Freedom to Run

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The girls LOVE the freedom that their walking legs gives them!  Since we don’t really have an ideal yard to let the girls roam freely, we like to take them to the park or open green areas whenever we can.  So this past weekend we walked up to Wolftrap Elementary School (my old elementary school) and let them run around in the field.  It was very sunny and Avery wouldn’t keep her glasses on so she was squinting quite a bit; however, it didn’t keep her from  having a great time.  Emerson loves to throw the ball!

And Avery takes off….

But Daddy isn’t too far…..

Daddy captures Emerson first!

Mommy then captures Avery…

…Only until Daddy captures both!

Emerson thinks Daddy is SO MUCH fun!

But DADDY, DOOOON’T put me down!

And then it was time to go home for our afternoon nap!

 

Halloween

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We celebrated Halloween twice this year!  We visited our friends Stacey and Cooper and their little girl Lindley this past weekend.  They moved to Raleigh, NC a few years ago and have a beautiful single family home in a great neighborhood.  It makes me very excited and eager for the day that Justin and I finally have our single family home; at the same time it makes me enjoy our time in limbo living at my parents that much more since our household responsibilities are minimal compared to what they will be when we are finally homeowners (renting our condo doesn’t really count). So with little household responsibilities it makes going on weekend trips such as these that much easier and actually enjoyable, knowing there isn’t a whole lot else at home that I really should be doing.

Saturday morning they had a neighborhood Halloween Parade which was kicked off with a short walk following a fire truck and ended with games and crafts and each kid receiving their own small pumpkin. Here we are following the fire engine…we were the very last group of people….

The girls were a little too young for the games and crafts; however, they still had a fun time running around freely in the streets.  Neither girl wanted to hold Mommy or Daddy’s hand and they just took off!  Don’t worry the road was closed for through traffic!

We had a great time and when we got back to Stacey and Cooper’s house we decided to take a few more pictures of the three girls together.  Here are the results!

LOVE Lindley’s facial expression in this one!

What you think you lookin at Ms. Lindley?

The girls had different nap and night time schedules so they didn’t spend that much time playing together, but when they did they seemed to have a fun time.  We can’t wait to go back and visit again!

 

Halloween was a few days later.  We dressed the girls up and took them trick or treating.  Now incase you are wondering what the girls were dressed as, they are mice impersonating cats…DUH!!!  Yes, so THIS mommy bought these cute shirts at Target thinking they had CATS on them and thought “CATS, what a great Halloween costume”.  So over the next few weeks, I found black leggings, a tail, whiskers, and ears and I thought my little cats were all set to trick or treat!  Well the night before Halloween I decided to try on their costumes and as they were running around the house all so cute, Daddy informed me that their shirts had mice on them….MICE!!!!!  I was never big into cartoons or Disney Characters growing up, but SERIOUSLY how did I miss this!!  So my babies became mice dressed up as cats…LOL!  And I was the mama cat who they were trying to run away from!  The girls wouldn’t keep their ears on or their whiskers so I finally decided I would draw whiskers on them.

  They didn’t seem to realize thy had tails on so they thankfully kept them on most the evening.  Mama Cat and her mice (aka CATS) went trick or treating at 7 or 8 houses in the neighborhood.  Mama Cat even let the girls try their first piece of candy…a Kit Kat, which they both seemed to enjoy!

This Mama Cat better start planning early for next year and run the costume idea by Daddy in advance!

Cox’s Farm – Fall Pumpkin Festival

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This past Saturday we took the girls to Cox’s Farm Fall Festival.  It was a beautiful fall day, temperature perfect…warm in the sun and more importantly warm enough for no coat!  We let the girls get out of their stroller and walk around.  Emerson loved it; Avery not so much.  She took a few steps when we first got there, but then she cried off on and on the entire time.  When she was out of the stroller, she would cling to me or Justin for dear life.  Sometimes big events such as these that are out of the every day norm are sensory overload for her. Still when she cries, I can’t help to laugh sometimes. I know that is awful as a mom but she seriously has the CUTEST pouty lip that I have EVER seen!  Emerson on the other hand was LOVING the freedom that those chunky little legs of her give her.  She had a great time checking everyone and everything out and loved climbing on the hay!  

