More room = New toys!

I have been wanting to get a play kitchen for the twins for so long! Every where we go that is the thing they love to play with, especially Elizabeth. We obviously couldn't fit one in the apartment and I wanted to find it used since they are so expensive. Well, the weekend we moved in someone was having a yard sale down the street and we found one (technically the credit goes to Mark, and he scored the play kitchen and a million pieces of food for only $40!)!!

I saved it in our garage until all our family had left and I knew that I was going to be all alone with the 3 kids. I brought it out Sunday night so that they could wake up to it in the morning.

I'll admit that I got a little into assembling it, who can resist a play kitchen?! There was so much food!

Mark woke up before Elizabeth and saw the pans on the stove and that was about it:

I didn't open up any of the doors and we waited for Elizabeth to come down and she was so excited I couldn't get her to look at me for any pictures!!

They finally figured out that there were treasures to be had inside all of the doors! They have loved playing with this kitchen and the good thing is that I only put out about half of the food, we still have more to rotate in!

A fun little desk that they mostly like to climb on for now:

The twins and their cousins had fun playing in this box that our microwave came in, they got pretty creative with it and I have a couple more ideas on how to make this box even more fun...if I can find the time to create it, take pictures and then blog about it!

Even Annie is enjoying playing in her all pink play mat! I bought this from my friend Alicia who has twin girls the same age as my twins and I was so excited to buy something pink! With the twins I had to be gender neutral (as much as I could) with items like this. She loves to lay in there and I think look at the mirror, who really knows...she is content and the twins are obsessed with trying to climb in there the second they know she's there!

Annie at 1 month

Annie Sophia:

Based on her weight at the Dr.'s office a few days before she turned 1 month old she is 9 lbs and maybe a little over. She is a good baby. She sleeps well at night getting up 2 maybe 3 times to eat, unless of course she's having a growth spurt, then it's every hour and half! Compared to the twins this is luxury for us and I am so happy to be getting at least 2 hours of sleep in a row!

Unless the twins wake up, which they have been sick and doing lately...but that's usually where Mark steps in. He is also loving the fact that he doesn't have to wake up at all in the night with a baby:)

We are so in love with Annie, she has started smiling more this week, she has so many different smiles and faces and we love them all! Her hair is still growing and hasn't started falling out yet anywhere. It is getting long and starting to curl up at the ends too! She is still a light sleeper, a good eater and has her fussy window from approx 4-7 pm, and sometimes later. I say fussy but she really isn't that bad, it's more like she has a hard time settling down for the night. I'm happy it's at this time of day though because that is usually right when Mark gets home so it works out pretty well!

She has started to get herself on a bit of a schedule, I'll start molding it a bit more in another couple weeks but she is doing so great! The only issue she has is reflux but unfortunately there isn't much we can do about that until she outgrows it. I feel really bad when it gets stuck in her nose and she is congested, the Dr. promises me it's normal but I still hate it! Her personality seems pretty mellow so far, she's pretty quiet too but I'm sure that won't last long!

We love our sweet Annie so much and are so happy that she is part of our family!

The Robot

Welcome to the newest member of our family and our very genorous housewarming gift from Mark's parents! Mark found it first thing the next morning and pushed the button to let it go, he had fun following it around while Elizabeth was terrified! You will notice her perched high up on the couch!

Mark and some of his new words

Lately Little Mark has been picking up words like crazy, it seems like every day he's got a new one! Today it has been sock (which sounds a little like rock) and yesterday it was cracker. When he is playing or looking at books he is saying words but we haven't figured out what they are yet. It's a lot of fun. He learned to say Cheerio because that is what they have for breakfast every morning and he would always point it at me and I would tell him what it was. Then one day after several weeks of this he said Cheerio!! It was quite rewarding and exciting for me! At the end of the video I ask him to say to say his sisters names and when he doesn't know how to say any name or object he will just say mmmmm.

Bonding time

The twins each have their own special way of bonding with Annie. Little Mark has become quite sweet with her. Every time he wakes up for the day or from a nap he has to run into the room and see where Annie is. He loves to push her in the swing and check in on her, it's always the 1st thing he does and it's so cute! Every time we tell him to be soft he gives her a kiss, usually on the head and then he gets a mouthful of hair too! The following pictures is another way he shows some love...but let me explain something first. Mark is used to cuddling up with Elizabeth and he loves rolling over to her and putting his head on her lap or just laying next to her. So when he sees Annie he tries to do the same thing...which melts my heart...

until he tries to roll on her....

but she doesn't seem to mind, look at her reaching out for him:

the past two days she has even given him lots of smiles, these two are really cute together!

Elizabeth loves Annie in a different way. She is my helper. She is always handing me a diaper (or 10), a blanket or a burp cloth. It's actually really, really nice for me! She tries to share her food or toys with her and shove it in her hand, she doesn't quite get that she can't grab things yet! She will even take her precious bottle out of her mouth to give her kisses (this is saying a lot for Elizabeth cause she loves her bottle!). Here they are in some kind of matching shirts:

Moving Party!!

