Well behaved?!

We were out to eat with the girls the other night.  And randomly, some lady came up to our table, put her hand on my shoulder and said "you sure do have very well behaved children."  After thanking her for her nice compliment, she continued on to say how nice it was to go out to eat and see two young children behaving as well as ours did.  She told us that it made her day.  It was so refreshing to hear. 

I will admit, the girls were quite well behaved that night.  They ate well, they were reasonably quiet, and when they started getting a little ansty, they just climbed off their chairs and came to stand between Nate and me...they didn't run around the tables, jump on the chair, bang on the table with silverware, etc.  We were so proud of them.  And we sure let them know it!!

I forgot to share this, but the girls had their 3 year appointments a week ago.  No concerns for either one of them.  Addi is now 31# 6oz and Livi is 33# 5oz.  Now I don't think we have to go back until they are four years old!!

Birthday celebrations

Due to more reasons than I care to list, we didn't have just one big birthday party for the girls this year.  Instead, we had a few smaller celebrations.  One with just Nate, myself and the girls, one with Nate's family and one with my family.  Despite the lack of a huge celebration, the girls enjoyed celebrating their birthdays for over a week straight!

Just one of their three birthday cakes!

Getting ready to open presents.

They were giddy with excitement!

Opening one of their shared gifts.

Addi blowing out her candle.

And Livi blowing out hers (Addi's face cracks me up - don't spit on my cake!)

The end of the day.

I'm sorry

I don't write often anymore.  For someone who has never been short of words, it's an odd feeling to no longer know what to say.  At times, I feel like there are no words.  Just emptiness.  Blankness.  Then there are other days when I'm overflowing with thoughts running rampant through my head that I wouldn't even know where to begin. 

And because I'm not sure what direction I want to take with this blog, I've refrained from writing about the random thoughts.  The sadness.  The anger.  The disbelief.  Plus, I'm not sure who would want to hear it.  But in the same breath, I worry that if I just write about what the big girls are doing, people will think that I've moved on.  That it no longer hurts.  The truth is, I'm overwhelmed with pain and sadness for my sweet little girl.  Which is why it makes it so hard to write.

Yes, the girls do funny things.  They reach new milestones.  They amaze me with everything they know.  I want to write about it.  But the words just won't come.  By the time the girls go to bed (which is when I do most of my writing), my thoughts are consumed with Elli. 

So I apologize.  I need to figure out what I'm going to do with this blog.  I've toyed with the idea of just hanging it up.  But I want the girls' lives to be documented.  I read back to what I wrote just last year and it's amazing everything I've forgotten.  But I really do need to decide...if I keep it going, will it be dedicated to the girls?  Will it be a place to write about my grief?  Will it be a place to share more stories about Elli and the wonderful, beautiful 9 months and 13 days we had with her?  Will it or should it be all of the above?  Who knows.  I surely don't.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Darlings!

I cannot believe my babies are 3 years old already.  I'm sure every mother says that with each passing year.  But man, it seems like just yesterday when we brought them home from the hospital and they refused to sleep for almost 48 hours straight.  And when I say they refused to sleep, I pretty much mean that they cried bloody murder for that entire time.  I still remember Nate making a trip to Walmart at 2am thinking that maybe the babies were gassy and we needed to get some gas drops to help out their tummies.

But three years, wow.  It's been an amazing journey.  A wonderful, overwhelming, fantastic, stressful, funny journey.  Time can slow down just a little bit.  I would be okay with that.

Our peanuts at 1 day old

One year old.

Two years old.

And just recently at the park...

Homecoming

We went to the University's Homecoming Parade today.  And I'm happy to say that this is the first parade that the girls have enjoyed!!  They used to get a little freaked out once the bands would come through and our parade experience would end before it really ever got started.  But they loved every minute of the parade today.  They actually liked the bands, they laughed at the guys riding in little go-karts, they waved at the Homecoming King and Queen, and they jumped at the chance to hoard as much candy as possible!

It was a beautiful fall day today.  I'm actually not even sure you can call it fall.  We had to break out the short sleeves again because temps have been in the 80's for the past week.  Just last week we were wearing pants, long sleeves and coats.  Unbelievable.

Hooray!!

It was another fun day with the girls.  But that by no means that Elli wasn't on our minds.  As we were loading the girls in the car, I must've had a somber expression on my face or something because Nate asked me what was wrong.  I lost it.  We went to the Homecoming Parade last year and Elli was just a wee little 3 week old.  I remember everyone taking a peak at her, marveling at how tiny she was, how cute she was, how she slept the entire time.  I remember getting the comments "you sure have your hands full" when people realized that we had twins who were just a week shy of 2 years and a 3 week old baby.  Last year's Homecoming Parade was the only parade Elli had ever been to.  So yeah, it hit me hard.

On a slightly funnier note.  I was informed by Miss Adalyn today that I am not a girl.  I am, in fact, an elephant.  Sheesh.  I know I've gained a few pounds in the past couple of weeks.  But man!!  When I tried to convince her that I am a girl, she was insistent that I am not.  I'm an elephant.  Thanks for the ego boost sweetheart!!

Apples, yum!

We took the girls to the apple orchards for the first time.  They really enjoyed picking their own apples.  Apparently, apples taste better when you've hand-picked them yourself, because we haven't been able to get the girls to eat an apple in the past few months!  But all of a sudden, they're munching on their respective apples as we made our way through the orchards. 

Looking through some of the pictures that I took I just realized that from the back, the girls are really hard to tell apart at times!!  If it weren't for the different colored ponytails in their hair, there were a few pictures that I'm not sure I would've known who was who!