The Celebration Part 2.

This post is all about the CAKE!!!! I made them myself (like you couldn't tell, hahaha!) and for some reason we have a million pictures of it. I guess there is something monumental about letting your children, whom you have protected from all unnatural substances for a year, devour a plate full of icing, cake and well...sugar!

Mark didn't even wait until we finished singing, he wanted to try his cake!

Elizabeth on the other hand got a little freaked out by the candles and singing...this is how the first few minutes went:

Mark was going at it with just one hand for awhile....

Then realized he could use both!

Elizabeth carefully picked at hers:

Sucked on it a little bit (she does this with a lot of her food, it's like she thinks everything is a lollipop!)

In the end she wasn't really into it, she was ready for bed!

Mark on the other hand was unstoppable. He took a break thinking he had destroyed it:

Until I turned the cake a few degrees and he realized there was more!

Done and done for this 1 year old.

We ended up having to take his plate away and leave the cake because once I turned the plate around he realized that it might be fun to throw the entire cake and plate on the floor...for once I thought ahead of this little guy!

I like this one because if you look to the right you will see blue icing on Elizabeth's highchair....yes Mark was trying to reach her cake and eat it too!

Elizabeth kept staring at Mark, like who is this guy covered in blue?!

Off to the bath, they were laughing at each other and Mark thought he was pretty special with all of us staring at him! Poor Mark was on such a sugar high, he was talking in his crib while Elizabeth was passed out! I had to read a few books to calm him down.

The morning after....Mark spent the morning playing under the table, his favorite spot to play (and poop, which just happened to be blue this morning, haha!).

And Elizabeth was obsessed with the ribbon on the balloons, she played with them forever!

The celebration Part 1.

Little Mark was happy from the moment he woke up, he's even clapping because he's so happy that Daddy was working from home in the morning!

Sweet Elizabeth's stomach flu returned with a vengeance and she woke up at 1:30 am throwing up and pooping ALL over! Poor baby, I felt soooo bad for her. We got her all cleaned up and fed her some pedialyte but 10 minutes later she threw that up all over me and our bed! Needless to say....she wasn't her usual happy self and we were limited on what we could do and where we could go on their birthday, but we still had LOT'S of fun! She loves to sit on daddy's lap when he's working so this made her smile a little first thing in the morning:

We played and played and then at 12:04 pm we sang happy birthday to Little Mark since that was his time of delivery and he danced and smiled and thought he was so special! Well that and we were letting him push the buttons on the phone:)

Then at 12:06 pm it was Elizabeth's turn and the smile says it all, she was SO happy we were singing to her!

Then the craziest thing happened when we started to put them in their highchairs for lunch.....2 ducks came right up to our sliding glass door!!! We had never seen ducks before at our place, I'm thinking it's cause we live in the city and in a massively huge apartment complex. It was so cool! In my cheesy sentimental way I thought maybe it was the twins great grandma's sending them a birthday present since the twins LOVE farm animals right now. Mark and I miss all our Grandma's a lot and are happy that we still have one with us!

So we fed them crackers and the twins were mesmerized!!

This picture has nothing to do with their birthday I just love it because I'm the one making them both smile. Can you two please remember this when you are 16 and rolling your eyes at me?! Always remember that I am the best mommy who will always do anything to make you smile!

After we got some food in them we went to Red Robin so that we could eat and celebrate some more. Red Robin is the place I go for my birthday so I thought it would be fun to take them there too. Here is me and Mark Mark.....wait is he flipping off the camera?!

Here is Mark trying cantaloupe for the first time, he's hesitant but only for a second. This kid will try anything at least once!

It took him a minute to get his little chompers into it, he had to really concentrate....

And guess what...he LOVED it!! He ate the entire thing, got juice everywhere and the next day for lunch I fed him more and he was complaining when it was all gone!

He got the hang of it and I was so proud of him for using his teeth like a big boy! He seems so grown up when he does that!

Elizabeth wanted nothing to do with the cantaloupe, if you can tell by her face:

But she was interested in this....

Or just playing with it!

Mark was happy to see this little treat too!

He sucked up every last drop we gave him, which I'm sorry wasn't much but I didn't want him to get sick before his birthday cake....which you will see how that went tomorrow when I post pictures!

So that is how the first half our day went!

Wrong!!

Well most of you were anyway......according to a not perfect but almost perfect view in the ultrasound we are having a

GIRL!!!!!!!!!!

But guess what? She is already taking after her big sis and wouldn't let us see her profile, so all we got was feet, lol!!!!