Our first attempts at getting a picture of the girls together.

Okay maybe if Mommy gets in, we’ll get a better shot?

New plan…let’s walk around instead.  Maybe we’ll be ready for pictures later….

Little Avery was hungry and crackers just weren’t cutting it.

So we took a quick lunch break with the food mommy packed us!

Mmmm…chicken nuggets daddy!

With full tummy’s, the camera came out again…Emerson and Mommy posed in the pumpkin carriage….

…but Avery still wanted no part of it.

Next we found the hay!

And guess what…Avery still wasn’t a happy camper 🙁

until she started trying out her football moves….AVERY GO LONG!!

Emerson made a new friend and made certain things stayed under control.

And the time came that we were nearing the exit so we tried to get a few more pictures where we were all smiling…

We’ll get there one day!!

Avery is Walking!

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I think it is fair to say that Avery is a walker now.  She still crawls some but usually if there are no walls around her whatsoever.  She is walking unassisted more and more, still wobbly, but every day there is improvement in balance and distance.  She is very determined to walk and she continually gets back up and does it again after she falls.  Watching her determination brings such joy to my face.  Avery has been using the walker some too in learning to walk.  She’ll go get it from the other room and she even can maneuver it pretty good now.  If she runs into a wall, she’ll just turn herself around until the path is open again.  She doesn’t get frustrated one bit. Emerson used the walker some when we first got it in the summer but since then it pretty much sat in the corner until Avery started using it recently.  Well, Emerson has recently started to become a little jealous of Avery and has all of a sudden found a recent interest in the walker.  She too now likes to use it. Emerson has also become more cuddly lately.  Avery is generally the more cuddly of the two and likes to sit in laps especially early in the day.  Emerson now likes to bring a book to read and sit in laps too.  It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Frying Pan Park – My Birthday!!

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Sunday for my birthday, we took the girls to Frying Pan Park with my parents.  The girls got to see pigs, horses, cows, chickens, sheep, and goats.  We had taken the girls here once before in April and it was neat to see what a difference 5 months makes at their age in terms of their awareness of the animals and their surroundings.

Here is Grandma with Emerson and Mommy and Avery in the background minutes after arriving at the farm!

Only a few minutes after we got there, the “papa” goat herded his family and the loud noises that goat made scared the heck out of Avery and she pretty much cried the rest of the time we were there.  Here is Papa Goat…well his rear anyway!

I must admit I don’t blame her…I had never experienced such “herding” before and it was neat to watch. Emerson seemed to have some cognitive understanding of the animals which was really neat to watch.

Emerson wanted Grandpa to give her a closer look.  Have you ever seen a goat stare you directly in the face?  It’s kinda SCARY!!

Meanwhile Papa Goat stuck around in Avery’s mind pretty much the whole time.

Mommy’s turn to hold Emerson now!  We got to see cows!

And the family shots!  Come on girls look at the camera!

Fine mommy if you insist but I’m not smiling.

 


Meadowlark – Birthday Weekend

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I’m not very good with the computer so it took me a few weeks from the time I decided to blog to finally set one up…Thanks hubby!!   My birthday weekend was a few weeks ago but it was SO much fun.  Saturday we took the girls to Meadowlark.  The weather was  nice and sunny.  We dressed the girls in their white dresses, the ones we used for their 1st birthday pictures.  I figured they would grow out of them before the next warm season.  So we put a blanket down and attempted to take pictures of the girls together.  Needless to say the idea worked better in my head than it did on paper. Emerson kept running away the second I placed her down and Avery kept moving as well.  We got a few pictures; albeit not the ones I pictured in my head.   After realizing a true photo session was not going to occur we walked around the gardens and looked at the fish and the ducks.  Avery even started saying duck! The girls would not stay on the blanket alone as I had planned so I had to sit with them and even then I still had one “runaway”.  So here is just me and Avery.

