Anna...

Gets really high fevers. Always has. It really scares me every time her little body gets red and shaky. Today (Friday) she was acting tired all morning, which I chalked up to the fact that for the last several nights they've been going to bed late and getting up early. Then after we got back from playing with friends and I got them down for their naps (Anna walking herself over to the bed to let me know it was time), I noticed she was really hot and her breathing was quick and shallow. She seemed to feel better after some Advil when she woke up, but that wore off faster than it's supposed to and all my hot sweetie wanted to do was rest on mom or dad (Anna has never voluntarily snuggled) and go to sleep without dinner. I had to force her to drink something, since all she wants to do is nurse and we're weaning due to my diminished milk supply due to the new baby, so that wasn't going to get the job done. She woke up a little bit ago screaming and we forced some more Advil and liquids in her, choking and screaming...now she's sleeping peacefully for a few hours till she wakes up and we do it again. Here's praying she gets well soon! Kara never seems to get sick with the same severity as Anna, which is a blessing. Nan's a little bit of a sickie - she has that peanut sensitivity too...

SATURDAY MORNING UPDATE: Anna was up one more time in the middle of the night screaming and being force-fed Advil and water. However, she seems to be fever-free right now, just having to tell us she's pooped much more frequently than normal (and once in the middle of the night - ew). I also finally checked teeth, and Anna has a new incisor on the top L (probably for several days now), the first new tooth since they got their 1 year molars at 12 months. They're both cutting their other incisors too. Luckily getting teeth has never seemed to bother them.

Cleveland Fun: Around the House

Cleaning up "dirties." They started to love vacuuming after using this little vacuum with Grandma - Kara more than Anna. Not only do they like to point out the dirty dishes, but Kara has been known to point out "dirties" on the floor and tell me we should get the dustbuster. As I said to Andrew, someone needs to be responsible for keeping the house clean - and as he responded, it might as well be an 18 month old. :) I think it's because I'm nesting a little and so have been cleaning more around the girls.

They climbed up and down these stairs who knows how many times. Andrew was sitting with them to keep them from going up and going to Peter's room. Unfortunately the stairs are slippery and Kara took one huge tumble all the way down from the top as I watched and screamed. I was just as upset about it as she was, and she was unhurt. I've fallen down those stairs too, which is how I know they're slippery.

Cleveland Fun: Peter's Room

They loved playing in Peter's room - he has a mirror on the floor they can look in and this fun chair. It also was my room until a few months ago, so they may remember being there. Last month they also had a slight tongue obsession - we had been looking at pictures of them from last year and they thought their big toothless smiles were them sticking their tongues out. :)

Peaches in Jail

If you are familiar with me and my parenting/worrying style, you should know that I view getting the girls to eat and drink enough as my chief daily goal as a mom. Anna ate some peaches "in jail" one time and thought it was so funny, so it continued for a few weeks. Whatever works. I think we're over the eating in jail phase, but I can always pull that back out if need be.

My Helpers

For the past month or so, they have loved standing at the counter and "helping" me make food. It started with oatmeal - they push the buttons on the microwave, help me stir, and shake the cinnamon on top. Here they're helping me make a bagel with cream cheese and jelly for their afternoon snack. It's usually a debacle of cream cheese and jelly eating, but it's fun for them. They also like to point out all the dirty dishes, make their sound for "yuck" and tell me that I should wash them. I tell them that daddy washes the dishes (we've been splitting that duty lately), so then they say "yuck" and "dada." They've seen me do dishes a lot lately, though, so most of the time it's "yuck" and "mama." Thanks, sweets.

Best Friends

They are so cute together lately - they interact and show that they love each other more and more every day. They love holding hands when they walk around - taking turns as the leader. They also like to tackle each other with hugs and kisses on the bed. Of course they play together too - they generally want to do what the other is doing. It's helpful to us that they will now also go retrieve the other when we ask them to - sometimes this is achieved verbally, sometimes by hand holding, sometimes by pushing. :) Yesterday when we played with Play Do Kara pulled her chair out and moved it so it would be directly next to Anna's. Just a tiny example of the niceness that goes on between them every day. Best friends - and my loves.

My first and best love and I started dating 10 years ago today. That's a long time. I am so thankful for him - and for how much we have both grown and changed over the past 10 years. It's embarrassing to think about how young and silly I was 10 years ago as a freshman in college when I "liked Andrew" and pined for him, frustrated by the fact that we were "best friends" and nothing more. Silly how long those few months were before he approached me about dating instead of just being friends (even mentioning marriage). And how we had a dance party in my room when he left after his historic speech. Those were the days. I have to admit, though, that I enjoy these days so much more. As I watch my love provide for us, husband me, and father my children, I am filled with joy at the lives God has given us. Most of the time anyway - I do still have some of that silly insecure girl in me...which is okay, it reminds me how far we've come.

Happy Birthday

My little brother Michael's birthday is today...so here's Anna saying Michael, one of her favorite words (not her best effort, sorry), and the ensuing antics - dancing, saying bye bye, and more Michael.

No offense to my other siblings who had or have birthdays around this same time - I think they have said Matt before, but Sarah's a little hard. We'll work on it. They do love the pictures of you we have and do the same "bye bye" and "more" routine when we look at them.

Loving the Weekend

We spent a lot of time at home hanging out, but we also had a couple of fun outings to spice things up.

Hanging out on the window sill with dad made them so happy, but made me almost have a heart attack. Luckily no one fell off.

