Aquarium Visit, Playing Dress Up and Other Photos

Just hanging around the house with mommy after her appendix was removed. (Woke up New Years Day around 6am not feeling well. Back in the days of alcohol and parties, I would probably have dismissed it, so thank goodness I'm a boring old parent now who didn't do anything crazy New Years Eve. Anyway, I tried to go back to sleep and couldn't and thought a trip to the ER would be a good idea. Turns out I was right.)

Sitting in our new chairs that are just our size. I think they like having their own place to sit and play.

Playing dress up with our tu-tus. I came home from work last week, and they ran to the door wearing these. This was the first time I saw them wearing them and it was to die for. They just looked so cute.

Nicole finally wearing her head band. She wasn't a big fan. It didn't last long.

Kaitlyn with the full ensemble...magic wand and all, although it's upside down. :-)

Photos from our first trip to the aquarium:

Nicole pointing at some fish.

The girls LOVED running through this tube that goes beneath a smaller exhibit. They would run to one end, see me or Mike, scream, turn and run to the other end, and then do it all over again. Did we mention there were fish? It's all about the little things at this age.

The girls were fascinated by Deepo. He's obviously a rip off of Nemo, but this character was walking around the aquarium the whole time and we stopped not once but twice for hugs. They really liked him, Kaitlyn especially.

Looking at the fish with DaDa.

More fish with DaDa. This is the underwater tunnel leading back toward the whale sharks. For those who have been to the aquarium before, I'm sure you remember the VERY SLOW moving sidewalk in this tunnel. Kailtyn thought that was the greatest thing. She would get on and then get off. I don't suppose they've ever seen a moving floor before. As previously stated, did we mention there are fish at the aquarium? :-) We bought annual passes though, so we'll be back. I bet each time we go that they'll get more interested in the fish.

A Long Hiatus - Sorry

It's been a while and a lot has happened. Let's start with Christmas first. We had a wonderful holiday, and the girls got lots of nice toys and a few cute outfits as well. They completely don't "get it" yet, so next year will probably be the first Christmas around our house with the huge excitement. Nonetheless, they enjoyed this holiday. And they're enjoying all their new toys.

Nicole playing with an ornament. This one survived. (See below.)

Kaitlyn with her pom poms. Santa left those in their stockings.

Wow. We each got Cabbage Patch twins this year!!! Here's Kaitlyn looking at hers.

Grandma with her three grandkids. What a photo!

Nicole playing with ornaments on the tree. Kaitlyn wasn't too into the tree, but Nicole sure was. We ended up putting our play yard fence around the tree but finally had to take it down Christmas morning. I think she broke 4-6 ornaments this year in the short time that she had access to the tree. This particular one she's grabbing right now was a Christmas gift to me from my mom this year and it lasted all of about 4 hours on our tree before she broke it. Oh well.

Seond thing to update is their 18th month checkup. Both kids lost in percentiles for weight.

Nicole still gained weight but just not on a proportionate basis which is why her percentiles declined. She in the 78th percent which is great. And she's 97th in height!!! She may be one tall cookie. A good balance between height and weight. The strange thing with Kaitlyn is that she not only declined on the percentile scale, but she actuall LOST weight from her 15 month checkup. Needless to say, the doctor wasn't crazy about that. Kaitlyn is now in the 3rd percentile for weight and 50th for height. The doctor has insisted on a very high calorie diet for her (but obviously not for Nicole which presents an interesting cooking challenge). Specifically, our doctors said Kaitlyn should have a pasta with butter and cheese every day!!!

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Also, the pediatrician still agrees with me about the few oddities that I've noticed with Kaitlyn, so we will proceed down the path of going to visit a developmental pediatrician who will evaluate her. She still has her bouncing stim and she's still not talking at the rate she should be. I think Mike and I are talking ourselves out of the fact that she might be autistic and instead think she might be on the autism spectrum but somewhere very mild where it's called something else. And I don't even know if Mike agrees with me on that. We'll see what the doctor says in March (it takes a long time to get these appts).

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On a postive note, we do have more words than we did for our last post. Kaitlyn continues to say many animal noises: duck, horse, bee, owl, snake, and lion. She also says baby, bath and ball. And recently she's begun to say circle and I swear I heard the word cookie yesterday. There are a few other words too, but I can't remember right now.

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Nicole on the other hand is really starting to babble. She says: uh oh, oh boy, oh my, oh no (lots of phrases with "oh"), and my favorite...Oh Toodles (anyone who has watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse will get that one). You can say to her, Nicole do we need a Mousekatool, and she'll respond, Oh Toodles, which is exactly correct. That's what Mickey will say on the show. She also says shoe, night night, bubble, and touchdown. Now, here's what's really impressive!!!! I don't think this is normal...I could be wrong, so pardon my excitement if this isn't impressive...my 1 1/2 year old child can count to TEN already!!!! WOW!!!

Little Gym

Today was the last class for this semester of Little Gym. The girls really enjoy LG. Clearly they mostly just run around and such, but that's part of what they love. Face it...at home, they can't just run around and eeeekkkk, etc. (If we had that bigger house I'm after with a basement for a playroom, well, that would be another story....aaaaahhhh....for now I'll just dream.) Anyway, they have actually learned a few things though. They know how to forward roll. They can walk on a balance beam (assisted of course). And this is their big chance for interaction with other kids which I love. And to continue along those lines, we've started having Joanna take them to story time twice per week at our local libraries. Anyway, since today was the final class, they call it "show" day. I use the term "show" VERY loosely. It basically just meant that you could bring your cameras and that they got a medal at the end.