And the “runaway” returned!

Once bottles were done, we strolled along the path….

….and made our way to the Gazebo where we saw lots of koi

…and attempted a few more pictures with Mommy! Wait we weren’t ready…

Okay, now….Mommy is ready 🙂

Okay so maybe we didn’t get the perfect picture, but we had a fun time!

I HAVE A BLOG!!!!

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I wouldn’t exactly call myself an extrovert.  While I have a bunch of great friends, I’m not exactly the type that likes everyone to know everything about me.  I’m quiet by nature and in truth that’s how I like it.  Every once in awhile I’ll be crazy and my husband and I will make friends with “outsiders” on vacation but then we end up regretting it because we end up seeing those same people non-stop and then we feel like we HAVE to talk to them every single time.  So the idea of having a blog and having others know my business is a little scary. 

But I started following a few blogs this year, not many but just enough that I remember to check in on them every so often.  I thought to myself this is a great way to not forget!  When the girls were nearing their first birthday I decided to write them a letter.  I was already starting to forget how hard and tiresome (but worth it) those first few months were and I wanted to always have those memories fresh in my head.  I was starting to forget some of their milestones.  I don’t know if was pregnancy brain that never went away or the fact that as each month passed, I was just amazed at their development and these little people who they were becoming that it was easy to forget events that happened months prior.  I found that each passing day with the girls brought so much joy that the days of the three hour feeding cycle through the night and functioning on only a few hours sleep while not so long ago, had long been forgotten. 

So I wrote them each a letter for their first birthday.  For now, it remains in their Baby Book, but one day they will have it to read.  I want the events and memories to always be vivid and vibrant.  I want the girls to one day be able to know all the wonderful things we did as a family, they learned or did for the first time, and the emotion accompanying it all.

I decided I would write a letter to the girls on every birthday.  But what was missing from these letters was pictures!  Justin is an awesome photographer.  He has such a passion for it, which is great because I LOVE having so much of the girl’s lives documented, and I can barely operate the camera.  This is not a joke…when I do take a picture I often cut out a few heads in the process.  Anyway, right now we have pictures galore downloaded to our computer and I wanted a way to tie my “journals” with Justin’s pictures. 

I want the girls to know how much I LOVE being their Mommy!  I always knew I wanted kids but I was never one of those women that felt like motherhood was my sole purpose in life.  When Justin and I got married, we knew that we wanted to experience life as a married couple for a few years.  We were enjoying life and vacations to the Caribbean and Europe that we knew would be infrequent once kids came along. But once we these little boogers came along, life has been WONDERFUL!  They have managed to light up our lives in ways I never knew possible.  I couldn’t be more in love with my kids. I love them so much that literally sometimes it hurts…CRAZY! 

So here we are and the time has arrived that I have gone from Stalker Blogger to Blogger. 

This may sound silly but one thing I don’t want to forget is that the girls drank breast milk until they were 13 months old.  I don’t want to forget because I consider this a HUGE accomplishment!  I don’t know that I ever had a true goal because I didn’t want to set myself up for failure, but I can honestly say that I was hoping to make it to at least 6 months but was going to be happy if I even made it through 3 months.  It was a huge time commitment but I had a great support system at home and at work who made the difficult task less challenging.  When the girls were 13 months and I completely stopped nursing and pumping, it was bittersweet.    On average I spent close to 4 hours pumping and or nursing everyday, prior to the last few months when I started weaning!   I HAD TWINS…there are not 4 extra hours in the day!!!!   Again, I am so proud of myself…no matter how tired or frustrated I ever was, I never once wanted to fold in the towel.  But now I must admit it is nice to have that extra time back in my day and now that my evenings are “free” I should have more time to cook and workout and sleep!  One definite bummer is that now that I’m done nursing and pumping, I have to start watching what I eat again.  This entire year was the first time in my life I could eat ANYTHING I wanted and I was still a size 2!  That is so not me so for once in my life it was so wonderful to live in the body of a naturally skinny person. Oh, if only that would last forever!

Anyway, LET’S BLOG!!!