She is healthy and in the 45th percentile, which we think is awesome seeing as the twins best was 18th percentile!! Because the twins were so small I will be going in monthly for growth check ultrasounds. So at the next one hopefully she co-operates and we will get a profile of her beautiful face. I couldn't believe how fast the ultrasound was. With the twins they took at least an hour but usually more. I think we were done in about 20 minutes! It was nice for my back but I could've layed there and looked at her moving around all day!

On Monday this little one started kicking! She is super active, especially at night after the twins go to bed! She knows it's party time with mom and dad! She also kicks a lot when I'm holding one of the twins, for example the other night when Elizabeth was sick I was holding her and I think she could feel the baby kicking cause she kept moving around trying to get comfortable on my chest and stomach!! She is already trying to communicate with them and I think they are going to love her. In fact the morning before the ultrasound Elizabeth didn't want to sleep and so I was getting her dressed and I asked her if we were going to have a baby brother or sister and she started saying ssssssss (like a snake)....I'm convinced she was trying to say sissy and she was right!

I'm still feeling good and enjoying the bliss of the 2nd trimester!

1 year.

WE MADE IT!!!!!!!!! You started out sooooo small, you couldn't suck, swallow and breathe at the same time, you couldn't regulate your own body temperatures, Elizabeth needed a little help breathing......AND NOW LOOK AT YOU!! You 2 have amazed us. Through out this year you have been tough, determined and strong. You have inspired us to be better. You have made us beyond happy. Life is never boring and always exhausting.

The first 6 months were long, difficult, stressful, and tiring. But we also felt like we were witnessing miracles as we saw you slowly progress and gain weight. We will always treasure those special moments of holding you and talking about our day and as of today I miss how you had to hold still for me when I changed your diapers!! You both looked at us like we were the center of your world and we LOVED it. The next 6 months brought a little more sleep (yay!), tons of fun milestones, lots of personality started to show and the two of you started to interact which is our favorite thing in the world to watch! We love how you two laugh and wrestle with each other and you follow each other around now, it's not just Elizabeth following Mark! You rarely go anywhere without looking to see if the other one is coming, in fact you will turn around and go back and see if and why they aren't following you, it's so cute!

Thank you for being patient with us and each other, for making us laugh every day, and for bringing us joy beyond what we could have ever imagined. WE LOVE YOU MARK AND ELIZABETH!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Mark at 1 year:

Elizabeth at 1 year:

Happy Birthday Daddy!

What a difference a year makes!!! Last year we were here:

Just 2 days away from welcoming the arrival of our babies and life was stressful in an entirely different way! I remember not being allowed to light the candles on your birthday cake because we were in the hospital, sad that we couldn't be at home but happy that we had made it through another day keeping our babies healthy and in my belly!

And here we are a year later!

I know all you wanted was kisses from these two, Little Mark delivered but Elizabeth is still a tease...I promise I practiced with her all day! I'm sorry you were sick today. It's so sad that grilled cheese and soup was all you felt like for dinner and you couldn't even finish one slice of your Dairy Queen ice cream cake!! Thank you for being so devoted to me and all 3 of these kids, thank you for stubbornly refusing to allow me to get up with them in the night (unless they are both up:), thank you for working hard, being patient, being the responsible one, sacrificing golf and snowboarding time for us and for being a better husband and father than I could have ever dreamed. I feel so lucky to have you as my partner in life and forever. I love you babe!! Happy Birthday!!!

7:15 - 8:15 am

Here is what happened in the first hour of my Monday morning:

Babies wake up, change Elizabeth's diaper then Mark's. Mark peed out of his diaper and as I'm stripping him down Elizabeth diarrhea poops in hers so bad that it's dripping down her leg. So I hurry and rush her into the bathroom. Mark follows crying and screaming because he wants his breakfast. He continues to crawl all over me screaming in my ear while I try to contain the poop and Elizabeth who is just so crazy excited to be awake that she can't sit still for longer than a nano second! I finally get her cleaned up while Mark empty's out the wipes container. I run to get them strapped into their highchairs and put Elizabeth's clothes in the sink in cold water. I feed them breakfast in which Elizabeth has little interest and Mark can't stop yelling at me to get it in his mouth faster. Clean up, get Mark dressed, go to get Elizabeth's clothes...start throwing up because I somehow forgot to eat breakfast. So I hurry to get a bowl of cereal in while luckily both babies leave me alone. Then Mark poops.

That's some 1st hour! No wonder I'm exhausted by bedtime (actually I'm a little exhausted now!) Crazy kids. Got to love this glamorous life!!