Hiking!

We took a trip to Sleeping Giant the other day. I'm really surprised at how well the girls did. Sylvia loved hiking and I think Mya did well because she wanted to be with Sylvia! Ha! Anyways, here are a few pics from the trip:

Sylvia running up the trail

Mya in pink, wanting to rock climb:

Taking a drink break:

Mya walking Gaia:

Sylvia with Gaia:



At their 3 year well visit, Mya weighed in at exactly 27lbs and 36". Sylvia weighed in at 26lbs 12oz and 35 3/4". Just a touch smaller than Mya. They were both finally on the chart between the 5th and 10th percentile. My little pumpkins are minis! They go back to school on Thursday. And I go back on Monday. Mendy went all this week but then has off until Thursday, so she'll be with the girls until Wednesday. Another year begins for us.

3-year Update!

Hi Everyone!


Sylvia, Mya Sylvia, Mya

Can you believe we just turned three? And we can show you on our fingers, too! We did quite a bit of growing this year, in all sorts of ways. This year, we went to daycare and socialized with our friends. We've really begun to play WITH our friends, not just next to them. When we went on vacation to Florida and Georgia last month, we even learned how to swim by ourselves (with our tube floats).


Mya, Sylvia

We love to repeat whatever our mommies say (whether good or bad!) and they think we come up with some pretty funny things on our own. We really like to discover the world around us. We have definitely started to develop different personalities. Sylvia seems to be more sensitive, but she is also the leader and likes things her way.


Sylvia

Mya tends to be more independent from her mommies, but she follows along with whatever Sylvia wants to do.


Mya

Both of us love attention, but we also really like to play by ourselves. Our imaginations have really started growing and that's fun when we play together, but sometimes it's a little scary because we've started having some bad dreams. Mama is pretty good at explaining shadows and things to us, so we're still comfortable going to sleep. Speaking of sleep, we finally sleep a good 10 hours at night and still take our afternoon nap. At naptime, Sylvia falls asleep very quickly, and Mya needs to move around A LOT before she gets comfortable enough to sleep. At bedtime, we fall asleep on our own, but we have to have all of our stuffed animals with us and Mommies have to read us a book or sing songs. We love how Mommy reads the "monster" book (about Grover) and we love books about trains and dinosaurs and families and well, really, we love any book.


Sylvia, Mya

We know our ABCs and can count to 10. We like to sing songs (especially the itsy-bitsy spider, twinkle twinkle little star, old macdonald, and the wheels on the bus) and even make up our own songs about things that are going on around us. We like to do yoga and forward rolls. Most of all, we love to wear underwear! Mommies are just starting to let us wear it out of the house because sometimes we still have accidents, but we're getting good at telling Mommies when we have to go!


Mya, Sylvia

Well, that's about it from us for this year... Mommy edited and realized we stepped into the third person on occasion, but it's hard to speak on behalf of both of us... she's smart like that. :D

Love,
Sylvia & Mya

Memorial Day '08

We are having some gorgeous weather here this Memorial Day. This morning, we took out the backyard water park and the girls went nuts. They had fun splashing around and going down the slide (which really needed some baby oil or something... it was slow). This evening, we'll be going over to my parents' house for dinner and visiting with my sisters and their kids.

A few pictures of this morning's fun...









And yesterday, we went to Bassett Park. The girls had their first ice cream truck experience (as well as their first popsicle)! Needless to say, they enjoyed it.

Safety

Setting: Doctor's office after an hour's wait. 6:10 pm Tuesday

Mommy (to Mya and Sylvia): Do you think the sun will still be up when we go outside or will it be dark?

Sylvia (to Mommy): It dark outside. It scare me.

Mommy (to Sylvia): Why does it scare you?

Sylvia (to Mommy): The monsters.

Mommy (to Sylvia): There's no monsters.

Sylvia (to Mommy): You save me?

Mya (to Sylvia): No, the moon save you.

