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| The babies must have had a tough morning. This was how their lunch went that day. |
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| Here are the girls on their 18 month birthday! Hattie sucking her fingers, Tille playing with the blocks |
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| Hattie and Tille have been wrestling a lot lately. Tille is usually on top and Hattie is usually trying to get out from under her. I have a great video of it, but I can't get it to upload, so just imagine it. I can never quite tell if they're mad at each other or having fun, but usually they come out smiling when it's over. |
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| Here are the babies watching their show. Sesame Street. It's their favorite thing on earth. |
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| Every now and then, Hattie will figure out how to get past the home screen on my phone (even though it's locked) and she gets into the camera and takes selfies. After each selfie, she squeals with delight at her cunning. |
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| A couple weeks ago Matt and I went to the season home-opening game for RSL. We took this picture when we first got there, before the game started. That's why the stadium isn't full yet. The games are always a lot of fun. The big supporter section of the stadium (fan club) is at the south end, and they have a full drum section that plays through the whole game. It's really pretty cool. This time they also let off a few smoke bombs and unfurled huge banners that covered the whole section. |
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| This is their first time playing outside after the snow melted. Matt said they just wandered around the back yard for 40 minutes and loved the fresh air. Hattie in white, Tille in pink. |
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| They've been getting lots more outside time since then. They were at Matt's sister's house a few days ago for about 4 hours and spent almost the entire time in her backyard, swinging and playing in the sandbox. |
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| Both girls had a cold earlier this week. I like to give them their medicine in the bath, because they can't run away and when (not if) they spit it all out I can just rinse it off. This particular night, Hattie took her medicine pretty well, but Tille wanted no part of it. She was hiding in the corner of the bathtub making sure that I had zero access to get the syringe in her mouth. I asked Hattie if she could help Tille feel better about taking her medicine. Immediately, Hattie moved closer to Tille and put her arms around and kept giving her big hugs. It was heart-meltingly cute. I called in Matt and he took a few pictures, so of course they looked up and smiled perfectly. Just the best. Tille closest to the faucet, Hattie with her arms around Tille. |
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| A couple days ago the girls were giving each other rides in their car, pushing and pulling the car around. I got a good video, but again, I'm having a hard time with videos today. |
I've been meaning to write this post for so long, and now I can't think of any of the stories I was going to tell. Let's see what I can come up with...
Whenever I need to check the girls' diapers, I ask if I can smell their bums, and they'll come right over and turn around and kind of bend over so their bum is right in my face. A couple days ago, I noticed Hattie turning her baby doll over and smelling her bum, so I asked if baby doll needed a bum change. Hattie nodded yes and ran over to where we keep the diapers and wipes. I got a diaper down and Hattie got it all unfolded. She tried to put it on her baby but couldn't quite figure it out. I showed her how it worked, and then she cuddled her baby. Tille wanted to participate too, so we diapered her baby doll. Then Tille got her blankie out and started wrapping baby doll up. I showed her how to swaddle her baby, and she gave her doll a big hug and carried her around all wrapped up. Such good little mommies.
Any time Matt has a night meeting and I'm on my own bathing the girls, Hattie wants to get out first while Tille splashes around in the draining water. So I dry, diaper, and lotion Hattie and then get Tille out. Hattie will usually unfold Tille's diaper and hand it to me and then hold the lotion bottle for me. She loves being helpful.
We took the babies to the pediatrician for their 18 month checkup back in February. They're both pretty little, 21 pounds for Tille and 22 pounds for Hattie, but they're keeping steady on their growth curves, so that's good. The dr also said it's time to start worrying about them not talking yet. He said in another couple months we should look into getting them therapy. For now, we're watching Baby Signing Time with them and trying to learn some basic sign language. They've gotten to the point where they'll sign for a snack and a drink. For the first few days they hated it more than anything. If I tried to sign they would yell at me and run away. If they wanted a treat and I told them they had to make the sign, they would scream and decide they didn't want a treat anymore. But they're getting better. Hopefully they'll get better before we have to start therapy.
And one more bit of news. Tomorrow is my last day at my job, and I start a new one on Tuesday. I've been here for just over 9 years, which is longer than I ever imagined I'd stay. Right now it takes me between 45 minutes and 2 hours to get to and from work (each way), and it's killing me. At least once a week it's 1 1/2 hours, just because of traffic. My new job is about 10 minutes from home, and I won't even have to get on the freeway. I can't wait for such a short drive! I always imagined when I left this job I would be skipping and dancing on my way out. But it turns out I'll miss this place. It's been sad saying goodbye to people over the last few days. The real kicker is that the day I got my new job offer, Tania, who sits next to me and is the only other person in the company who does similar to what I do, told me she was probably getting an offer too. I didn't even know she'd been looking. So her last day is tomorrow also. Kind of rotten timing, because we're each others' backups here and nobody else knows the systems we work with or the duties we complete. So it'll probably be a rough transition for the people we leave behind. But my boss decided to just kind of reshuffle my job, giving most of my stuff to another guy already on our team and giving that guy's work to somebody else. So I've been able to train him pretty well over the last few weeks. So it all works out in the end.