We had my parents and 2 brothers come help us move and despite the stress and hard work we had fun. We had been living in an apartment for what was only supposed to be 4 months and that 4 turned into 8! It took much longer to close on the house than we thought but we are really happy we waited it out because we love it here and the neighborhood seems really friendly and great so far! I'm a little sad to say goodbye to the place where the twins had their 1st Christmas, 1st birthday, took their 1st steps and where Annie came home from the hospital to....but really only a very tiny bit sad because it was one of the hardest things to have to endure! 2 busy toddlers in a small 2 bedroom apartment is never fun and I don't know how people do it permanently!

The kids are loving the space here in the house. Just last night Mark was saying, as we heard Little Mark pour out his wagon full of blocks and say boom while spreading them out everywhere, that we feel this is his new game he likes to play because he can make a mess then walk into a different room and play with something else! He couldn't get away with that at the apartment! We even got what I was secretly hoping for the most...a cute grandma that lives right next door! With both our parents far away I wanted to have a grandma we could adopt and when we met her husband for the 1st time he told us that she was a 'professional grandma'! How perfect is that? They even brought us dinner last night and mowed our grass for us! The neighbors next to them have a 1 yr old and brought us cupcakes...I actually said to Mark are we on Desperate Housewives? I didn't know people still actually did that! He then told me that he did see a group of women 'gossiping' at the playground the other day, haha!! We love it here!

Grandma T always brings so many fun books and toys. This time the big hit was these little lights that you can put on your finger:

We turned the lights off and they had so much fun, in fact they are still having fun with them a week later!

Mark is trying to eat them here but he also chased the light around like a dog when I would shine it on the floor, it was hilarious!

Then Uncle Mark had Shay, Jena and Grace flex their muscles for us, and yes that is my son playing with a necklace...so manly I know!

Then he taught Jena and Grace the game of arm wrestling, Jena looks really intense here:

Then she lost, wait a second, does anyone see Grace cheating?!

And then won!

Liam is getting huge and enjoyed playing with new toys. He told me that he loved coming to my house and missed me, still such a sweet heart!

Even Annie got in on the party action with a new outfit from Grandma T:

See her looking at me? I think she kind of loves me:)

Elizabeth got her toe nails painted for the 1st time by cousin Monica!!!

And Daddy fed Elizabeth her 1st tiny piece of salt water taffy (it's the blue stuff stuck in her teeth)...which I made her take out as soon as I found out about it, sorry E!

Then we all crashed. Hard. See:

Thanks again to everyone that came to help, we love you all!!!

Yard work or yard play?

Why not start with the ugliest part of our new house?! The backyard! Or should I say the forest in our backyard. The house had not been lived in for quite some time so the grass had gotten a little lost in weeds. We actually do have a literal forest in our back yard, a green belt with a stream that runs through it. It's quite pretty and we love having the trees as our neighbor instead of houses! Here is the before picture with the help, aka my Dad:

And this is as close to an after as I got. We didn't quite finish it before it was dinner time so I'll take a better picture once we get it all cut down:

Little Mark has been dying to go running through the back yard so he was very excited to finally get down there. I say down because it's basically a hill you have to scale to get down and back up! He LOVES it when Mark throws him high:

This was a little too high for my heart to handle:

Here they are trying to climb back up. Elizabeth doesn't really enjoy touching dirt, or getting her hands dirty (that's my girl:) so she was having quite the time trying to figure out how to climb back up to the house!

Poor girl! We only laughed for a few seconds, and took video for only a few seconds more before helping her up!!

Mark on the other hand dug in the dirt like a dog looking for a bone! The picture is blurry but he was DIRTY!

We can't forget our cute little niece/helper Grace:

Despite the sad frown Mark is giving me he loved going on rides with cousin Grace:

Thank you Grace for being so good with the twins! You can come back anytime!!

We love Scotland!

Before I start going on and on about our new pad I had to share these pictures:

My parents went to Scotland last year and brought the twins back these adorable hats and t-shirts. The twins are really into trying to get hats and clothes on right now. We think they look adorable and someday when we all go there together I will bust out these hats so we can take one of all of us there! Thank you Grandma and Grandpa T!!!

Best excuse ever!

The reason we have been MIA for 2 weeks?? After waiting to close for 5 super long, super hard, super frustrating months we finally moved into our first home!!! Ladies and gentleman, introducing our new wallet cruncher, our weekend plans for the next year and our favorite place in the world right now:

Unfortunately for Annie it meant that I missed out on her daily updates and pictures because we didn't have the internet working until this week:( Sorry sweetie, we will be talking about you non stop and catching everyone up on how awesome you are!

A BIG, HUGE, MASSIVE THANKS to our family who came to help! I'm sorry I was a little grumpy, I promise I love you all! Mark and I have amazing family and we feel so lucky to have you, thanks for your muscle, meals and patience!

1 Month

My little Annie Sophia is 1 month old today!!!!

She is the center of our world and she knows it! We love her to pieces!