20

20.
The girls are 20 months old. They are talking, running, pretending, and loving cotton candy. I'm amazed at how much they understand. Like when I was laying on the couch a few weeks ago being sick and they wanted to play. I told them I was taking a nap and started to 'snore'. Can you guess what they do now when I say, "Girls, let's go take a nap!"? They drop wherever they are and start snoring. It kills me.

Oh and I'm sorry that this month's batch of pictures is pretty crappy. We were sick for half of it, so there weren't many pictures taken and the ones that were are filled with messy faces, crazy hair and half naked babies. I tried to get the best ones though...

Sophie

  

 

I've said the phrase, "Sophie is crazy" at least 20 times this past month. She is. She's got this back of the throat babble/gurgle thing going on that makes her sound nuts when she talks. I really should try to get it recorded. It's pretty hilarious.

She's also constantly running, dancing, walking backwards, stomping, or climbing. She never sits still and it's getting particularly hard to get good pictures of her.

She still loves her binkie and her favorite thing is to have one in her mouth and one in each hand. It's going to be a sad day when they all disappear in about a week...

Sophie babbles all the time, but her "real" words are puppy, ball, bath, daddy, bubble, hi, bye, 'wus dat', whoa, uh-oh, please (said eeeeeeeze), cheese (said like please, but much shorter) kitty, up and...I think that's it. She's constantly mimicking what we say though. I'm thinking her vocabulary is going to explode soon.

Sophie is very independent. She usually doesn't want to be held for more than a few minutes, she does not like being strapped into a stroller, and she certainly doesn't like it when I make her go inside after playing outside. She is so friendly to everyone and is hardly ever shy and it scares me. I swear that girl could walk out of our house and find a new family to live with and it wouldn't even phase her.

Sophie loves my brother. The last two times we've seen him, she hasn't let him put her down. Yesterday, my brother went to pick up some cousins for Easter dinner and she freaked out. Arched back, kicking the floor, throwing her binky, and lots and lots of tears. It was a happy reunion when he returned. She loves him.

Lillian

 

    

 

  

I'm still trying to figure Lillian out. She can be the sweetest little girl and then she'll turn into an absolute terror in the blink of an eye. She's the {slightly} bigger girl and will remind Sophie of it daily.

For the most part though, she's the sweetest baby in the world. She cuddles, gives kisses and high fives, and has the cutest expressions when she's excited to see you. The word that always comes back to me when describing Lillian is 'adorable'.

This girl loves stuffed animals. She's got a few favorite, but for the most part anything that looks like an animal and is stuffed with beans or batting will instantly be her best friend.

Lillian is funny. I think she gets humor just a bit better than Sophie does. And she's got this sly little grin about her that makes me so incredibly happy.

Lillian does NOT like other babies at our house. I babysit a little boy from our neighborhood once a week and she is never happy about it. I'm happy to do it because I think it gives me good practice at what three kids would be like (and no, that definitely wasn't an announcement) but Lillian gets really, really possessive over me, her toys and her sister. I have to keep telling myself that when we have three kids, we'll have a baby and won't instantly have a third one their age, but I'm still pretty certain that Lillian is not going to handle a new baby very well.

And together

{This picture is hilarious to me. It was taken when we were all sick and I obviously didn't pay much attention to what was going on. Lillian's foot in in a measuring cup that was filled with macaroni and cheese. There's an empty root beer can on the couch and my children hadn't been dressed for the day. Let's just say those were a hard couple of weeks...}

This may sound silly, but the girls finally realize they are sisters. I can say, "where's your sister?" and they'll point to each other. In the morning, when one of them firsts wakes up (99% of the time it's Lillian) she's gets SO happy when she hears her sister crying. She knows it means she's awake and they get to play. A lot of times, they'll be sitting in their high chairs giggling uncontrollably to each other for whatever reason. They talk to each other. They love each other. They know they're sisters.

They also watch each other very, very closely. If Lillian gets daring and starts climbing on the retaining wall at the end of our driveway, Sophie is right behind her, ready to try it herself. If Sophie figures out how to open a bottle of lotion, Lillian is determined to figure it out for herself. It's amazing how much they influence each other. What they do, their moods, what they eat, and virtually everything else is all dependent and influenced by their sister.

Because of this, it's almost impossible for me to picture life with only one of them. What if they weren't twins? What if Sophie (baby A) was born and instead of being two minutes behind, Lillian was two years behind. I really think being a twin influences their personality. I *think* that's a good thing, but I'm also a little worried about it. There's a great debate within the twin world about what to do for school and although we won't be crossing that bridge for a while, I surprisingly think about it a lot. Do we split them up or do we keep them in the same class? They are SO dependent on each other that it scares me sometimes. Most of the time, they have to be right by their other half. I peek into their nursery class every Sunday hoping that they'll be playing with other kids, but most of the time I find them like I do at home, side by side, sticking close to their sister. I know they're young and aren't really "capable" of playing "together" yet, but it truthfully does worry me. I don't like calling them "the twins". I don't like thinking of them as a unit. I want them to be individuals. And luckily they are. I just want them to realize that and not be defined by their birth circumstances. Does that make sense? That was a complete ramble....

Basically, we love them. They have huge personalities, lots of funny little quirks and are so much fun to be around. They love everyone around them (they're especially loving our neighbors and realizing that they're going to be around and in their lives permanently) and we are constantly getting comments about our adorable, cute, silly, etc, etc twins.

Sometimes I don't like the attention, but I won't lie, with how crazy the last 20 months have been, I don't mind the praise and gloating over my children sometime. ;)