Happy (belated) Birthday

I wrote the text of this last week, but didn't download pictures till just now. It's been hard to blog with my online class I'm teaching, in addition to my grueling sleep schedule of as many hours as possible a day! :)

Kara, Anna

This last one is the only one from the actual day.

And now: more than you want to know about our lives as of late...

18 months already...sometimes it seems like it's gone quickly, other days I wish it would go faster. :) We are having nap issues lately, since they are trying to transition to an afternoon nap from a late morning nap, but are extra grumpy and don't want to eat lunch before they nap (even when they tell me they want to eat-awesome), so don't sleep for long because they're hungry. And then they end up going to bed really late because their whole schedule is pushed back by having lunch at 3. Fun.

I do love that: they're growing up, learning more (they remember everything, and the randomest things), and talking more. Not adding a lot of words, but communicating a lot better with what they do say. I think they could say more than they do, since whenever they do say something new and I praise them for it, they usually just laugh and never say it again. Anna's new words are "bagel" and "Michael." (not a stretch, since her favorite made up word has been "miggle" - often used in place of yes). I think they've mostly given up their standard phrases: "dah buttah buttah" for Anna and "buzzah bah" for Kara, though they do start saying them as soon as they wake up sometimes. They still love all their animal sounds and now make a "monster" sound too (which they realized sounds like the garage door, so the past few days they've been making that sound and saying "dada" - haha).

Andrew had taught them some cheers/fight songs (if you're yelling for the zebras, say go!), and this week taught them the Arkansas woo pig sooie thing, which I think is SO dumb (sorry to my AR family). That's what I get for taking a nap one day while he fed them dinner. :) He also told them some potential baby names, and they've taken to the one they can say - Abby - so they now call the baby Abby (sorry little one if you're a boy)...which has since become Ah-buzzah buzzah. Kara said that one day and cracked Anna up, so they just went back and forth saying it and laughing at each other and haven't gone back to Abby. They love snuggling my baby, which is nice since they wouldn't usually snuggle me.

Temper tantrums are more common, though they understand what they are, so if I say "are you having a temper?" or "are you going to have a temper?" they'll tell me "yeah" a lot of times. We also do a "stop crying" clap and chant. Too bad those things don't help more.

We've been working on colors and I think they have most of the basic ones down (finally!). We also started working on letters - what they look like and what they say. They are remembering those surprisingly well, too - I mostly just want them to realize all of the sounds they can make so they'll start talking more. O is the favorite, and they'll point it out wherever they see it, but they know a lot of them.