Sylvia (to Mya): Oh, the moon. You save me?

Mya (to Sylvia): No, I not a mommy.

My kids know how the world works. And honestly, what can keep you more safe in your sleep than a pile of stuffed animals?

Gum

Ok, who knew gum could be so cute? They were dying to chew it and they know how to spit it out, so I let them go for it (supervised because i'm nervous like that). They looked like little valley girls, so I had to get it on tape! I also love how they know the camera and were yelling "cheese" as if to say "take the dang picture already!"

Spring has Sprung

If it wasn't official before, it is now. I'm no good at keeping up on here. But I won't give up! If for nothing else, I feel like I need somewhere to record all of the happenings with my little ones so that I don't forget in the "mommyhaze". It's really hard for me to believe that they will grow up to be women, independent of Mendy and me. At the same time, I know that day will come like a bullet train and before I know it, they'll be out on their own.

Here's a random aside for you: Why is it that experiences we share as human beings stay the same generation after generation and our human development stops it from becoming innate? I mean, every mother has this feeling at some point, but none know how to "handle" it until it's done... they try to pass on the knowledge to younger mothers, but they won't get it until they live through it themselves? What is so necessary about the actual experience?

Enough philosophy.

Cute things the girls do: they like to ride their bikes outside (which really means push off the ground, not the pedals), go to birthday parties (everytime they see a cake, they sing happy birthday to themselves), jump off of things, eat pizza, play in the big sandbox at the park, play "catch" (also known as "I throw, You chase"), pet animals, run, "swim", do yoga with me.

Cute things the girls say: well, they say a lot of cute stuff. Most of the time they have little conversations that mimic what Mendy and I say. They are starting to have more pretend play, so they get more in depth in their games of "kitchen" and "talking on the phone".

We haven't watched nearly as much TV lately now that the weather is nicer... THANK GOD. I really thought Connecticut was going to be the death of me this year. I was GA homesick quite a bit... thinking about all the Piedmont Park time the girls are missing!

Well, that's that and I hope I get better at posting (really).

ABCs

I don't have a lot of time to post tonight, but I wanted to stop by with the latest accomplishement. Here it is!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all!
Love,
Mya and Sylvia





These girls have a blast whatever they do. I'm so proud of them. They're getting much more expressive and understanding of the world. It makes me so happy to watch them grow and become little people. Watch out world, here they come!

Update: long overdue.

Well, it's been quite a while since I've updated the Mommyblog. I guess that's what happens when the lights of your life become increasing mobile and excited about every new opportunity! The girls have been a joy to watch in the past few months. They have become very attached to each other as friends and playmates, but will still play well with the other kids at their daycare. They seem to be happy any time they get to experience something new. Definitely my kids! They are having a difficult time handling all the indoor time here in Connecticut in the cold weather, but we try to make things as fun as possible. Lots of trips to the mall playgrounds and indoor playscapes. Trips to Grandma and Poppi's house and to see their cousins. They're learning to speak their minds and not give in. These are great qualities and ones I hope to foster as adults... but let me tell you, it kind of sucks when they're two and a half!!

Anyway, they absolutely enjoyed their Christmas this year. They really understood the whole "santa" thing this year. Every tree they saw, they said "Oooh! Presents... For me?!" Great, now I have little materialistic children! They got to fly in an airplane to see Papaw and Nana in Georgia. They were quite well behaved, especially for being off-schedule. As luck would have it, Sylvia ended up with a little stomach bug on our last day, but seemed to sleep it off pretty quickly and was okay for the flight home.


We spent New Year's Eve with their cousins and had fun wearing hats and blowing noise makers until all hours of the night... (which for me , lately, means 12:01).


