A little natural light

I know, I know. I post a lot of picture of the babies taking baths. The thing is that when you have two 10 month olds, the bathtub is a great place for them because they can't get away! I can keep them in one spot and they are content to play as long as I let them. I usually take pretty good advantage of this time by taking a bunch of pictures. I literally have hundreds (if not a thousand) pictures of them in the bathtub. The only problem with this, is the fact that bathrooms are notorious for having awful lighting. Here's an unedited picture of the babies in our apartment bathroom.

See how yellow it is? I could have used a flash, but I haven't mastered the flash in manual mode yet. Plus, I don't have one of those fash-bouncing-thingys (can't you tell I'm a real photographer? HAHA!) so there would be a blinding flash mark on the tub. I've got photoshop (which I really don't know how to use very well) and I play around with the white balance (you can do that when you open the picture in Camera Raw) and the levels and curves. Most of the time, I can get the pictures to look OK, but they usually look a lot better in black and white. That's why when Sharon took pictures of the girls in the tub, she used black and white film. It looks a lot better.

Well, in the girls' new bathroom, there's a teeny tiny window above the tub. I was shocked when I saw the difference of that one insignificant window. Here's an unedited picture in the new bathroom. 

Sure, it's not perfect and I'm obviously no professional, but look at the difference! I'll still play around with the levels a little bit, but it's so much closer to 'perfect' than bathtub pictures were before. If there's one thing this house has taught me, it's the benefit of natural light. The pictures in the post below were hardly edited at all. In fact, I think I only touched up one of them and that was to make it less bright.

Reason number 593,027 why I'm excited for our house.

12 inches too far

 The first morning we were here, I prepared the girls' bottles as usual. Sophie was the more vocal one about her hunger, so I made her a bottle, set it down maybe a foot away from her and turned to go make Lillian's. The following meltdown ensued.

She absolutely freaked. Even after I handed her the bottle, it took her a while to calm down. (Don't you love the squirting milk going into her mouth?) It was hilarious and like any good mom, I grabbed my camera to capture it. Maybe next time, I'll actually hand her the bottle instead of expecting her to crawl the 12 inches to get it herself.

We are back on the interweb!

That's right, folks. We officially have internet again. And we're officially in our house. And the girls officially have their own rooms (although, that might soon change. Explanation coming soon). And we officially have awesome neighbors. And we officially have a kitchen table (that's a big deal). And I'm officially annoying myself with all these "and officiallys" so I'm sure I'm annoying you too. 

The girls have gotten much more hilarious since we've moved here and I have many posts that I need to write. For now, I'll leave you with a few pictures. 

 Lillian

Sophie

Now, who wants to help us unpack? ;)

Home Owners

We just bought a house. We just bought a house. We just bought a house. 

Crazy. 

What's even more crazy is how we're going to be paying just a few hundred dollars more than what we're currently paying in rent. For an entire HOUSE. With a yard. And a patio. And a garage. Which is awesome because I've never even lived in a place with a garage. We have our own mailbox (or at least we will once we buy it). We have our own space. We can paint the walls florescent green with brown polka dots if we'd like because it's ours. Not that we will and not that we technically own it until we finish paying it off down the road, but it's a close to ours as we can be right now. I am thrilled.

We're turning off our internet tonight and I'm not sure when we'll be able to get it set up in the house, so it might be a little while until I blog again. I hope you forgive me though because the next time I blog, it will be coming from our house.
Holy crap.
I can't wait. 

And just because I know most of you aren't personally involved with where we live and you check this thing because of the babies, here's my newest favorite of them. 

Bath time is still my favorite.

One more thing. Sophie is getting really interested in standing up on her own, and can do it for about 30 seconds at a time. Both girls like to walk while holding onto our hands. Life's about to get real interesting at our HOUSE.

Ah! I just love saying it.
House.

Over and out. 

B.

My favorite Dads

These guys are my favorite. 

And please note that my brothers and nephews aren't my Dad. It's Ok though because I like them too. I also want to note that this is the only picture I have of my father in law on our computer. I need to be better at taking pictures at family get-togethers.

Happy Father's Day!!!

