Hattie and Tille's personalities are coming out stronger and stronger.  Hattie is learning to be a really good big sister.  Any time Tille is sad or hurt, Hattie will give her a hug or pick out a toy and hand it to her.  Last week Tille was coughing in the bathtub and Hattie reached over and patted her on the back.  She sure loves her sister!  She's also learning to help.  Last night after the bath I had dried and lotioned Hattie and was doing Tille.  Hattie picked up the lotion bottle and handed it to me.  I would get some, then set the bottle down to rub the lotion on Tille, and Hattie would pick up the bottle again and hand it to me when I was ready.  It was pretty cute.  I have a big green double nursing pillow.  Lately, I just have to ask Hattie to get the big green pillow, and she'll run over and grab it and try to drag it to me.  It's a little too big for her, but she really tries.  If I give Hattie a wet rag or paper towel or anything and ask her to clean something up, she's really good at wiping it around.  And if I ask her to throw something away, she'll lift the lid on the garbage can and put it in.

Tille is really into learning how things work.  We have the standard baby toy that's a stick on a base and it has rings to stack up the stick.  Tille was determined to learn how to put the rings on.  She would sit and try and get really frustrated when she couldn't do it.  But then she started being able to get the rings on faster and faster.  Until one day she mastered it- and then she would sit and stack all the rings, dump them off, stack again, repeat, repeat, repeat forever until we made her go to bed.  She didn't crack a smile or a laugh or pause to look around.  She concentrated hard and practiced a ton.  We have a baby gate/wall that was in front of the fireplace, and we put all sorts of forbidden things behind it (lamp, diaper wipes, dirty diapers, etc- all the things our babies most want to play with).  Tille and Hattie both learned how to move it around so they could get behind it.  So Matt arranged dining chairs and high chairs on their sides with the legs sticking through the gate, and the gate folded a couple times to lock it into place (I'm not describing it well, but basically it was a tangle of gate and chair legs).  Tille took her time and studied the construction, and then moved the chairs away and got into the gate.  So we've given up on the gate.  Now Tille is really into buckles.  When I take them downstairs to play, she spends most of her time standing by the stroller studying the buckles and trying to see how they work.  She does the same with her high chair.  And anytime I buckle her into anything, she hands me the pieces of the buckle and watches closely to see what I'm doing.

Ever since the babies were born, I've been expecting them to poop in the tub.  Other than a couple little poops in their first week or two, we haven't had any.  I was starting to think that my girls just weren't interested in bath poop.  And then this week happened.  Saturday night Matt was bathing the girls and I was cleaning the kitchen.  Suddenly Matt yelled 'Tille's pooping!'  I ran in and he handed me Hattie and got Tille out fast.  He cleaned up while I got the girls ready for bed.  I think we were both so surprised, we didn't really know what to do.  He bleached everything and we called it good.  The next night, I was bathing the girls while Matt was cleaning.  They were playing nicely and then Tille got the look.  She pooped again and I got them out of there as fast as I could.  Again, Matt cleaned up while I got the girls ready for bed.  Thankfully we've had 2 poop-free nights in a row, but I'm paranoid now that Tille just likes pooping in water.
And now, some pictures.

My boss's wife works (runs?- I'm not sure) for an online boutique girl's clothing store.  Every now and then he'll bring in some outfits for the girls.  Usually they're super cute frilly dresses.  Most of them are still too big- their sizes are from XS to whatever, rather than 9-12M, etc. So I have a bag of really cute dresses that I'm excited for Hattie and Tille to grow into.  A few weeks ago he brought in these dresses.  They're still a little too big, but they're pretty cute.  If you look really close, you can see that they're unicorns.  There's a face on the chest and a little horn sticking up at the collar.  Hattie loves  putting on frilly, lacey clothes.  These dresses have flowers and beads and lace and frills and everything.  I put it on her and she just sat and looked at all the details.

