The bigger thing, though, was the level of thought and analysis she had to use to determine how to get the exersaucer moved while she was in it. It took her less than 5 minutes to figure out how to get to the goal. My babies may not be able to crawl yet, but they sure are smart. :)

Isabella with the carrot a month ago.

Caitlin in one of the exersaucers in February.

This day was a mixed bag.

The monkeys are 10 months old today!

First, I'll start with my test results yesterday. I passed with a very good score. Yay for me! I was hoping to take the state exam for my broker's license this week, but there was not an available slot so I can't take it until next Tuesday. I'm bummed about that. I am so tired of dealing with the class stuff. I really wanted to take it this week so I could move on and start trying to land my first transaction.

Today. Caitlin started off the day with some serious poo grunting and then crying for her mommy. I gave her some prunes thinking that would help her move things along. I put her on the floor to play until she started crying and acting like she was in pain. So I picked her up and sat down in front of my open computer. She was straining so hard to have her bm that she puked up the prunes. All over the two of us. All over my computer. Later on she was straining again and this time when she puked it didn't come out of her mouth at all. It just came out of her nose. She was struggling to relax enough to breath and I was kind of freaked that she was going to suck the stuff into her lungs. We got her to relax and then a little later she did it again. By this time I was getting concerned so I called the pedi's office. They told me to put her in a warm bath. So I did that and voila 15 minutes later everyone is happy. Well, I would have been happier if I didn't have to clean up the tub. While I love being a mommy, there are some parts I could do without!

Caitlin telling her daddy about her day.

I was able to spend some one-on-one time with Isabella today while Caitlin was taking a nap. Apparently, my little baby is suddenly into full on interaction with the world. I am not sure if it just happened overnight or if I have just been too wrapped up in getting my broker's license. We were looking at a touch and feel book and she was completely aware of the fact that the pages had parts with different textures. She really liked the fuzzy animal pages. That was a first. Usually the girls just want to grab the books and chew on them. The other big moment was sitting on the floor with the girls. I have been working on helping them move up to a sitting position on their own. Isabella is really close to doing it by herself. The special moment though came when we did our good job and clap when she sat up. This time her face lit up, she smiled and I think she said yay. It was so easy to see that she knew she did something good and was enjoying the moment. Each time we did the sit up routine after that, her reaction was the same. Her celebration of her success made me feel all happy and mushy. I'm turning into a big sap!

Later in the day, Isabella discovered the basket of clean diapers and decided to help her mommy with them. She kept trying to pull herself up enough to pull the diapers out. After she took out all of the ones closest to her, she pulled too hard and the basket fell over on top of her. It was so cute!

The aftermath of Isabella vs. the basket.