One more tiny little thing... We're buying a house. TOMORROW. I can't wait to get that pen in my hands and sign my name a million times. :)

Short and sweet and panicky

The house is finished. We're just waiting for the loan and everything to go through. I'm freaking out. I'm starting to go into panic mode. Buying a house is a huge deal. What if our neighbors hate us? Too bad. We're stuck there. What if we hate it there? Too bad. We're stuck there. Not that either of these things will happen, but the thought of permanently settling down some place is nerve racking. That sounds so funny coming from me because remember how I hate change? I hate it and yet I'm freaking out over something being so permanent. I guess our other option would be to continue paying rent and forking out almost as much as our mortgage is going to be. Not a smart option, in my opinion. 

So let the packing (yep, still haven't really done any of that) , unpacking, sod laying, and being the new kids on the block commence. I'm scared. I don't like being the new girl in town. Not one bit. 

And for no particular reason, here's a goody from yesterday.

This picture is entitled "Green beans don't even come close to raspberries."

Duck and Crawl

One of my strengths is being able to improvise. Not in a theatrical kind of way, but in a I'm-in-a-pickle-what-do-I-do kinda of way. I think working with teens and adults with disabilities for a few years taught me this skill. I knew how to redirect a not so good conversation or situation when it came up, I knew what to do in mild (or not so mild) moments of crisis, I learned to plan ahead and foresee potential problems and I learned when to act like a complete idiot if it meant making a situation better or less painful.

This skill has come in handy since I had the girls. For example, one trick that works almost every single time is something I call "The duck and crawl". The girls are in separate cribs that are along opposite walls of the nursery, with their dresser in between. When I lay the girls down for naps and bed time, the first girl watches me put the second baby down. They are usually pretty calm and happily sucking on a binkie. That is, until I leave. Then the screams begin. Seeing that their 10 months old, I've been a little desensitized by their cries. I really do believe that babies should learn to sooth themselves. Do I want to spend the rest of my life rocking my twins? Absolutely not. I'm not against a little crying. But, when I leave there is usually more than a little crying. So I've learned to master the duck and crawl. I put one baby down, put the next baby down and squat. Literally, I squat down on the ground and crawl out of the room. Ridiculous, right? I have no idea how I figured that one out, but it works almost every single time. For some reason, when the girls physically see me walk out the door, they loose it. If they see me duck, I don't know, they think I'm hanging out on the floor? I don't get it because they are fully capable of standing in their crib (and they do every single night for a few minutes before giving up and going to sleep) so you'd think they'd catch on to my little trick. I can't say that they go down without any problems, because they do. They fuss every night, but they usually don't scream.

Now if only this worked in the middle of the night when Lillian thinks it's time to play. She's not hungry, she's not too cold or too hot, she's just awake. I have an insomniac and I've given up hope that she will ever change. We really need to move and get them in separate rooms so she'll stop waking up Sophie. Luckily, the house is finished (minus the yard that we have to put in. Yep, terrified for that one) and we're going to be signing the papers any day now. Hallelujah! 

Who knows how long I'll have to do the duck and crawl. I just hope I'm not the crazy mom crawling out of their classroom when I drop them off at Kindergarten. However, I'm not entirely convinced that won't be me... 

How's that for a Wordless Wednesday? ;)

In a Heavenly trance

 

Raspberries are a definite hit at our house. 

 

Even when they're cold,

 

 they put the babies in a Heavenly trance

and they anxiously await for Dad to bring them more. 

Looks like we'll be buying lots of raspberries this summer

Telling the twins apart

The girls are fraternal. Well, actually there's a 30% change they're identical, but they were in separate sacs and each had a placenta (that's one of the grossest words in the English language. I'm sorry it just appeared on my blog) so odds say they're fraternal. Plus, the majority of people we come in contact with can tell them apart. Even when they were newborns, we could tell the apart most of the time. There were a few moments of mix ups, but we just had to take a step back, look at them again and we figured it out. There are some pretty obvious differences between them and once you know them, it's easy to know who is who.

Sophie has a heart shaped head. Her cheeks and chin are narrow and her eyes are deeper. Her head is longer than Lillian's, her forehead is smaller and she has less hair. If none of that works, just take a look at her left ear. 

