who are these short people living in my house?

Remember all those times when I thought Noah and Lily were changing and growing quickly? I was wrong. Absolutely wrong.



Well not wrong, per se, but the amount of changing they've been doing lately puts all those other times to shame. I literally have different beings in my house than I did last month.



And no, they haven't started walking (although Noah is absolutely capable) or talking. But they are definitely different. For one thing, all of a sudden they show preferences, make choices, and communicate those desires. Gone are the days when I could just plunk any food in front of them at lunchtime and expect them to unquestioningly accept it. They make point and grab gestures to everything else on the table, especially Mommy's food and drink. And after a few repetitions, they usually seem to understand that they can't have it. (And then I hide it. Because understanding doesn't mean accepting.)



Just a few minutes ago, I was cleaning up the kitchen when I realized I couldn't hear the TV anymore. (We don't usually keep it on when the babies are awake, but Daddy had been catching up on soccer.) I looked into the living room to see the TV blank with some unrecognizable setting on the screen. And Noah looked at me innocently, holding the remote to his ear as if it was a telephone. It was too cute for me to get upset, even though remotes are off-limits. So then I took the remote and proceeded to get the TV back from never-never land. When I finished and looked up, Noah was sitting patiently on the floor and watching the TV. He then pointed at it, grunted, and looked at me. And then I realized that he thought, since I was doing things with the remote, that it was "movie time"--and he was all set! Again, too cute for me to resist, so they're now watching a sign language DVD.



Speaking of sign language, there's another area where the twins have exploded. Before their birthday a month ago, they could sign "more", and Lily was beginning to pick up "milk". Now, they also do eat, bath, please, hat, dog, ball, and baby. A lot of these are not super consistent, and there are a couple that they don't both do. But they're beginning to generalize and use them out of context, which is really exciting. They've also learned several body parts in the past month: they now know tongue, hair, head, nose, ear, and bellybutton. It's ridiculous.

I have a couple videos I want to put up, but I think I'll do them a little later...