Great-Grandma's are the most amazing people!

This week was my grandmother's 88th birthday.  Happy late birthday Grandma!  She is the most amazing woman.  For one week a year she does her best to spend every possible moment with her family.  Even if it means sitting by a campfire late at night in the rain. During that special week in July, I was able to capture some moments of her with her with the monkeys.  You will notice in a couple of the shots that a certain obstinate 2 year old insisted on sitting on the ground instead of grandma's lap.  So my awesome grandma showed my little monkey how much she loved her by getting down on the ground with her.  No one could ask for a better grandma than ours.  We love you!

Big night in our house.

We have been talking about working on the monkeys' transition to a big bed for months now.  They still crib share and I keep thinking they need more space.  Then I look at them sleeping all snuggled up into on small part of the crib and wonder if they really need more space or if I just have some "society says it should be this way" guilt.  They seem to truly prefer sleeping together.  I know eventually we will have to separate them, but until they are big enough for bunk beds or we move to another house co-sleeping is the way it's going to be.  Trust me when I say I have no delusions about how hard it will most likely be to separate them when we finally do move them to individual beds. 

Fast forward to nap time today.  Isabella didn't want to take a nap and was having a bit of a fit.  At one point she put her foot up on the top rail and acted like she was going to climb out.  Well that made the transition decision pretty easy.  Time to work our way to a big bed before one of them gets hurt.  Jeff took the front of the crib off tonight and they are now officially sleeping in their daybed.  We bought a bed rail that is too big, so we had to get creative on how to keep them in.  For the time being we have the mesh bumper across the front of the bed.  It won't keep them from climbing out, but it should keep them from rolling out while they are sleeping.  Just in case it doesn't, we have blankets and pillows on the floor.  

There was a lot of drama at bed time, but they didn't climb out and fell asleep in less than an hour.  I would say it was as close to success as we can get.  Tomorrow morning will be interesting.  Caitlin likes to wake up early.  Too early for me.  She hears Jeff getting ready for work and I want another hour of sleep.  Now that she has freedom I can see that my 3 to 5 hours of sleep is going to dwindle even more.  I don't know how I'm going to cope with that.  

More importantly, I don't know how if I'm ready for them to have so much freedom.  I've heard plenty of stories of twins and the trouble they can get into in their room.  Almost all of those stories involve diapers.  Not necessarily the clean, unused ones.  I'm just not ready for the kind of scene so many others have had to clean up. Hopefully I will laugh about it when it happens, but I will live with dread until it does.  For now, it is time to buy dresser straps and other baby proofing things to keep my little monkeys safe when they decide to climb the dresser or use the window as an escape hatch to their beloved outside.  

I am going to have to find more time to post as I have no doubt that life is only going to get more interesting as we enter this new phase.

Yin and Yang

 A few months ago my yin and yang shared a swing at the park.  They really enjoy the swings, but I don't think they will be able to share much longer.

More photo fun with momma.

I have several things I want to post about, but not a lot of time tonight. Instead I am going to post more recent pics of the monkeys. These are from another one of our play days.

Walking with Daddy.

There is not any activity the girls love as much as walking. They must be trying to make up for waiting so incredibly to do it. Nothing brings on a tantrum faster than telling them they can't go out for a stroll. This day was Jeff's turn to indulge them.

Why can't she focus?

Sometimes Caitlin has difficulty focusing on an activity. Maybe this is why?

Is caffeine bad for toddlers? She sure seems to like it.

Just kidding! I've never given her a taste of soda. She barely knows what juice tastes like. She loves to play with any kind of soda or water bottle though. I seriously don't know why I buy toys for them.

I see you.

Yoga time!

You can't work mommy!

The monkeys do not like it when I try to work during the day. The second they see me walking over to my computer they get upset. Usually they stop what they are doing, come over to me and do whatever it takes to get me to put the computer down, which usually means grabbing the mouse, pushing buttons, pulling cords or straight out turning the computer off. One day a couple of months ago I gave in, put the computer down and picked up the camera instead. This is how our play time went.