It doesn't stick out as much as her right ear does. I'm not sure if this has more to do with genetics, or the fact that for most of the pregnancy, that ear was at the very bottom of the totem pole, so it got squished more. I think it's adorable, but Josh has voiced some concerns that she might not like her uneven ears when she gets older, but I really hope that isn't an issue. I guess we'll see when the time comes. 

Lillian's face is much more round. Her eyes are more like mine (although they both have my eyes, but Lillian's stick out like mine do), he face is wider, she has a significant greater amount of hair, and both of her ears poke out.

It's funny because some people that meet them for the first time, automatically realize they're fraternal, while others automatically think they're identical. Sometimes I correct people, but if I'm in a I-don't-want-to-talk-to-strangers-about-my-children mood (which I'm in probably 50% of the time) I don't argue and agree with whatever they're telling me. 

Do you see the differences?

Even in the hospital, Lillian's cheeks were chubbier.

 

And yes, most of these pictures are old. I quickly realized I don't have many recent pictures with both girls in them looking at the camera. Crawling will do that to ya.

10

*Warning: this is WAY longer than I intended it to be. I wrote a lot more than I thought I would. This isn't short and sweet by any means. Feel free to just look at the pictures. 

My babies are 10 months old. 10 months. Seriously? 10 months? Truthfully, I can't say 'where has the time gone' because I have a hard time remembering day to day life before these little ladies came into our lives. Every waking second is consumed by them and they really took over our lives in the greatest way. I'm not going to lie, I was very apprehensive when I found out we were having twins. I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I could survive. My confidence level was pretty low. However, that has changed. These girls have taught me more about myself and my capability to care for others in a way I couldn't have ever imagine. I mean, I have two children. I'm not bragging or tooting my own horn, but seriously I, Brittany Mangelson, have two children. Sometimes I'm still shocked when I walk into their room and see two cribs. Two sleeping (or awake) babies. Two matching dresses. Two adorable swimming suits hanging to dry. Two high chairs. Two car seats. It's crazy. Twins are crazy.

This past month has been a big one for the girls. They had started crawling at the last month-by-month post, but they were still a little freaked out by it. Not anymore. Holy cow. The newborn phase was a piece of cake compared to this. I am constantly making sure they aren't getting into things, eating things off the floor that shouldn't be there, trying to play in the toilet water, etc, etc. They are all over our little apartment and soon they'll be all over our house. Mobile babies are a lot more complicated that stationary babies. Either way, we love them to pieces and think the past 10 months have been a blast.

Sophie

I swear this girl has the personality of a 14 year old. She's all drama, all the time. She's hilarious and she knows it. She'll make a noise or do something cute and then look at you for your reaction. When you laugh or smile, she'll crack an ever so slight smile of success. It's absolutely hilarious.

She is obsessed with her sister. Obsessed. She usually always wants to be right next to her and I mean right next. Sometimes, she'll even crawl on top of Lillian's legs because she wants to be closer. Luckily, Lillian doesn't mind most of the time. Must be a twin thing...

Sophie makes the craziest faces. The craziest. And again, she knows she's funny. I predict that she's going to love being the center of attention and is going to take on the 'funny girl' persona. She's a complete ham.

She also dropped her butt scoot and has really mastered crawling. She's still a bit lazier than Lillian is and will give up in a tearful protest if she wants you (or something you have) and are too far away. Whereas, Lillian will become even more determined to crawl to you if you're far away.

Sophie is a fantastic sleeper. Honestly, night time would be a lot easier if we just had her. If she wakes up, it's because Lillian woke her up. She could easily sleep from 7:00pm-8:00am if she was left in peace.

Sophie has mastered cruising on furniture. She was the first to pull herself up in her crib, but didn't have much interest to do it with other furniture. As soon as she figured out she could walk along the furniture though, nothing can stop her. She goes, and goes, and goes!

Sophie is pretty dramatic (did I say that already). She's throws some pretty wicked  tantrums and can hold her breath (to save it up for a scream) so long that her face turns completely blue. It's ridiculous and most of the time I sit and laugh while she does it (that is, if she's not hurt).

