So far this year has been a blur. Mostly because of work. January is always a rough month at our company because we have year end close, new budgets, and board meetings. Usually we have about 3-4 weeks from the time the budgets are finalized to get the board packages ready for the meeting. This time, for reasons that don't matter but are completely ridiculous and stem entirely from bad leadership, we had less than a week. It was awful. And, for some unexplainable reason, everything else came up during the same week. Basically everything I've ever worked on in 9 years at this company came up and people had questions and needed extra reports. January is also usually a rough month for Matt. Most of the communities he manages take a break from meeting towards the end of the year, and then they all want to meet in January. Plus, he has a lot going on with weather in January, getting phone calls from people asking about plows, following up with plow companies, maintenance issues, etc. So it's been busy. And, just for a little extra fun, the girls decided not to sleep in January. They were waking up every night between 1 and 3. They took turns, so maybe Hattie would wake up one night and cry, and then Tille the next night. But whoever woke up first, the other would always wake up. Matt and I are all for letting them cry themselves back to sleep, but they'll cry for an hour or more, and then we don't get any sleep. So we were spending most nights on the living room floor with babies rolling around on us and kicking our faces. After weeks of this, we decided we had to power through and let the babies cry and if that meant 0 sleep for us for a few nights, then that's what we had to do. I think the babies heard us talking, because they didn't wake up that night. And it's gotten better. They still wake up every now and then, but they usually sleep til around 5 or 5:30. We're still exhausted, but at least we can stay in bed all night usually now. And now, I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
At the end of every episode of Sesame Street, there's about a 30 second clip of Cookie Monster doing something. He'll share cookies, or smell cookies, or dance, or run. Tille likes to run with him. If I ever need her to calm down or get extra energy out, I say 'Run run run!' and she'll run around the house for 10 minutes. She runs around the living room, the hall, the kitchen,wherever. Sometimes Hattie will run with her, sometimes she'll make me carry her while I run with Tille.
I caught this video of the girls in their bath a few weeks ago. Every night in the bath, I use one of their toys to pour water over their head, then I rub in the shampoo and rinse it out. This is Hattie learning to wash Tille's hair. I love watching them learn how to do things, and their giggles here are just the best.
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| A couple weeks ago Matt's 2 year old nephew came over to play for a couple hours. He wore the girls out running around and playing with toys, and this was the result at dinner an hour later. :-) |
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| The girls have started learning to use silverware. Tille likes to concentrate really hard and try to spear her food with her fork; Hattie prefers if I put food on her fork and hand it to her. But sometimes she'll manage to stab her food herself. These 2 pictures are the first time we tried giving them forks. Tille with the pink plate, Hattie with the blue. |
Tille loves to put mine and Matt's shoes on and walk around. All the time, she'll surprise us by suddenly having two shoes on and clomping around. She's definitely a shoe girl.
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| A few weeks ago both girls had head injuries within a day of each other. I had taken Hattie and Tille outside to play and get some fresh air one afternoon. They were just walking around the driveway, and Tille face planted on the pavement. Her wound kind of looks like the Adidas logo. |
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| The day before that, Hattie slipped in her pajamas and hit her head on some furniture. She's had several wounds in that same spot, so at least she's just scarring over the same old scar, rather than covering her face with new scars. |
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| One Saturday morning Matt had to go to a work meeting. He had just set up a tv in the basement a few days before, so I took the girls downstairs with me and let them watch a movie while I exercised. This was my view. Pretty great, right? |
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| Sometimes during the day when the girls are getting grumpy, I ask if they want to dress in pretty dresses. They love wearing pretty dresses. Sometimes they'll choose their big poofy red dresses from their Michigan cousins, sometimes they choose their unicorn dresses. Always, once they're dressed up, they like to run to Matt to show him how pretty they are and they walk around the house being fancy. |
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| Here's Hattie being fancy while she colors in her unicorn dress. And by 'colors', I really mean 'organizes'. Hattie's favorite pasttime is cleaning up. Every time we get the crayons out, she moves them from one bag to another, or she'll dump them out and put them all back. We have toy box shelves in their room, and she'll take a box down, empty all its contents, and then put them all back in. Over and over and over. Often at meal times, she'll move her food all to one side of her plate, then to the other, back and forth, back and forth. In nursery, if she starts having a hard time, I just ask her to clean up the toys, and she'll be set for the rest of the hour. |
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| This is Tille being pretty in her unicorn dress. |
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| Here are the 2 dresses I've made for the girls out of Matt's old shirts. And look! They let us put headbands on them! One of the headbands even stayed in place all the way to church. It was gone about 2 minutes into sacrament meeting, but that was a major win. |
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| Tille being a model |
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| Hattie being a model |
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| A few days ago we were at Matt's mom's house and the oldest cousin here had all the babies around him watching a video on his phone. Tille had found the 2 year old's shoes and got them both on her feet by herself. |
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| Yesterday, after waking up way too early, the babies fell asleep again in the living room. Matt went downstairs to exercise, I was down the hall blow drying my hair, and they just slept and slept and only woke up right before I had to leave for work. It was so cute. |
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| A few weeks ago Matt's sister dressed Hattie and Tille up in some outfits she bought them, and took them over to their cousin's house. I think these pictures are great (Tille with no vest, Hattie with the vest) |