Fun outing #2 was to Babies R Us to finally get potties. They were more excited about the seats, as you can see. They've since become excited about the process of using potties - they love processes or any series they can repeat. Kara was sick and then I've been sick, though, so we haven't really started trying to use them. We tried once when they asked yesterday and after sitting and getting up many times, Anna peed on the floor. At least they want to try even if they can't figure it out just yet - as long as they're mostly trained by the time the new baby comes...diapers for 3 are not an exciting prospect.

Our first fun outing was to Pet Smart to spend perhaps the best $17 we've ever spent. They LOVE their fish. He's named (of course) Ah-buzzah buzzah. I call him Buzzah for short. They will stand up on chairs at the counter forever and watch him - the first night we got him it was extremely hard to get them to go to bed - they kept running back to check on him. They especially love feeding time (poor overfed fish). It's super cute - if I ask if they love Buzzah or if he's their best friend they both say "yeah" and get so excited. They give him kisses (fish kisses, of course) and he seems to like them, too...he swims around and looks at them while they examine him. Their smiles around him are priceless. Only a small taste of what's to come with the new baby, I'm sure.

Speaking of the new baby - I've felt it moving for 3-4 weeks now on occasion, but last week I started feeling it kick consistently - my favorite part. The first time I felt a series of kicks in the same place I invited the girls to come feel it too. Anna sat on my belly and kicked it, joining in on the fun. Kara brought me a boot. Girls, you're so funny. I've only felt 1 kicking...we'll see for sure at our ultrasound in a couple weeks and will share the gender then too. I'm thinking 1 boy, Kara and Anna still think "girl girl." :)

A Pierce Christmas

As I mentioned before, Nana, Pop and Stu came up for a pre-Christmas celebration (a month ago now). Some photos of our Pierce Christmas celebration (these collages look so small, but there were too many pictures!)

Kara took her Christmas unwrapping very seriously. Toothbrush (a favorite), putting things back in the box and closing it, trying to get every last tiny piece of wrapping paper off, picking the exact present she wanted, etc. And this bow was passed between who knows how many people and presents.

Anna was just a little less serious - showing off her naked babies, her bow, wrapping her babies in tissue paper, brushing her teeth (that one was serious, though), and Play Do, a new favorite. Post morning snack time is apparently Play Do time. Every day they walk over to their table, sit at the chairs, grab the Play Do and tell me they want balls and snakes (I am not creative with Play Do, clearly).

Checking out their new table and chairs, which goes with their kitchen - very fancy - though we had to take the breakfast bar off to get it to fit. Sit and spin...mostly just for the music, but they do spin sometimes too. Photo album from Aunt Jill - they loved the gift tag (Mary and Jesus) so much that I put that in...and stockings.

A clip of their present opening. Typical girls. And typical Anna Stu stare-down at the end.

Post-Christmas decorating of our tree - all their idea - so cute. I didn't trust them with having ornaments on it this year (and we just put it up the day of gift opening).

More Spaghetti, I Say!

We had spaghetti (okay, whole wheat rotini) for the first time the other day. It was the first time they had accepted spaghetti sauce...we had tried before. Now they can't get enough and noodles with sauce is the lunch of choice. They still don't like to be dirty, though, so they tell me their hands are dirty and I have to remind them we'll wash them when they finish many times throughout the meal.

First time - Kara's a little messy (and mad she doesn't have the camera), but not so bad.

I love these that Andrew took of my sweet spaghetti faces on another, messier day - I think they get messier when he feeds them. :)

Kara, then with a fish face. (Fish kisses are also popular).

Kara, Anna.

Anna (love how one eye closes when she smiles really big - haha) and her fish face and hands (showing how a fish swims). Much of their communication is their own made up signs these days.

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.

Babies

Sitting in her baby stroller - Anna looking on and mad that she doesn't have one of the babies.

Making their babies walk. By the way, they prefer their babies naked, just like they prefer being naked. They get SO excited whenever we take their clothes off.

Story time started again today (we moved up groups, so now they're the youngest). We danced, sang, read books, and they loved the stickers they got at the end (then I am pretty sure they ate them after we got home-Anna definitely ate half anyway). However, when I asked them about story time when we got home, what they remembered was that there was a girl who was crying. They kept saying baby and showing me that she had tears, then saying mama and showing me that her mama gave her a hug. While we were there, they blew her kisses and kept pointing at her since she was so sad. My little empathetic sweeties! :)

Sweet Shots with Nana and Stu

Andrew's family came to celebrate Christmas with us the weekend before the actual day. The girls were really excited, since they remembered the last time Nana and Pop visited - any time Nana and Pop were mentioned they pointed to the door, expecting them to walk in any minute. :) They also started to say "Nana" and "Pop" when I asked them who was coming to see us. Uncle Stuart also came, which we found out the day before or so. They had started saying "Stu" awhile before (okay, so it sounds like "shoe") and were really proud of themselves. They didn't quite have time to process that he was coming too before I took the video, though.

They love saying Nana, Pop and Stu so much that they now just randomly cycle through their names out of nowhere. And the response to any question that starts with "who" is always Nana, Pop and Stu over and over.

Kara gives the Pierce baby staredown to Stu. Even though they were excited about and loved Stu and Pop (and told me quite often they would give them hugs and kisses), they were more than wary of them the whole time, and getting within 2-3 feet of either was an improvement. They ended up warming up to Stuart a little more than Pop. So silly.