She has the typical 'first born' personality. It's hilarious what those extra 2 minutes of earth life did for her.

She's had a few nicknames given to her over the past 10 months, but the one that's stuck and the one we call her 90% of the time is "Chophs". Not too far away from the typical Sophs, but we'll take it.

We went to our new house yesterday and Sophie discovered the stairs. She immediately mastered them. Our Realtor was shocked at how quickly she booked up them. I was too, but I wasn't so surprised when she tumbled down them. Don't worry, she only fell one step before she was caught, but this girl is injury prone. Before we even saw the house, she had already secured two bloody lips that day. *sigh* Broken bones are surely in her future.

one of this girl's many crazy faces

look at those lips!

standing like a champ

Lillian

Sweet, sleepless Lillian. It's true, she's sweet (most of the time) and sleeps a lot less than Sophie. She's started getting up in the middle of the night again and it's usually a battle to get her to back to slumber land. We're working on it... pray for us...

Lillian truly is the champion of crawling. She can crawl just as fast as I normally walk, which is really funny on a tiny little body. She sees something she wants and is there in a matter of seconds before she gets to it.

If there's something to pull herself up on, she will do it. Lately, she isn't happy if she's not standing.

Lillian also is learning to throw tantrums. Hers are intense. She arches her back, lets go of all her weight and slams to the ground. She obviously doesn't check to see where she's going to land, so she's actually gotten pretty hurt before. She's hit plastic toys, shoes, books, her sister, the coffee table, etc. I'm pretty good at reading the warning signs of said tantrums, so I can usually catch them before they happen. They don't happen all the time, but they are often enough for me to avoid them at all costs.

This girl loves gram crackers. I repeat, she LOVES gram crackers. One of those sugar-filled pieces of cardboard solves any and all problems she might have. Really, it is a cure-all for this girl. She gasps, flaps her arms, and gets a huge smile on her face when she realizes she's getting one. Even if her lip is bleeding (like yesterday morning. We had 3 bloody lips yesterday) she is magically cured when she's got a honey gram in her mouth.

Lillian is like a little puppy dog. She always wants to be right at my feet. Like I said, she's a fast crawler, so she's usually successful at following me around.

She loves music and starts bouncing pretty much any time any comes on. I think we've definitely got a future dancer here.

She babbles more and more every day, which makes me excited because for the longest time (and by longest time I possibly only mean a few weeks) Sophie was the one doing all the talking. Lillian says 'mama' but doesn't associate it with anyone. We're working on it though...

Lillian loves the water. Sophie does too, but Lillian really, really loves it. She'd take a 3 hour long bath if I let her, whereas Sophie is good to go after about a half hour.

She's got the sweetest personality and the cutest little grin. I still think she's the prettiest baby on the planet. Argue if you'd like, but you'll loose. Lillian is the prettiest.

And like her sister Chophs, her nickname is similarly, Chills. 

The girls are really getting good at playing with each other. Everything I read and heard said that twins only mirror play (as in play side by side, but not together) until they're over a year. That is absolutely untrue. I can't tell you how many times I've caught my girls banging on something together, giggling away. Or how many times one will be screaming (happy screaming) at the other and the other will be cracking up. My favorite is when the chase each other. It's usually Sophie doing the 'chasing' with Lillian laughing hysterically trying to get away. Lillian will crawl around a corner or something and hide from Sophie and then when Sophie catches up to her, they both bust out in giggles and Lillian takes off again. It is my absolute favorite thing they do. They are completely wrapped up in each other and it's the greatest thing to witness.

Yep, we make them do this a lot.

Their moods also affect each other a lot. When one is hurt, they both cry. When one is happy, they're (usually) both happy. When one is hungry, they both are. When one has a messy diaper, they both do. I don't know if this is so much a 'twin thing' as it is a sibling thing, but it's really interesting to see how similar these girls are, and yet they're completely opposite. 

Happy 10 months, girls. We've been on a wild, wild ride with you!

And if you made it this far and are wondering "how do you tell them apart?" I'll answer that soon. You might not be wondering, but we've been getting that question a lot lately. They are in fact, fraternal and there are some pretty easy ways to tell them apart that I will share at the beginning of next week.

