Halloween 2011

What does a dragon say?  "Rawr!"

 

I think this is Addi.

And I think this is Livi.

Livi was running back and forth with all the pumpkins.

One of my dragons (Addi) peaking at her treats.

Love it.

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! 

Mall of America

We took a completely spur of the moment trip to the Mall of America today.  When we woke up, it looked like it was going to be a rather overcast, possibly rainy day.  So we loaded up the car and out the door we went.  The original plan was to take the girls to the aquarium so that they could see all the sharks, sea turtles, jellyfish and more.  But we never made it that far.  We got hung up in Nickelodeon Universe.  They had so much fun.  It was really great seeing their faces light up at the start of each ride.  They were even brave enough to go on the Log Chute with me which includes two big drops into the water below!!

Here are some pictures of just a few of the things that we did. 

Their first ride on a carousel.

Riding on Dora's ferris wheel.

My big girls went for a train ride all by themsleves!!

They met the Backyardigans.  Addi's hug with Pablo.

Livi's hug with Pablo.

Last but not least.  Weeeee!!!!!

A close-up of the expressions.  As much as it might not look it, they really did have fun!

Overall, it was a great day.  Like I said, seeing their little faces light up with pure enjoyment was something that I needed.  Nate did too.  For a few hours today, we felt almost like a "normal" family.  I did have a bit of a hard time when the girls went to meet the Backyardigans.  That was Elli's favorite cartoon.  She would become entranced in the bright colors and catchy music.  So that was tough.  But I couldn't deny the girls the chance to hug Pablo and Uniqua (yes, I know their names!!).

Anyway.  The girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  Even though we talked all about the sharks on our trip to the mall, they didn't ask a single time while we were there if we were going to see them.  But leave it to sneaky little toddlers, and the minute they realized we were getting loaded back up into the car..."what about the sharks?"  Stinkers.  Just like bedtime.  Not thirsty, not thirsty, not thirsty.  Lay them down..."I'm thirsty."  Too funny.

Title this yourself

There seriously are no words.  Sometimes I wonder what goes through the minds of almost 3 year olds.  Underwear on your head?  Wow.  Just, wow.  They sure are proud of themselves though!

Happy Birthday, Sweet Angel

Our lives were forever changed when Miss Elliana Jo entered this world at 7:25am on September 13, 2010.  I wish I had the words to describe the moment that I first laid my eyes on her.  I was captivated.  I experienced a love so deep.  Then she opened her eyes and looked into mine.  And I melted.  She was mine.  She will always be mine.  What an amazing, gorgeous, perfect baby girl.

Elli, you send me little signs that you're watching over us and I thank you for that.  Just yesterday, I went to the party store to buy you some balloons for your birthday.  After I purchased them, I realized that I bought 14 total and I thought "well, shoot, I should've just bought 13 since that's the day you were born."  Once I got home, I was unloading the balloons from the car and *pop* - we've now been left with 13.  You're always there.

Happy 1st Birthday to the sweetest, most beautiful Angel in Heaven.  Not an hour goes by in which I don't think of you.  But I imagine that you're singing and dancing with all of the other Angels.  We love you baby doll.  Happy Birthday.

Latest obsessions

Doors, light switches, lipstick and deodorant.  Weird combinations, right?

Alivia must shut every.single.door she sees open.  Every one.  If they're the last two kids left at daycare when I pick them up, she has to shut every door on our walk out of the building.  First thing she does when she wakes up in the morning is to shut the girls' bedroom door, our bedroom door, the bathroom door and the small closet door.  The other morning, she shut every door, as per routine.  Minutes later, I had to go to the bathroom.  But the naughty mama that I am, I left the bathroom without shutting the door.  She came running down the hallway yelling "no mama, no mama" proceeded to put her hands on my thighs in a stopping type of motion and demanded "shut the door!!"  As I shut the door, she turned to head back down the hallway, throwing her hair behind her and said "THANK you mama!"  And just as she said that, she stopped dead in her tracks, turned back around and said "now give me a hug."  Gotta love that girl.  The obsession with shutting doors?  Well, whatever.