Here are some shots from today's class:

Nicole with the bells at the beginning of class.

Kaitlyn with the bells. They really love these bells too. When it's time to put them away, they just keep shakin'.

Nicole with some LG friends.

Kaitlyn climbing on something. Finally a place where I'm allowed to climb and it's encouaraged mom. :-)


Holy cow. Can you imagine how excited I was to actually snap a photo of them both doing what I wanted them to do at the same time!!!! (That goodness for that quick shutter speed camera that I got last Christmas.) Look at them hang on the bars. Woo Hoo.

Kaitlyn getting her medal.

Nicole getting her medal.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving photos first and a few others from November. Enjoy!!

Kaitlyn outside on Thanksgiving day. Cute coat!!! They have matching hats too. What a good find Mommy.

Nicole in her cute coat as well. And notice that Nature Nicole is back...picking up all the fallen leaves. Maybe we won't need to rake in our yard. HA! :-)

Daddy and the girls with Great Grandma and Great Grandpa.

Gamma showing the girls and cousin Mackenzie how to work the horn on Great Grandpa's wheelchair. What fun!

PaPa and all his Grandkids. Definitely something to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving evening - Kaitlyn chillin' with her cousin Brett.

Other random November photos below:

Nicole clapping in the tub.

Kaitlyn smiling as usual for the camera.

Daddy was trying to teach Nicole to "cover her ears." I think she got that message. :-)

Jeana the human jungle gym. The only one missing is Minnie. Can you blame her? I think she runs the other direction almost every time our kids enter a room. Poor pups....

In the process of gearing up for Christmas (which will involve moving a few pieces of furniture), we freed up the space in front of this chair which was previously blocked by toys, etc. You'd think we just got them a new toy. They can't stop climbing on this chair now.

See what I mean. So cute. And see Nicole with our car keys...another favorite "toy" around our house. Truly, Mike and I don't know why we even purchase toys. Remote controls, the phone and car keys are by far the favorites around our house. :-)

Going to see Santa tonight, so maybe a new picture posting in the next day or so.

Halloween

Yeah, finally the Halloween post. There are photos of the pumpkin patch that we visited, the church we visited to actually buy our pumpkin (the ones that the pumpkin patch were a bit on the expensive side), and our neighborhood's Halloween parade. There are no photos of actual Halloween night because my mom took them trick or treating with their cousins since Mike and I were in Florida for a funeral. If I were a betting woman, I'd say Ceylese probably took some photos though. :-)

On the hayride.

Pickin' out pumpkins with DaDa.

At the church buying a reasonably priced pumpkin, sitting on a bail of hay.

Nicole wandering around.

Kaitlyn stopping to smile pretty for the camera. She's such a ham for the camera.

The church had this nice photo opp. Cute.

Kaitlyn in costume for the Second Annual Stoneybrook Halloween Parade.

Nicole in costume for the parade.

Parading down to the clubhouse.

Pictures!!!

This isn't the post I promised, but at least it's a post with photos. I promised Halloween, and I still haven't had a chance to download the pictures from my camera. Maybe later today...my work deadlines ended yesterday so I finally have a chance to catch up on my personal life.

Anyway, we had our holiday photos taken on Saturday. Yes, that early!!! Portrait Innovations is crazy in December as we learned last year (having had to reschedule our initial appt for another day since they were almost TWO HOURS behind schedule). Let me tell you, early November isn't that much better. This was only the second weekend that they had their holiday backdrop available, and it was already a zoo. Luckily Mike and I have learned that you don't go to Portrait Innovations on a weekend without two cars. As soon as the shoot is over, Mike goes home with the kids and I stay to pick out the pictures, get them printed and pay which can take up to another hour. And that my friends is why we take two cars. No way Kaitlyn and Nicole would have been "happy" just hanging out in a photo studio for another hour.

Since they give me a CD with my shoot, no downloading required!!! An easy picture post. Yippie. Here are a few. Oh, and don't you just love the cute outfits I picked. I found them at Children's Place. You can't see Nicole's skirt really well in any of these photos, but the outfits are the inverse of each other. Dressing girls is the best!



Above: The whole time, Kaitlyn kept putting her hands up to her face, which we of course didn't want. But then we wouldn't have ended up with this adorable photo!!! How cute!

Above: Hard to get a smile out of Nicole when she sees a camera. She smiles plenty in person. There's just something about the camera, but I think this was a pretty cute expression.

Above: We didn't order this one since the finger is in the way. It could be cropped, but then the quality would go down. It was just such a cute picture though, so I wanted to at least put it on the blog.

Above: And there's our Nicole again...not smiling. That's so "her" when it comes time for pictures though, so they're still cute pictures in my eyes.

Coming Soon...

...a post!!! I promise. Hopefully I can upload some photos during lunch. I've been SO busy at work with quarter end and our press release and 10Q. Then, on top of that, Mike's step father passed away suddenly on Monday, October 27th. He immediately went to Florida to be with his mom, and I made it down on Friday for the service only to turn right back around on Saturday to come home. Ordinarily my boss would have been really understanding and I probably could have taken more time to be with Mike and his mom; however, his dad passed away in his sleep Tuesday morning. So, basically the only two people at my company who do the quarterly SEC reporting both had family tragedies. Instead of him covering for me, it kind of turned out the opposite. I worked really hard last week to cover his absence but was still able to take one day to be with Mike's family where I needed to be.

Anyway, that's a long story for something that was supposed to be short....a post is on the way.