Some of the cute things I've missed updating are the sayings they've come up with. They call ketchup, "kepitch". They tell you to "shhh! quiet, I'm on the phone" when they play with our cell phones. They tell you, "better go to sleep, the train is coming!" because if you're not sleeping, the Polar Express won't pick you up. They say, "listen, Mommy, no touch, it's hot... okay?" when they make food in their kitchen for us and they make very concerned faces... especially Sylvia.

Sylvia seems to be the serious of the two and Mya seems to be the jokester. But on the whole, they're both very silly girls. Mya is still the heavier of the two and I think they're pretty much the same height at this point.

I'll try to get on here more often to post... try being the operative word.

My life is good.

2-year Update!

I had this posted on my other journal and totally forgot to post it on here... so a bunch of weeks late... here is the girls' 2-year-update.

We're two (as of July 18th)!!!! Terrible twos or Terrific twos? It depends on the day! I guess that makes us pretty normal two-year-olds. We love to get into trouble together. Moms know if it's quiet, they have to worry! We had our 2nd birthday party with an SPCA theme and asked everyone to donate things to unlucky doggies and kitties. Mom made our cakes look like dogbowls. She's weird.

We've had a huge couple of months! In a matter of a week (in June), we decided to go straight from having about 20 words ( + animal/transportation sounds) to speaking in sentences and questions and within the month have picked up between 50-100 words if not more. Moms were shocked at the rapid progress we made. Mommy Jody admits she was nervous we might have a delay, but she's over that feeling now!

We really like to play at the playground and climb. We love to climb the rope ladders to get to the swings rather than taking the stairs. Our other favorite is to hang on the zip line and have Mom push us across!

Our all time favorite passtime (other than watching the whale in Finding Nemo) is to read books! Moms are happy about that, but they're a little annoyed at having to read the same books over and over... and over again. Our favorite nighttimebook is "How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?". We love it when Mom RRROOOAAARRRS! We get so silly.

We really like trains, airplanes, and buses. We find them as much as we can when we go outside and we listen for them in the distance. We got to go on all three when we went to visit our family in Georgia. We were really excited! We're pretty glad we didn't get kicked off the plane like the other little boy from Georgia. We know how he felt... we were excited to say bye-bye, too!

Well, here are our stats from our two-year wellbaby doctors visit.

Mya: 24 1/2 lbs, 32 1/2 inches tall... that's up 2 1/2 lbs and 1 inch from 18 months. My chart shows I've picked up on weight a bit (20th %ile - I eat way more than Sylvia) and dropped down a bit in height (25th %ile). Mom thinks I'm about to shoot up.

Sylvia: 22lbs (same as last time, but Mom thinks last time was inaccurate), 32 1/8 inches tall (up 3/4 of an inch). I've followed my weight pattern pretty evenly at 5th %ile except for last time (Mom says it's an outlier... whatever that means). My height dropped to the 25th %ile, too.

sentences

I don't want to make the big update until the 18th (or so), but I have to come brag on my little twinkies. In the past week while we were on vacation, they started consistently talking in full sentences! "Mama, I want more _____." "Will you help?" And my favorite is when they try to sing the last verse of the ABC's "Now I know my sea, Next I won't meeeeeeeeee"

Sigh... cute.

23 months!

This won't be a long update, but Sylvia and Mya are 23 months old today! One month from today, they will turn 2 years old! Can you believe it? I can't! They are starting to talk like crazy, putting words together, practicing their twin talk, and giving the best hugs and kisses ever!

They're physically active little girls and I'm having a lot of fun keeping up with them. Though when they are tired, it's a fight! They can gang up on us like nothing you've seen! But then as soon as they hit the bed, all they want are hugs and their lovies. Such sweet independent little girls!

