A Year and a Half Old!

Today Brady and Chloe are 18 months old!  Where did the last 6 months ago?  Dear me!  WHY is their second birthday ticker already to the halfway mark???  They don't go to the pediatrician until this Friday, so we won't know their stats until then.  I will save my big post until after they go to the doctor.  They are so grown up I can't even believe it!

Today we had one of our last classes as Birdies (10-19 months) at The Little Gym.  In a couple of weeks we will start the fall session in the Beasts class (19 months to 2 1/2 years).  After watching them in gym class today we could tell they are more than ready to move up to Beasts class and hold their own with the older kids.  We have come so far since we started going to the The Little Gym at 10 or 11 months old and they couldn't even walk yet!

We are also going to move them up to the Toddler story time at the library.  We were going to "Infant" story time (for ages 0-18 months) but now we will be going to "Totally Toddler" story time (for ages 18 to 36 months).

Today after gym class and their nap, we took the kids to a new park in our town.  We only had a short time there since it started to thunderstorm, but the kids still seemed to really enjoy it.  We then went out to lunch and to Babies R Us to pick up a few things.  We let the kids each get a little toy, Chloe picked out a dolphin, and Brady picked out a toy truck (who is surprised!).  Brady was with Chad while I had Chloe in a cart with me in another part of the store.  The funny thing was Brady and Chad picked out the exact same truck that Brady always takes out of the toy pile to play with during story time at the library!  Chad wouldn't have recognized the truck since story time is during the day when he is at work.  How funny that he and Brady would pick that same little truck to buy out of all the toys at Babies R Us/Toys R Us!

Here are a few pictures from our day:

At the new park with Daddy!

Attempting to share a seat on our Dinosaur!

The 1.5 year olds with their new toys from Babies R Us!

Goofing around trying out some potential Halloween costumes!

Hope you are all having a fun weekend so far!

Thursday Theories: Why Toddlers Are So Cute

So I have a theory about why toddlers are so gosh darn cute...

I think it is in case they decide to do something like THIS:

All you can do is laugh, take a picture, and post it on your Facebook and your blog for everyone to see.

Happy Thursday everyone!  Almost time for the weekend!

Wordless Wednesday: Bedside Tables---Not Just for Book Storage

Cool Cuts for Kids

Over the weekend we took the kids to get haircuts.  This was Brady's third haircut and only Chloe's second.  They were both really great, and nobody cried or got squirmy or upset.  They both look so big and grown up now!  

I have a few pictures to share with you of their new 'dos:

I hope you all had a fun weekend and are having a great start to your week!

Operation Baby Blanket Swap

On my last day of work at my former job, my coworkers threw me an amazing baby shower/going away party.  It was so sweet and generous of them, and it was a bittersweet moment for me since I was leaving all of those kind people to embark on a totally different journey, being a stay at home Mom to twins.  My favorite and most treasured gifts from that party were two hand crocheted baby blankets made by my boss herself, who was the Senior Vice President of the company.  She was such a busy and powerful woman, it touched me to think of her taking the time to make these beautiful baby blankets for my children.

The babies loved and enjoyed the blankets for a long time, and they even had their newborn photos taken with one of the blankets.  Below is one of my favorite photos from their newborn session, and that is Brady's pristine baby blanket they are all wrapped up in.

Unfortunately with time Brady loved that blanket for all that it was worth, until it started to unravel.  I kept just cutting the loose strands and hoping it would stay together until I could figure out what to do.  He had become attached to his blanket and needed it to sleep for nap time and bed time.

After looking on Etsy for a baby present for a friend of mine, I came across a baby blanket that was pretty similar in style and color to his old blanket, and I decided to buy it and see if we could switch the blankets out.  Here is a comparison of his poor old blanket on the left, and his new blanket on the right:

I undertook the baby blanket switch on Saturday morning while the kids were busy eating breakfast and watching Sesame Street.  I was very anxious to see how he would react to the new blanket at nap time.  Would he notice a difference?  Would he be upset, and would I have to give him back the old blanket?  At nap time I put him in his crib, and then waited for a while and snuck in when it was quiet to find him like this...

Operation Baby Blanket Swap was a success!  Whew!  He seems to have accepted his new blanket and loves it just as much as the old one.  I have saved the old one as a keepsake.  A friend suggested framing a piece of the old blanket and hanging it in his room, so I may do that.

Here are some pictures of Brady with his baby blanket 2.0:

Here's hoping he can enjoy and love on this new blanket for a long time to come!

Can't Keep Up!

The babies (can't really even call them that anymore) will be 18 months old in a little over a week!  I plan to do my traditional loooong update about their eating, sleeping, playing, development, talking, etc. habits and milestones along with their height/weight updates from the doctor as usual, but I feel the need to write down a few things that are happening right now before I forget.

