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| Maybe I had these pictures in the last post, I'm not sure. Here's Tille taking a break from playing hard in the middle of the day. |
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| And here's Hattie. |
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| Matt's niece got married in December. At the luncheon, his nephews played with Hattie and Tille. They're really good at playing with the girls, and Hattie and Tille love them. Here's Tille learning about drinking fountains. |
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| This was on our way to Matt's niece's reception later that night. I think these dresses are so cute. Both girls walk a little differently when they get really dressed up, like they know they're fancy. Also, we do try to do their hair. We have a lot of headbands, bows, barrettes, etc. But they usually last about 2 seconds before the girls pull them out of their own or each others' hair. They don't like ANYTHING on their heads, except, weirdly enough, beanies. They'll walk around all day with a beanie. But if we try to put anything else on them, they tear it off immediately. |
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| Tille ate a crayon one day while I was working at the table. I turned around and there was orange all over the carpet, her clothes, her hands, and her face. Luckily it was a washable crayon. |
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| Aunt Jenny got these outfits for the girls' birthday. I think they're so cute and have been anxiously waiting to put the girls in them. They finally fit! Both girls were smiling and being super cute while I was taking pictures, but Tille must have changed expressions right when I took this picture. That's why she looks a little loopy. Still pretty cute though. |
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| Here's Matt's nephew playing with Hattie during Christmas Eve dinner. I think they're watching Sesame Street on his phone. The babies LOVE Sesame Street still. We can't even say the name of the show around them, because they'll start clapping, squealing, jumping, etc and find the remote so we can turn it on. And then they get mad if we don't turn it on for them. We record all the new episodes that come on, but somehow, in months of recording, we've only gotten about 20 episodes. So we've gotten to know those episodes really really well. Luckily, it's pretty good for a kids' show. |
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| The babies got chairs, baby dolls, and a rocking horse for Christmas. They mostly use their chairs to climb onto the couch to get the remote and try to find Sesame Street. But sometimes they legitimately like just sitting in them. And they mostly use their baby dolls to pull the hats off and hand them to me to put it back on. But they do also hug and kiss them. |
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| Here's our family selfie of the year, just a couple days after Christmas. Hattie on my lap, Tille standing up. |
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| Here's Tille passed out again on Aunt Kathryn's watch. I really don't know how she gets them to do this. |
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| Tille's favorite meal is spagetti and green beans or broccoli. She'll lick the plate clean. |
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| Hattie likes it too, but not quite to the same extent. Both girls are really good eaters. They don't like eggs or bananas, but they'll eat just about anything else we give them. Hattie has had really bad eczema for a few months. We've tried various lotions and creams, but nothing has really worked. Finally last week we took her off dairy and it cleared up almost immediately. She still scratches at her elbows and knees sometimes, but it's not red scaly anymore and she's not scratching hard enough to break through her skin. So it looks like she has a dairy sensitivity :( I hope she can grow out of it. |
I've been the relief society pianist for the past year(ish). With all the new changes at church, my position has been eliminated. A few weeks ago one of the bishopric counsellors asked to meet with Matt and me, and I was pretty sure I knew what was coming. And I was right! All 4 of us are in nursery now, starting yesterday. It's so great. The girls have been ready for nursery for a few months, even though they won't technically be old enough til next month. But they love playing with other kids. Church has been so so so so hard with them. We had church from 11-2; their naptime is 11:30. So usually we spent Sacrament Meeting in the hall, then we went to gospel principles (smaller class than gospel doctrine, more room to run around, people there were more open to crying babies than in the other class). The teachers in gospel principles are a young couple who said they didn't mind the babies crying, but about 10 minutes into class every week, we'd have to take one and then the other screaming baby out to the hall. We felt so bad disrupting class every week, but wanted to at least try. So then one of us would take the babies home to sleep while the other would stay for church. Now, we have church at 9 so the girls are still awake and happy. They were good all through sacrament meeting (mostly good- for some reason they both insist on sitting on my lap at church. If Matt tries to hold one they whine. They're pretty good at both fitting on me, but yesterday Hattie kept fidgeting and eventually squirmed off my lap and bonked her head on the chair. So Matt had to take her out. But still, it was the best sacrament meeting we've had in a while). Then we went to nursery, and if we weren't supposed to stay, we could easily have just put the girls in there and walked away. Once they saw the other kids and all the toys (including a few Sesame Street toys), they didn't care if we were there or not. There were 7 kids total, and they were all pretty good. There's one other teacher, who was there all last year and knows the routine. We played with toys for 20 minutes, had a snack, colored, sang songs, had a lesson, and played with bubbles. It felt very rushed (she used to have twice the time to do all that), but it was just right for the little attention spans. It was so cute to see Hattie and Tille joining in with the other kids. They sat nicely at the table and ate their snacks, shared crayons with the others, and got right in the jumble of bouncing kids to pop bubbles. I think church is going to be soooooo much easier now.
Matt's sister has this roller coaster in her basement. We had Christmas Eve dinner at her house, and Hattie and Tille had a blast playing after dinner. I had never seen anything like this, and I think it's a great idea. There little faces are so cute as they fly down the track! (Hattie in top video, Tille in bottom video)
One day Tille and Hattie were sitting in my lap. Usually one will be sitting with me, and the other will come and inch her way in until she pushes the other out. They were both pretty happy sitting in my lap this particular day, until Hattie started messing with Tille. Tille took it for a while, but finally got a little mad at the end of this video (it had been going on for 5-10 minutes before I got my camera out). More and more lately, the babies like to egg each other on. One will be playing nicely and the other will keep trying to start a wrestling match. Yesterday, Tille was playing with a box, and Hattie kept chasing her around and laughing. Tille wasn't laughing. Finally, Hattie got the box and took off , laughing all the while. She thought it was a great game. Tille didn't.
I got a sewing machine for Christmas. I took a sewing class in high school and made some pants (and a couple of frogs), and a few other little projects. And I've done little bits of sewing over the years, but I've never felt like I was competent with a sewing machine. So now I'm going to learn. I've seen lots of things on pinterest where people take old dress shirts and turn them into kids' clothes, so I thought that'd be a good starting point. Right around Christmas, one of Matt's favorite shirts finally gave out. It's had a hole growing in the elbow for a while and he would just roll up the sleeve so you couldn't tell. But finally the whole sleeve just quit. So I had a shirt to practice sewing on! Over the next few days (mostly in 10-20 minute chunks between the babies needing me) I made a little dress. I used one of their other dresses for a pattern, then just cut the shirt up. I kept the button- up front so I didn't have to do lots of hemming and such. I had to cut the collar off to size it down, and then I sewed it back on. And I made a sash out of the remaining good sleeve. I don't have a picture (maybe I'll update this later), but I think it turned out ok. It's not stellar, but it's definitely a dress and it fits the girls. I'm pretty proud of it. Matt gave me another shirt that he hasn't worn in a while, so I'm going to make another dress soon. I think I'm going to like my sewing machine.
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| Here's Tille modeling the dress I made. I didn't realize the collar looked so weird in both pictures. It's not that noticeably bad in person. :) |
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| Hattie was being cute and posing by the window too, so I had to get her picture. |