I'll be back with a longer update when the time arises!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was wonderful! My sisters and I (along with my mom's mom, the 5 cousins, Mendy and my dad) took my mother on the Thimble Island Cruises. It was actually pretty interesting and it was a gorgeous day to be out on the boat. My mom has the same connection to water as I do, so it was ideal for both of us. We all went to eat at The Chowder Pot III afterward. Yummy food. I was very proud of the girls. They did a great job on the boat, though they were intent on trying to play on the stairs to the lower deck the whole time. They also did REALLY well at a not-s0-kid-friendly restaurant and let us eat our whole meal in peace! I guess that was their mother's day gift to me. I liked it. Then we went over to my parents house and we all had ice cream cake and chilled out. The girls napped there for 3 HOURS. They were exhausted.

As a gift, Mendy got me a deep fryer. Not the most common Mommy's day gift, but hey, it's what I asked for! I really want to make tempura! And a great side benefit is that I can now make fried dough in the comfort of my own home... mmm.

Here's a pic of the girls on the boat from yesterday.

Long Time, No Post

Well hello there! I haven't forgotten about this blog. Ok, I had, but now I've remembered and 2 months later, I am posting again! The girls have gotten so independent. They're *this* close to being able to open doorknobs which will make life a lot more interesting. Their vocabulary has exploded. They started preschool this past Monday and are loving it. They still give us a hard time in the mornings because they are testing us, but less than 5 minutes after we leave, they are happily playing. When I go to pick them up, I'll peek in at them first. They are usually completely engaged in whatever activity they are doing. Then when they see me, they turn on the tears like it was the worst thing that could have happened to them! Slick little kids, I tell ya!

They had a great Easter and were rabid egg hunters... yes, rabid. They would growl if another kid was going for their egg. Good times.

We took a trip to Vermont to meet one of my best friend's newborn. He is absolutely adorable. I can't wait for him to grow up and be able to play with the girls! He is 6 weeks old. In the morning, when we woke up at her house, the girls looked around, figured out where they were and started saying "baby! baby!" All they wanted to do was play with the baby. I guess I"ll have to get another one soon.... ;) *sigh*

Sicky Sick

Wow, what a night. At around 11:30, I heard a cry from the girls room that was not just "adjusting". So I went in to find Sylvia puking the days menu onto the pillow, sheets and blankets. Lovely. Luckily it didn't hit Mya, so we changed the sheets and Mendy stayed in the girls room with Mya. I took Sylvia and a bunch of towels back to our room to tend to her. Every ten minutes with a rare 30 minute exception, she had a bout of vomiting. The poor thing was throwing up in her sleep at times. I felt awful for her. In the morning, she started to seem better, but was also showing signs of dehydration, so I was getting ready to bring her to the hospital. As I started to get her ready... Mya starts gagging and puking. She didn't puke up any food, though. I guess she had digested it all. Thank god. Anyway, I let Sylvia chill while we cleaned up and tended to Mya and Sylvia seemed to get a bit better so we let her drink some gatorade. In small sips, she was keeping it down, so we never had to go to the hospital. Mya didn't have it nearly as bad as Sylvia, but it took a while for her to be able to drink anything either. They both seem better and have held down some toast and cheerios, so I think we're on the mend. Unfortunately, Mendy now has whatever it is and has been in bed all day today.

Please keep your fingers crossed that I"m not next!

The girls had their 18 month wellbaby visit on Tuesday. And they couldn't be more identical... no really.

Sylvia's stats: 22lbs, 31 1/4 inches, head circumference - 48".
Mya's stats: 22lbs, 31 1/4 inches, head circumference - 48".

That's 17th percentile for weight! They're on the charts!!!! 50th %ile for height and between 75th and 90th %ile in head circumference.

Yeah. Identical. Sylvia's speech has exploded in the past two weeks. She now has moon, star, shoes, socks, head, night-night, etc... I can't keep track anymore! Mya is still a little slower, but she'll do it when she's ready. She's was sick last week and she's not all too impressed with the new digs. I think being home for February break will help her out... AND MOMMY!

Ok, I must go, work beckons.