They are doing/saying so many new things so quickly these days sometimes it catches me off guard.  In my mind, they are still little babies and they aren't "old enough" to be doing these things.  Except that they are, they can, and they do.

One main thing is their relationship as siblings has really evolved over the last couple of weeks.  Before during playtime Brady and Chloe would be off doing their own separate things most of the time, especially since Brady is obsessed with cars/trucks he prefers to spend most of his time pushing them around and Chloe prefers to do puzzles or read/be read to.  Recently I have found them more and more frequently doing an activity or playing with things together.  They also seem to want to get into trouble together (getting into things they shouldn't as a pair and often helping the other person make a bigger mess, etc).  The last day or two I have heard Chloe refer to Brady as "brother" several times.  In addition, yesterday Chloe put herself in time out alongside her brother as a sign of sibling solidarity, I suppose.  Today, after he fell down she went to comfort him, by patting him on the head and asking him, "You OK, you OK?'.  The beginnings of a lifelong friendship and sibling bond are already blossoming, and I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see.

Another thing is their verbal skills, particularly Chloe.  In addition to naming objects, she has started to put little two and three word phrases/sentences together.  Here are some of the things she has said recently:

"I go night night" (this is a favorite of hers)
"I go Mommy" (she was in the playroom dancing with her brother and Daddy and wanted to find me)
"You OK?"

I am sure she has said more, but I have already forgotten them, which is why I wanted to write them down now!

The last thing is some progress with the potty, although nothing major.  We've had the potties for quite some time, but I have been pretty lax about asking the babies if they want to sit on them.  I think my relaxed attitude about it has actually helped to move things in a positive direction, since they have been showing interest in sitting on the potty more and more frequently, not just at night after their bath, but during the daytime too.  Another big breakthrough is that Brady has started to show interest in sitting on the potty over the last few days, which I consider to be a huge win, since he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it for the last month and a half.  He didn't even want to be around or near the potty, and now he voluntarily sits on it at least once a day.  My plan is not to push potty training anytime soon, but to just continue with this voluntary sitting on the potty, encouraging and praising them when they do sit on the potty, etc.

I will leave you with just one picture today of BOTH children sitting on the potty.  Granted Brady is sitting sideways and more IN the potty than ON it, but I will take what I can get!

Wordless Wednesday: Random Selections from Life with Toddlers

Poor Blog!

It seems I've gone a whole week with no blog update!  So sorry about that, we've had a lot going on in our world.  The main thing that has caused a drastic reduction in my blogging time is a new initiative we've had to get healthier since June.  We bought a treadmill and I have been using the babies' one nap time a day to workout.  Ordinarily I used their nap time to update the blog, do laundry/household chores, eat lunch, surf the internet, catch up on the phone with family members, etc. but now the whole nap time is pretty much taken up by working out and trying to eat lunch before they wake up.  I am not complaining though, our whole family has been getting healthier and Chad and I have seen some weight loss success so far, and we are really excited to keep it going.

We have also joined a gym as a family.  Chad has been enjoying playing racquetball and basketball at different local gyms with some of his coworkers, and that led us to explore a family membership to the gym so he could go do these things on a more regular basis.  We are trying it out for a month to see if we'll use it, but so far it has been great.   

Today was a big first step for me, I took the kids after breakfast and put them in the gym daycare so I could workout.  I was so nervous to leave them alone there, since they'd never been left in a multi-child daycare setting (with people I didn't know) before, but they did great!  They seemed to have a blast playing with all the "new" toys.  The ladies at the daycare said they were good the whole time and when I came to get them they were busily playing with toys.  It made my heart so happy to see that they were happy.  

This also meant I didn't have to wait until their nap time to workout, since they were being watched at the daycare.  They were very ready for their nap when we got home, so they are napping now.  Since I've already done my workout for the day, I have this free time to update the blog, yay!  

Anyhow, I apologize for the recent neglect of the blog, the new arrangement at the gym daycare hopefully means that I can go a couple of times a week and free up nap time to update the blog again from time to time!  

I don't have too many new pictures of the kids, but I do have some pictures to share of some outfits.  I am hoping to have some pictures taken of them and of all of us as a family sometime in August or September for their 18 month pictures and also to celebrate our 5 year anniversary.  I've already picked out their outfits and I think they are going to be cute!  I think the family is going to be dressed in some variation of red, white, and blue for the pictures so here are a few things I have picked out for the photo shoot:  

Chloe's dress (front)

Chloe's dress (back)

Chloe and Brady's First Pair of Chucks!

Chloe's Headband Flower Bow!  

So I am just a little excited, can you tell?  I don't think we've ever taken professional pictures together as a whole family before.  We normally only take pictures of the kids.  

I hope you are all having a good week so far!