kaylee signs milk

Yesterday and the day before Kaylee started signing milk. I took a little video of it below. In the first clip she was signing milk over and over while drinking her milk. but when I started filming she stopped of course. In the second clip she's fussy, and then gets distracted by Ethan. But you can see a few half-hearted signs in there.

Good ol' Ethan has given up on signing milk. Interestingly, my cousin just blogged this morning about her daughter signing. According to my cousin, it's "common when children are learning language to overgeneralize." This is not something I knew, but it is definitely something that Ethan did. His milk sign suddenly became "I want something" and we tried every time he signed it to give him milk, but this just frustrated him when it wasn't milk that he wanted. So now he's just stopped signing. Our response to this has mostly been, "oh well." Perhaps he'll be inspired by Kaylee and pick it up again. And speaking of miss kaylee, she has woken from her nap and would like some attention, so I gtg. Happy beautiful-weather-in-WA Thursday to you all!

panorama

check out today's fun project! thanks as usual to danielle for taking the photos :)

8 months

I know, the kiddos are 9 months now. but scheduling their 9 month photoshoot made me realize I never posted their 8 month photos. so here they are!

gosh, my children are so cute :D

9 months

yesterday and today the kiddos turned 9 months. 9 months! can you believe it! they've been outside of me for as long as they were in now. crazy. I just called and extended the rental on my pump for another 3 months. I'm still pumping 4x a day, but I am so ready to decrease! In fact, I've put a date on my calendar (late June) when I'm going to reduce to 3x day. And then on Aug 1 I'll decrease to 2x day. our insurance has been super awesome so far and paid for my pump rental, but after Aug 11 I have to start paying for it myself. So my plan is to take a month or two to gradually decrease and then reclaim my body for myself! Hurrah!

In other news, I think Kaylee will be crawling in the next couple weeks. She's happy to hang out on her tummy now, and she can back up using her arms to push. She can also support herself in the crawling position, but she hasn't put it all together and actually made forward progress yet. But we did install a baby gate for Ethan last night, so that's crazy!

Happy Wednesday! (hey - it was a Wednesday 9 months ago too. weird.)

bike trailer

do you know how great blake is? he is great. extra-great in fact. my mothers day gift was him taking the day off work on monday. he made me an appointment at inspa for a massage too (while he watched the kiddos)... and we went out to breakfast (at village square cafe) with the kiddos... AND... we went on a bike ride. but what about those kiddos dana, where were they when you went on a bike ride? we took them with us, in our new bike trailer...

getting ready to go...

everybody's strapped in!

now we're really ready...

okay, one last pic before we head off...

my view while riding. I do like biking...

kaylee kaylee kaylee

I noticed that my blog has been a little ethan-focused lately. so, while life will never be "fair" or "even" for my kiddos, I thought a kaylee focused post was in order. and, now that Mothers Day has come and gone and I have mailed all the great-grandmas their mothers day presents, I can post these pics for the rest of you to see! These are from a little trip to JC Penney's in late March or early April. Ethan was not the happiest camper - in fact he only actually smiled in one picture (alright, I'll admit it - I did do some photoshopping for our family pic - I stole Ethan's only smile and stuck it on the best pic of the rest of us), but anyways, Kaylee was happy!

here's the photoshopped family pic:

for the sake of honesty, here's the original version - it's not that ethan's upset or crying... but... I prefer a more intelligent look for him ;)

just the kiddos - pretty adorable, eh?

alright, ready for the kaylee focused part? Since the dedication itself was all of 5 minutes, and then we whisked them off to the party in different clothes, we thought we would get some nice pics of their excellent dedication outfits. and since danielle is kaylee's godmother, and is always the one taking the pictures and never in them, we invited her to come along. it was hard to choose just a few of these shots, because kaylee is very happy in all of them - she likes danielle a lot.

oh, also - super cute thing to note - danielle got matching pearl bracelets for herself and kaylee. kaylee's is SO small. unfortunately kaylee is showing her other wrist in most pics, but you can sorta see it in the above pic.