Moving and Sleeping

Quick update. We moved. The girls are loving the new house. They have much more room to run around and play without being on top of each other. They have their own room and a playroom which is really nice. They have slept through the night for 3 straight nights, now. Which is good because we needed the rest, too. Last night, they wanted to crawl all over me as I was putting them to sleep, so I decided to try letting them stay on their own. Can you believe in 15 minutes they were sound asleep in their bed? When I left, I heard them follow me to the door and do their fussy cry (I would have went back had it been real crying). Then I heard them start "talking" to each other. Then I didn't hear anything for about 5 minutes. Then a few fussy cries. I stood by the door incase it turned into real crying so I could go in if need be. Then nothing. Twenty minutes later, I peaked in and they were sound asleep... IN BED. Which means they crawled back up into the bed together and put themselves to sleep. How cute is that?!?!?!

18 Month Update

The girls turned 18 months old on the 18th of this month. I can't believe it... weren't they just born? I don't want time to go this quickly!!! Updatewise... I don't have their weights/heights because they don't go to the doctor until Feb. 6th. As for their development, they are running around like madwomen. They climb EVERYTHING in sight. They play "catch", color, use forks/spoons (occasionally), follow directions (when they want to), do yoga, are attempting forward rolls, can locate their body parts (the newest is "cho"=shoulder). Speech is on target... They can repeat a bunch of words, but they only USE 5 or 6 of them (star, Pablo, Mama, Gaia, cat, more). They're much more receptive than expressive at this point. Though, they do have a twintalk repetoire of words... the two I've picked up are "gibble-bah" and "ichi". Cute buggers. Ok, I'll update the percentiles after the doctor's appointment. I'm anxious to see if they've caught up at all.

Christmas and such things

The girls had a wonderful Christmas. They really got into tearing apart the wrapping paper and opening boxes. They didn't necessarily play with all the toys, but they sure loved opening the boxes. Not even playing with the paper and boxes, but opening them and saying "ooooooh!" and then diving after the next box. It was quite cute.



Sylvia - "What's next?!?"

They got a matching pair of duck pjs from Santa Mendy and when they opened them, they started quacking. C.U.T.E.



Mendy, Sylvia & Mya (wearing their new pjs)

Their favorite gift was probably a set of strollers that my sister got for them. They push around their dolls and/or Pablo in them. Here is Mya with little Pablo.



They also got sing & spin Pablo which was a hit, but caused a few fights over sharing. They have since learned to share Pablo.

We travelled to Georgia to visit Mendy's family for 5 days. It was really nice to see them. I love how her family adores the girls and will do anything for them. The girls did great on the plane and even though their little routine was screwed up, they didn't seem too fazed by it. They were happy as always and just as outgoing.

They should be going for their 18 month well-baby visit later this month, so I will be back with the details.

Christmas planning

This will be a relatively quick update since lunch break is almost over.

The girls are doing wonderfully. They had some sort of bug that lasted quite a while (that both M and I had forever as well) during the Thanksgiving Holiday and after. We've been getting out of the house more recently and were able to go to the park last week, NYC this weekend and even got to go meet my sisters new puppy. Hopefully after the excitement of the holidays dies down, we'll be able to start getting excited about a possible move out of our current living hell. Middle.Of.Nowhere. Yay for civilization!

The Christmas shopping is going well. We sent out our Christmas cards yesterday, so that's all done. We got some fun presents for the girls... though they already found one of them and keep trying to get into the bedroom closet to play with it. It's the Sing & Spin Pablo from the Backyardigans. They don't even watch the show, but they LOVE them some Pablo! We have all of our plans to shop set after I get paid on Friday. Gotta love living paycheck to paycheck! My father is dressing up as Santa on Thursday at the QC Christmas party, so we'll be visiting Santa tomorrow. It should be interesting to see if the girls freak out.

If I don't get on here to post on their 17 monthday, I'll try to update as soon afterward as possible. We have crazy plans for the rest of the month, so I'm not sure when I'll be back.