Freak Out Time!

There is no way in just one short month that my girls are actually going to be a year old!  I won't stand for this! It's completely unfair that they are growing this quickly and I'm completely unprepared to have toddlers.  That being said, I AM excited to celebrate their first birthday with all our friends and family and I will do my very best to keep it together and be a rational adult :-)

The last couple weeks have been completely hectic and I foresee the next several weeks being even worse so bear with me if my posts start to become incoherent and all over the place.  This mama has a lot going on in her life!

But back to the kiddos...we plan on doing some major toddler prepping in the next weeks: we are pushing with full force to get the girls eating finger foods (this has been our biggest challenge) and we are going to start working on phasing out pacis. 

Finger Foods: How I loathe you.  The fact that the girls prefer baby food on a spoon from Alex and myself is entirely our fault.  Due to time crunches and saving ourselves the headache of cleaning up after two babies, we have resorted to shoveling spoonfuls into each girls' mouth.  Now, at 11 months old, neither girl cares to feed themselves and they like very few things with textures.  I've been on a mission all week to overcome this.  I refuse to serve them vegetable puree at their first birthday haha.  Texture has been our biggest obstacle, with Dozer being a close second.  The girls readily hand over their food to his waiting mouth next to their highchairs.  It's like I'm raising three children instead of two, honestly!!

Pacis: Luckily our girls aren't heavily reliant on pacis, they only use them at night and in the car.  Our first step is taking them out of their carseats.  Then, over the next few weeks they will only go to bed with one (now they get three in their crib so they can find one in the middle of the night so mommy doesn't have to get up!).  I know we are going to have some frustrating nights where they can't find that single one in their crib but I'm hoping some nights they will just give up looking for it and fall asleep.  I'm deliriously optimistic if you can't tell :-)

11 Month Stats

Olivia: about 19 pounds, can say Coco (my mom's dog) and can almost say "dog" (I think she might be an animal lover!), she easily stands without any assistance but refuses to budge a single step, loves to identify noses on all her stuffed animals and on people, if you say "Ay yi yi" she slaps her forehead hehe, she likes to pretend feed her goofy stuffed animal, and cannot be without her stuffed puppy dog.

Emma: about 24 pounds, can stand with no assistance and take 3 or 4 steps before crashing down on her butt, loves to point at things (including Minnie Mouse on our calender, the lights in the ceiling, and Dozer), she loves to clap and wave to the fireworks that come on before Disney movies, and she could spend all day looking at pictures and videos of herself (she will literally pull out photo albums and have me flip through the pages for her!).

Working on our Father's Day present

She's a super fast colorer

This little thief stole the bacon before I finished setting the table for Father's Day!

Father's Day 2012

The girls' gifts to Alex

11 Months!

Emma is ADDICTED to ice cream and whenever it is gone she becomes hysterical!

My smarty-pants

The Girls' Very First Cousin!

On June 5th at 8:42PM my niece (and the girls' very first cousin) Avery Harper Tavera made her debut, weighing in at 7 pounds 11 ounces and measuring 21 inches long--she is absolute perfection!  When my older sister went into labor earlier that day my little sister and I hustled down to the hospital since it was an hour from us.  We waited so patiently but Miss Avery had other plans--just like my girls had done to me :-) Even though my sister ended up with an emergency csection (again, just like these little girls did to me!) both her and Avery are doing fantastic.  After everything my sister went through she needed some big-time rest so we sadly had to go home without getting to see them all :-(  Luckily by Sunday all our schedules aligned so that Alex and I were FINALLY able to take the girls to see them.  I think Olivia could have cared less about the baby but Emma really wanted to touch her head--I think it was all the hair hehe! Unfortunately, as it often happens, I did not take a single picture since I was too busy man-handling my kiddos that insisted on going after every breakable thing in my sister's house.  (Little does April know how numbered her days are of getting to have candles and tv remotes out in the open lol)  We stayed about an hour and left them with some yummies from Trader Joes as well as the only advice you should ever really give new parents: It gets easier.  I am so excited for our girls to grow up together so close in age.  I have a TON of cousins with quite a few right around my age so I know how great that makes family functions :-)

My sweet little niece, Avery