Also, I think my pictures are a bit big on this post. However, I'm too lazy to get back into flikr and change it. So, deal. Please. 

Oh and I'm technically posting this on June 9th, but it's 5 minutes until midnight so I said "tomorrow", but it was really today. Why am I up so late you ask? I've got a sleeping Lillian on my lap and I've been terrified to move. I've gotta do it though. Wish me luck...

Happy Friday!

.

First off, has everyone's blogger updated? Weeeeeeird. It completely rocked my world this morning. I don't like change.

Actually, one change I am excited for is this upcoming move. Honestly, I sorta hate where we live. People aren't friendly, we live on the second floor which makes going anywhere by myself (with the girls of course) almost impossible, we don't live in a neighborhood so there's not really even a place to go on walks if I were to get down to ground level, we're a little bit frustrated with our ward (congregation at church), and I'm sick of having the apartment look messy simply because we have absolutely no storage space. Because of all this, I'm greatly looking forward to the next couple of weeks. We're doing the final walk through of our home today and then the loan needs to be finalized and then...we move! I am thrilled! Over the next month, we're going to be living in both places though, so blogging might be sparse. Since we're moving relatively close, we don't have to make one massive trip and move everything in at once. Plus, we need to order a fridge for the new home and I sorta refuse to sleep there until we have one... Anyway, I'm not rambling and this wasn't even what this post was supposed to be about, so moving on...

The weather this spring has been crazy. I don't think I have to tell any of you that, but I haven't liked it. Being cooped up with two babies all winter long was a killer and I did not really appreciate having the wettest spring in Utah's history immediately following. However, the past week or so has been wonderful! We've gone on walks in the park, played on our apartment's play ground, swam in our pool, and played on our deck. The girls LOVE being on the deck and I squeal quite loudly for all to hear. As mentioned, our neighbors aren't too friendly. We sorta know a few of them from church, but not really. There's a high turn over rate here with people constantly moving in and out, so really, we don't know anyone at all. On this particular evening, when the girls were playing on the balcony, they shocked several people below. They babies would squeal and the people walking by would jump, look up and say something like "ahhh, TWINS!" or "two babies!" or just laugh. These girls are quite a circus show, which is why I'm excited for our new house. Kids are everywhere. There are literally over a hundred in our neighborhood. Every time we've gone to see the house, there's at least a dozen kids running around the street, kids playing in the park in the center of the neighborhood and several moms/families pushing strollers. Much better than where we are now. And now I'm rambling again. Here are some pictures. And no, the babies were in no danger while these pictures were being taken. I know it looks like they could fall to their death, but they can't. 

And yes, they're in disposables. I'm not that crazy and realize that a mother of two sometimes needs a cloth diapering break.

I love that the weather is finally cooperating. 

Oh and sorry for the lack of a title. For the life of me, I couldn't think of anything to call this post. I'm not feeling clever or funny. Thus, the dot.

Edit: I hung out with Becky yesterday and all four of our babies. It was crazy. Crazy cool. She wrote about it here. You should check it out because she has an iPhone and thus has cool iPhone pictures of the us.

Another edit: The babies are TEN months old today! Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. I didn't realize it until just now. I'll start writing that post and publish it tomorrow. Ten months. That means in TWO months they'll be a year. Excuse me while I go cry.

When you wake up in the morning, it's a quarter to 2...

...and you want to find something to do, you brush your teeth!

 Anyone know that kid song? We used to sing it at work. 

Anyway...

The girls love brushing their teeth. For some reason though, we only have one toothbrush. I know, gross. These girls share everything. Bottles, toys, clothes, spoons, toothbrushes, diapers, etc, etc. We should probably get them their own toothbrush because they are starting to fight over it. They love it that much.

And yes, they just woke up from a nap and have a wicked case of bed head once again. I love that they're getting enough hair for it to be messy like that. I usually don't fix it either because it's super adorable.

It's bab-e food

Any former d.co members get the joke in the title? Probably not... anyway...

A few people have wondered how solids are going. Since we didn't do solid foods the traditional way (although I think what we did is very, very normal) I decided to revisit the subject.