 (that's a kaylee giggle face)

alright, now both kiddos in their dedication outfits:

and back to the kaylee shots...

can you tell that Ethan is about to cry in that picture? I can, but I think perhaps to others it is passable as a smile? I'm not sure...

and now, ending with my favorite kaylee pic...

 (I love that pic)

happy mothers' day

Happy Mothers' Day! As I've been thinking about celebrating my first real mothers' day, and all that motherhood has entailed thus far, I keep thinking to myself, "wow, I have a lot of help. I don't know what I'd do without all my help..." So, thanks to everyone who is a part of these kiddos' lives. I really appreciate you.

In particular, I want to thank my mom, blake's mom heidi, and my friends jackie, brianne, and danielle. the kiddos see these wonderful ladies EVERY WEEK. you think I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not.

My mom comes over every Tuesday so I can go to work for half the day. She shows up at 9:30, I say hi, and then head out the door for work. I come back home around 2:30/3:00 and she stays while I pump. Sometimes she even stays until blake gets home. Other days I sometimes go to her house, or she'll come over for a few hours just to see the kids and hang out (and help me out). The kiddos both definitely love when she sings B-A-Bay to them. Or the mexican hat dance, that's also a fav.

Heidi (and usually Bruce too) see the kiddos every other Monday so that I can go to work. But the Mondays that she's "off" Heidi often visits anyways! Or we'll see them on the weekend or they babysit so that Blake and I can do something fun. I think they probably do evening babysitting more often than anyone else. Lately we've been taking the kiddos to Bruce & Heidi's when they babysit on a Monday (and then they take them back to our house in the afternoon so that I can just come straight home from work - it's great).  The kiddos are always happy to see them when we arrive, especially if one of them is holding the red bowl. Yes, the red bowl holds their special toys that are just at Gramma and Grampa's. Many of them make noise, and it doesn't get much better than that. :)

Jackie is one of my wonderful friends. (She was in my wedding and I was in her's - that's the wedding we brought the kiddos to at less than two weeks old.) I can not tell you how blessed I have been to have Jackie around. After she got back from her honeymoon she continued her grad school studies, and that has meant that she didn't have class all day ever day. Yes she had lots of homework, and a part time job sometimes, but despite all that, there were several months when Jackie came over ever Friday to hang out with me and the babies. Now she's all graduated, but the perfect job has not yet found her, and so she still finds a Dana-day in between her interviewing and volunteering. She is very good at reading the babies "The Barnyard Dance" often complete with motions and noises and the kiddos think that's very fun. Like me, Jackie has two younger brothers, one of which is 11(?) years younger than her, so we get to swap memories of changing our brothers' diapers and such. It's been an extra little blessing that Jackie is so comfortable with the kiddos because she has been able to come over and watch them during the day so that I can go to the dentist and a couple other appointments. And she and Dave even babysat one night so that Blake and I could go out with my parents!

My friend Brianne does have a full time job but... her office is only about 3 blocks away! So whenever Jackie comes over, we invite Brianne over for lunch! (Sometimes she comes over on a non-Jackie day too). Brianne also sews lots of things for the babies too - she made covers for their carseats that we get comments on all the time when we go out. Currently she's sewing covers for our DDR mats so that the kiddos have a padded place to play and yet Ethan won't eat the cords!

Danielle was coming over once a week during the day for a bit too when her firm cut them down to 80% time. Then I was silly enough to suggest that she work part time at the church and now, between the two jobs, she's fully employed again, so we don't get long days with Danielle anymore, but between all the times she comes over to take pictures, or drop off little gifts that she's made or bought for the kiddos, or to play games with Blake and I, I think those kids probably still see Danielle about once a week!

So thanks, thanks, thanks, to all my kiddos' "other mothers." Raising twins is hard, but you guys make it great. Thanks for all the extra hands and all the extra help, thanks for the individual attention you're able to give my kids. They would not be as well loved without you, and neither would I. happy mothers day. :D