Then there's Adalyn.  If there's a light switch, it calls her name.  She feels the strong desire to turn on every single light in the house.  I usually go right behind her to turn each one of them off!!  She usually notices though and backtracks her steps to turn all of them back on again.  She's lucky she doesn't have to pay the electric bill!  Add to the fact that she opens a door to turn a light on while Livi has an obsession with shutting doors...sometimes a light or two will be on for an hour or more before I realize it! 

Lastly, lipstick and deodorant.  My morning routine no longer entails being able to disappear into the bathroom to throw myself together.  Nope.  I have two young kids banging on my door yelling "mommy let me in!"  That's because they know what I'm doing in there...and they want to have fun too!  Each one of them takes their turn taking the cap off my lipstick, twisting it upwards, smudging it all across their lips, spinning the color back down and replacing the cap.  From there, they must dig out my deodorant and give each one of their armpits a little tickle.  They're obsessed.  At least I probably have the best smelling kids in daycare!!  And I would probably have the scariest looking ones too if I let them go with their lipstick on, but luckily for them, faces get washed before we head out the door.

Doors, light switches, lipstick and deodorant.  It's the simple things in life!!

Our first camping trip

We went on our first camping trip in the middle of August.  I guess you can't call it real camping because we weren't "tenting" it by any means.  We were actually spending the night in my parents' RV.  However, we had it parked at a campground if that counts!!  This camping trip was planned well before Elli died.  And we seriously contemplated if we should even follow through with the original plans.  But in the end, we decided that we needed to do something "normal" as a family and couldn't deprive the girls of their first experience camping.  They had a lot of fun on grandma and grandpa's "bus" and they each had a little trick up their sleeve...

The second night they were kind of refusing to sleep, so Nate and I drove them home (luckily we were at a campground only 20 minutes away) so they could sleep in their own beds.  Early the next morning, we got a call from my mom asking if we had accidentally taken my brother Jason's keys.  Ummm, nope.  So they searched and they searched and they searched.  By the time we got back to the campground, they had found them.  You want to know where?  In the girls' ziploc crayon bag!  You want to know who takes ownership to hiding them in the crayon bag?  Addi.  She flat out confessed to putting them in there.  Luckily everyone found it rather funny.  Otherwise she would've had a lot of explaining to do because she had grandpa digging through the garbage (in the campground dumpster, not just our own garbage!) looking for those keys!!  What a sneaky little girl.

Livi's little trick didn't come to light until a couple weeks later when my parents went on a camping trip by themselves.  As the air was running, they heard something kind of rattling in the vent.  When they got to the campground and turned the RV off, it sunk back in.  So dad restarted the RV only for a cap of some sort to come shooting out.  Not thinking much of it, they tossed it in the garbage.  Not long after, they decided they wanted to listen to the radio.  And drumroll please...the radio knob was missing.  Haha!  We knew she was sitting in the driver's seat quite often on our camping trip playing with all the buttons.  But no one was aware that she had removed the radio knob and jammed it down one of the A/C vents!!  Oops.  Good thing they hadn't taken out the trash yet!

Anyway, here are some pictures of our first camping trip.

They drew pretty pictures outside the RV.

Livi watched aunt Chelsea color a rainbow.

She rode a motorcycle!

And a dinosaur!!

Addi built...well, I'm not sure what.

She enjoyed the swings.

And she plunged down the frog waterslide!

I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I normally do.  But life's simply not normal right now.  Life will never be normal ever again.  I'm trying harder every day to remember to take more pictures and videos of the girls just like I used to.  I don't want to forget a single moment of them growing up (which is one of the reasons this blog was created).  I never used to go more than a couple days without taking pictures or a week without video.  My picture taking has dropped to once a week if I'm lucky.  And the video footage?  It's dismal.  I need to continue to work on it.  I promise I will.