Quick overview: the babies didn't really get any solids until they were 7 months old. We skipped the classic rice cereal and went straight to avocados, bananas, pears, etc. We dabbled a little into baby-led-weaning, although we didn't do it 100%, so I can't claim we followed that routine because those mama's are hardcore about it.

These girls love to eat and we've pretty much every way under the sun. I've made a lot of food by mushing it up myself (I think the phrase 'making your own baby food' is silly though. I mean, anyone can mash up a peach or stick a sweat potato in a blender. Is that really 'making' something? I find the phrase funny...), we've purchased jar and pouch baby food, and have handed them slices of melon or other fruits and let them chomp away. I absolutely love having these options.

Their newest obsession are peas, which is funny, because somewhere on this little blog of mine are pictures of their first experience with the vegetable. They did not like them and the pictures were funny. I'm too lazy to find them for you though...sorry... At first, I was a little nervous to throw some peas down on their tray, but these girls are excellent chewers (gumers?). They're really good about pinching just one and chewing it until they go for the next one. Last night, their dinner was a bottle, peas, some watermelon and some shredded cheese. Sophie was a wise little soul and magically ate all the cheese and watermelon, but 'accidentally' let 90% of her peas plummet to the floor. She definitely takes after me and now I know that cheese needs to be a desert for her that she gets after her other food.

Like I said, these girls love to eat. Off the top of my head, I can say they've had

Avocados (mushed up/whole)
Cucumber
Bananas (whole)
Scrambled eggs
Pears (whole)
Apple slices (whole)
Pancakes
Tomato
Broccoli (usually cooked, but this weekend they tried it raw)
Apple sauce
Honeydew
Gram crackers
Cantaloupe
Blueberries (mushed up and whole)
Bits of rolls
Olives
Green beans
Pasta
Peaches (purchased baby food...can't wait for fall!)
Scrambled eggs
Mandarin oranges
Sweat potato
Yogurt
Squash
Carrots (cooked whole)
Cheerios
Prunes
Lemon (surprisingly they liked it)
Oatmeal
Grapes (usually cut in half)
Watermelon...

...and several other food via pureed baby food.  One thing I never gave them was pureed meat. I'm not the biggest fan of meat (I eat it, but in very small amounts. I've been that way since I was a kid) and the thought of pureed meat make me gag. Seriously, ground up, liquefied meat? That might just be the grossest thing on the planet and I didn't want them eating it. Recently, I've been giving them chunks of chicken and turkey. We haven't done ground beef yet, because that also seems gross to me. I'm sure I'll give them beef soon...the next time we eat it, but who knows when that will be. Oh and I also never used those mesh feeders. I don't think there's anything wrong with them, but that was just one more thing to prepare and clean and honestly, I didn't want to deal with them. Plus, I like the idea of the girls getting used to the actual texture of the food and I didn't think they'd get that with the feeders. Lillian has never choked and I don't think I'd consider Sophie's incident choking either. Josh was feeding her a hard-boiled egg once and she ended up throwing it up. I got a little scared, but she handled it really well and worked it up on her own.

So there you have it. A pretty boring post about what the twins eat.  My goal is to get them eating basically what we're eating in the next few weeks. That's the whole point of baby-led-weaning, but people do it from the start of introducing solids. Our usual routine is they'll drink 6-7oz bottles and then I'll give them 'food' 3 times a day. It varies completely though because I don't eat 3 times a day. I'm a snacker (this is probably the core problem to my weight gain). So, if I'm eating an apple, I'll cut off a few chunks for them and let them go for it. We're also working on sippy cups. I really want the girls to be weaned off the bottle by a year (or maybe 13 months since that's their developmental 12th month). They're not taking too fondly to it though. I've discovered I can't expect them to drink their milk from them because they freak out because they still don't really get it. Oddly enough, when their cups are filled with diluted juice, they do pretty good. I don't like giving them sugar-loaded juice beside for constipation purposes, so I usually just put a little water in them.

Aaaaand that's how we do it.




Chompin' on cucumbers and tomatoes.  

and one of Sophie devouring a tomato because it's hilarious.  

They love their food!