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.

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.

Not enough days like this.

When we got home from physical therapy today I decided it was time to get the camera out and have some quality time with the monkeys. I haven't done it nearly as much as I should have the last couple of months. I love being with the girls and I really enjoy working in real estate. I've been lucky enough to be very busy with the clients lately, but I've also quickly learned that boom times come at a cost. Today I ignored the phone and the email and was able to enjoy a great afternoon with the monkeys. I certainly need to work on finding the right balance so I can get back to more days like this.

What a month!

Wow, I can't believe it has been a month since my last post! I have been completely swamped with work, which is for the most part a good problem to have. The downside is not enough time with the monkeys and no time to blog. It looks like things are going to slow up a bit, so hopefully I will be able to post on a regular basis again. There is so much to catch up on!

The monkeys are doing well. We've had some drama which I will save for another post. For today I am going to give you some pics of the monkeys having fun playing on their mats. I promise give a real update on them very soon!

Little Cuties

Little girls with pigtails are so cute to me. I just love how fun and playful the style is. Needless to say, the monkeys' hair is in pigtails a lot. I'm sure it's pretty obvious, but I'm saying it anyway. Of course it is also a lot easier for them to see when their hair isn't in their eyes. :)

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone! We had a great New Year's eve and day. The monkeys went to sleep at their usual time so no celebrating for them. Some friends came over to welcome the new year with us. It was so nice to have a spontaneous, fun evening! We need to make nights like that a bigger priority in our lives. It is so easy to get caught up in work and our routines that I think we forget to have unplanned fun.

As you can see, the monkeys think 2010 is off to a great start. Best wishes for a year filled with health and happiness from all of us to all of you!

Whoa Isabella, the bling on your tiara is blinding me!

Okay mommy, here is the required similutaneous smile picture.

We gotta run now! It's time to make 2010 a fun year!

Merry Christmas!

We hope that everyone has a wonderful day filled with family, laughter and happiness.

Merry Christmas!

I think this year's holiday photo turned out very well. Getting that photo was certainly a challenge though. I seriously underestimated how hard it would be to get two one year olds to sit the way I wanted them to, keep their hats on, look the same direction and smile all at the same time. After a lot of work, a few tears, and some good old fashioned cookie bribery, we finally had some success. Here are a few of the photos that didn't make the cut.

First taste of snow

I meant to do this post back in October, so I'm obviously a little late. :) We had a big snow before Halloween. Halloween day was a beautiful day though. We took the monkeys outside for their first real chance to explore the snow. They had a lot of fun playing with the snowballs and eating the snow. They liked eating it so much that they wouldn't put their snowballs down even when their fingers were freezing.

Look mommy, rays from Heaven appear when you hold it up! It's magical!

Num, num, num.

My fingers are so cold!

Whoa, if you hold it long enough it turns to ice!

I love snow!

Can we play outside every time it snows?

Daddy, where are our snow tires? We can't drive up the mountain with these!

Now this is a snowball!