turn, turn, turn

Word has reached me from afar that I have been lax in posting. And I knew that, but when my mother-in-law brings me word from six hours away that her coworkers have been wondering if things are okay, then I suppose it's time to update! Rest assured that I still have all my fingers and that my children are still doing adorable things. If they would do those adorable things a little bit slower, I might take time to breathe and post a little more often.






Noah and Lily are almost eighteen months old. A year and a half!! Unbelievable. Every week they develop new aspects to their personalities and seem more and more grown up all the time. Some developments:

• We are still signing, even though Mommy has gotten lazy about trying to research and teach new ones. At last count each of the twins was using over 70 signs.


• The reason Mommy has gotten lazy is that the babies are now talking. Talking! They often sign at the same time, which is helpful in distinguishing whether "ba-ba" means "bye-bye", "pumpkin", or "zebra". I've counted about a dozen distinguishable words from Noah--I know there are more, but a lot of them sound like "da" so I'm not counting them yet. Lily's vocab has absolutely exploded--she says over 80 words and learns more almost every day.
  
  
  
• Babies this age are completely exhausting, and an absolute BLAST! Scott and I have so much fun with them! It's hard to give up playing with them and go do housework, because it's just too much fun to watch them play. (Oh, and they scream like banshees if we stop paying attention to them. That too.) Sometimes I find myself just staring at one of them as they look at a book or play with a toy. Every facial expression, every turn, every movement is fascinating.


• What is it about being outside? Lily and Noah could spend absolutely every moment outdoors, and probably never be sad, tired, or hungry. They would gladly pick up rocks and dirt (and dog poo) for weeks and happily waste away to nothing. I can fix any bad mood simply by mentioning "outside"--and they both make a mad dash and start grabbing at the door. I'm not looking forward to the cold months when our outdoor activity is restricted, but I'm glad we don't live in a cold, unpleasant climate.
  
  
• Both of the kiddos are absolutely enthralled with aspects of going to the bathroom. This, along with a history of horrible diaper rash, has prompted me to plan to potty train them next week. I may be absolutely crazy, but we're going to give it a whirl while I have a week off. I just don't like the idea of keeping my kid in diapers when she tells me she's pooping, you know?

In recent photographic history, we enjoyed a visit from Grandpa and Grandma in mid-October, dressed up and went trick-or-treating for Halloween, and are currently hosting Gemma and Granddad for a couple of days. In recent un-photographic history, Scott has been out of town for trainings for about four weeks out of the past month and a half, so we're glad he's done with those for a while. As for me, I finally took the EPPP, the beastly licensing exam for psychologists. And I passed! So now the only things I need to do are to pass the oral exam, finish my postdoctoral supervision, and pay the state of Texas a lot of money, and I will finally finally FINALLY be a psychologist!

Okay, pictures. Grandpa with Lily:

Here's Noah with his (tiny) pumpkin. We let the babies choose their own, and I'm pretty sure he found the smallest one there. (I think he thought it was a ball, because he kept throwing it...)

Lily was less content to pose with her chosen veggie. I had to catch a shot of her as she attempted to climb off the wall.

Grandma with her grandbabies. Not sure what they're looking at, but it's not the camera.

Aren't I cute?

Here we are carving the (tiny) pumpkins on Halloween. This task was made more frustrating by the fact that I had kept them in the back of the fridge since our pumpkin patch day to keep them nice. But the back of our fridge freezes things. In case you're wondering, I don't recommend trying to carve tiny frozen pumpkins. Also, this picture is misleading: the babies didn't help carve pumpkins. They just kept trying to eat the seeds.

The end result:

Here's their Halloween costumes, although they looked cuter in person. Lily was Dorothy, and Noah was the cowardly lion. Which was fitting, because he was afraid of the costume for weeks. Oliver was Toto, but he had to play his role from inside our house, because he is insane and tries to kill other dogs with his high-pitched yelps of death.

And Scott dressed as himself. Note the dark colors and law enforcement t-shirt... he did a great impersonation!

My first kid-to-Mommy flowers. Now I just need a vase...