Mark and Elizabeth have been doing these tricks for awhile but what is funny is that they now ASK me to take a picture of them doing things! For example, Elizabeth was swinging on the table as I was trying to sweep. She swings on anything that looks like it can be used for that purpose! Anyways...after doing it a couple times she said 'Mom, picture'!
We've caught Mark walking up and down the stairs without holding onto anything several times over the past couple months but a couple days ago he wanted me to get it on video!
Elizabeth has done a few stairs going up but going down she likes to hold on to something. She gets really frustrated that she can't reach the hand rail some days while she's walking down!
Annie has been doing some pretty fun things around here lately. But first of all here's a couple things to note. This girl is growing up! She eats far more than she used to, far more. And she gets around by all means except crawling (except for the rare times she tries and just goes backwards). This is her FAVORITE play corner! She loves to get into the wood puzzles and the wood train set and bang them either together or on the bin or the book shelf. She loves to empty any kind of container too.
And here is her newest noise as of yesterday:
And after Elizabeth got up from her nap yesterday Annie was so excited and was doing this funny thing that was making Elizabeth laugh really hard! I should've got a different angle so that you can see her face. Every time she would stop and look over at Elizabeth she would have this smile on her face like, 'that was funny right?!'
The first one is of Elizabeth sweeping up the mess they made from breakfast. According to Daddy she swept up EVERY last piece of food! I don't know how long it took her, but she can be a great helper!! We HATE having carpet there and can't wait to replace it next month!!!!
Here are the twins jumping off the curb into puddles, and me rushing off to get Annie inside since it had just started pouring!
I can't remember if I posted this video of Annie clapping for the 1st time. It was the day of the twins birthday party, just after everyone had left!!
I love and follow THIS blog and lately I have been trying, like really, really trying to follow her example and put more trust in my kids. Let me share an example with you. Because the twins used to(and still sometimes do if they are bored) throw their food or in Mark's case crumble, tear, rip and then rub it all over his hair, face and body and then throw it on the floor or in Elizabeth's case throw a tantrum and chuck ALL items off the table on to the floor or just simply sit quietly and poor her entire cup of milk on the table then splash around in it, I got in the habit of only giving them one item of food at a time (and doing my best not to take my eyes off of them for longer than 3 seconds! Meal times are exhausting for many reasons). For example chicken and rice and then once they were done with that, some fruit, once done with that, yogurt, etc...It helped minimize the mess but I knew it wasn't right. So now at lunchtime I give them ALL their items of food on ONE plate! And guess what? They do GREAT!! It also creates less work for me, I can actually sit and feed Annie without getting up a hundred times!
I thought I would try to channel this trust into art projects and something I have been terribly frightened of....PAINT! I finally ordered a ton of washable tempura paint (along with lots of other fun stuff) and let them go at it. Well one at a time of course. Mark was first in the morning because Elizabeth almost always sleeps in later then him. And then Mark takes an earlier nap and so I did it with her in the afternoon. You will see pictures and video of her at the end of the post. Mark was WAY too busy for me to even think about getting the camera out!
But a few days before we did paint, I started out first by taping down a big piece of Kraft paper to the table and filled cups with stickers, stamps and felt markers. Normally I would only get one of these things out at a time. This was our trial run! This was how it was set up when they came downstairs one morning:
And this is them concentrating hard and having fun!
Annie usually chills in her high chair:
And happily snacks away!
Here is the painting on the other side of this big piece of paper a few days later. We had sponges that were airplanes, houses and boats (these were the ones she chose! She loves being able to choose her own everything!! And if you are curious about where I got these cool sponges that are perfect for little hands, along with most of my other stuff it's here):