Every now and then we have a girl from down the street come and babysit.  The girls DO NOT like her.  They scream and cry the whole time she's there, whether it's 1 or 3 hours.  Luckily, the babysitter has little siblings who were sad babies, and screaming babies don't bother her.  Also, as a coincidence, her family has just started going on volunteer trips to the Mexican orphanage with A Child's Hope Foundation, so she's trying to earn money so she can go on the next trip.  So we're happy to let her babysit and she's happy to sit with the babies while they cry.  A couple weeks ago Matt and I went to my friend Emily's wedding in Springville.  Matt's sister babysat some of the time and our neighbor girl babysat the last few hours.  I assumed the girls would be at their wits end after a day with other people, and I was scared for how they would treat their babysitter.  But she said they actually only cried for a few minutes at the beginning.  She said if she stays on one side of the room and lets them play on the other side, they're happy.  Phew!  I'm glad they're learning to be ok with strangers.  Anyway, this picture and the next are from a few weeks ago.  Matt had to go to a meeting before I got home from work, so our neighbor girl came over just for an hour or so before I got home.  Hattie and Tille were screaming when I walked in, and cried the whole time the babysitter was putting on her shoes and saying goodbye, and cried when I took them downstairs to play for a few minutes, and cried when we came upstairs to play.  I wanted to see how their hair would work with gel (practice for their Halloween costumes), and since they were crying anyway I wasn't worried about making them mad by doing their hair.  So I tried, and I got these sad little spiky-haired girls (Hattie above, Tille below).  They stopped crying a couple minutes later.

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Hattie and Tille love animals.  If an animal (any kind) comes on tv, they get excited and point and laugh.  They're still pretty timid around animals and take a lot of coaxing to pet one, but they love seeing animals.  Here they are playing with Arthur at FHE. (Hattie in white shirt, Tille in pink shirt)

They love love love shoes.  If either baby sees a shoe lying around (or in a closet), they have to try putting it on their feet, then my feet, then Matt's feet.  And they're getting comfortable with wearing shoes for an extended time.  Tille wore hers all day yesterday.  Tille above, Hattie below.

When I lie on the floor, the babies use me as a pillow.  Usually they'll kneel on the floor next to me and lean their elbows on my chest with their hands propping up their head.  But sometimes they'll climb right on me.  This is Tille being super comfy. She sat like than on me for a while. That wasn't a fresh diaper. 

The Bodens handed down their little tykes car for Hattie and Tille.  And the girls LOVE it.  For a while we had it in the basement, and they would crawl all over it and push it around.  Now we have it in the backyard.  Anytime we go outside, they climb in and ask for a ride.  We just push them around and around the cement area and they laugh and smile and honk the horn and turn the wheel.  This is Hattie showing off her sweet sweet ride.

Here's Tille looking for acorns.

Both girls are chewing acorns about half a second before I fished them out.

I love how they hang their arms out the window like they're so chill.  What you can't see is that Hattie's other arm is around Tille's shoulders.

Hattie's having a blast while Matt drives her around.

On Fridays, Matt's sister Kathryn watches the girls for a few hours.  Usually his other sister Kim and his niece Tyler will bring their boys over to play (5 kids total, all under 2).  I love that theses babies will get to grow up being friends, and that my girls get to learn to socialize with other kids.  Last week, they all went on a field trip to a petting zoo in Eden (Ogden Valley, near PineView).  They got to see dogs and turkeys and goats (and probably other animals), and they got to ride a horse and a tractor.  Kathryn said the girls had a lot of fun watching the animals, but got scared if anything came too close.  Tyler posted a picture of her baby right next to a fence as a dog came running up.  In the background, Hattie and Tille were running the other direction as fast as their little legs could go.  Haha!  In the farm pictures, Hattie has two pigtails and Tille has one.

Both girls love anything resembling a seat.  They'll play in their carseats for almost an hour before they get bored.  We had to hide their baby rockers because they kept climbing in and rocking way too hard.  At church if they get antsy, I'll sit them on a chair next to me and they'll sit and swing their legs and wave at everybody and be happy for a while.