This summer we made it to a Caspar Babypants concert again!! Daddy took them to one last year but I had to miss it because Annie was brand new! I was probably more excited then them. We listen to Caspar almost every day and all the kids love it!
We got great spots and Mark was completely mesmerized by it all!
Elizabeth kept looking at me and smiling:
Annie did SO good!! She loved it!
We went with our friend Aubrey:
There they all are, waiting for the concert to start!!
In general the concert was a little overwhelming for Mark after about 20 minutes he was done and wanted to go home. Also he was mad that all the swings were full. The girls had a great time and we made it all the way to the end! We were getting ready to leave and the last song, Run Baby Run came on!! That's one of their favorites.
Here is Mark mesmerized at the first song:
It took Elizabeth awhile before she realized that Aubrey was playing with her hair!!!
This is one of Mark's favorite songs and Grandma T will really appreciate the eyes closing and his singing along just like he does when we play the video at home!!
This is our second year in a row going to the Fair and it was just as fun as last year!!!
Here we are all ready to go!
First stop. Baby piglets!!
They were so adorable but the kids would have nothing to do with petting them while this guy was holding them:)
Next was sheep. Annie was going nuts over the sheep!! She had her pointing finger out and was waving it all around (as you'll see in the video at the end)!
Goats....well they weren't that exciting. Little Mark was just very interested in watching them poop, which they did a lot of! His really into looking at poop these days. Dog poop, human poop. This morning he threw a major fit because I forget to let him look inside Annie's poopy diaper before throwing it in the trash outside! I couldn't even get him to look at the camera for a picture!
Llamas. Elizabeth kept calling them camels. This is a fake, but very real looking one:
Annie still didn't want to touch it!
And then we FINALLY hit up the kids ABSOLUTE FAVORITE..........ROOSTERS!!!!!!!!!! They perked right up and laughed and laughed every single time they heard a rooster crowing or a duck quacking! It was hilarious. You'll see just how excited Elizabeth was in the video at the end.
The last stop on our way out the gates was a carousel ride. I had been hyping this up, showing them pictures and videos of carousels and they were SO EXCITED to ride on one!!! Well, that is until we got in line. Elizabeth kept saying 'something else' and Mark kept saying 'go home'...but the tickets were paid for and I was convinced that they were going to love it so I MADE daddy take them on it!!
Annie and I watched from the sidelines:
Here they go!!! I was right, they did end up loving it! And they still ask to go back to the fair to ride the carousel!!
After going to the Fair and having a nap we headed to the park for our friend CC's 1st birthday party!!! Her and Annie are buddies and spend lots of time playing together on Sundays during church!
Here is the birthday girl with her parents:
And the twins chowing down:
While Annie enjoyed running through and playing with the balloons:
It happened to be next to a spray pad so the kids got nice and soaked!
Mark has some definite favorites right now. Me (Mom), his Leap Frog magnet letters, trains, Bubble Guppies, Wonderpets, Little Bear and Curious George, teasing Elizabeth, wrestling with Annie, and chocolate. Let me break some of these down for you. He is so attached to me that he has developed some serious separation anxiety!! He will be happily eating or playing and as soon as he figures out that I have gone upstairs and closed the gate behind me (usually to put Annie down for a nap) he will run to the gate and scream and cry until I get back. Same thing with the bathroom, but not 100% of the time. If I leave him with Daddy he will cry at the door for 15-30 minutes. We definitely can't leave him in nursery, in dance class or with any type of babysitter. I had to cut him off from crawling into bed with me at night (even though I secretly LOVE it), the compromise was that he could sleep in my bed at nap time and he could sleep with my pillow all the time. That reminds me, I need to shop for a new pillow! Every day at nap time I climb into bed with him and he gives me the BEST smile in the world!! It melts my heart, he smiles at me like he feels so special and happy and loved and then he says 'hi'. Oh it melts me to the core!! I then tuck him in, sing him a song and play with his hair and he falls asleep within minutes. That is when I get him in his sleepy window, if I miss that window then all is lost!!
For several months now he has been obsessed with playing with the letters. He learned all of them and their sounds a long, long time ago but he loves to organize them and say their sounds and sometimes sing the little song that goes with them (from the video). He FREAKS if anyone tries to take even one of them while he his playing with them! Occasionally he will give Annie a few, but not very often. I hope all this memorization will lead into reading someday soon!
He loves to play with trains and put together his train track. He especially loves any of the Thomas the Train characters! He has a lot of them memorized and even though he could care less about the show, he loves the books and the trains. He also loves cars and riding them around on all different surfaces and all over the house.
Lately he has been teasing Elizabeth like CRAZY!!!! He gets this laugh and then is relentless about annoying her! He will wrestle around with Annie a lot but to his dismay she is still too small to do a lot of harm. But she will sit on him and tickle him!! When we are outside he loves to take a toy like the toy lawnmower, the shopping cart, a little stroller and push it from our driveway to the neighbors (Roger and Sonya's) driveway. He will do it over and over again and if Elizabeth is doing it too he will always wait for her to get to the neighbors garage before coming back to ours! He still likes to ride his tricycle down the sidewalk and gets mad when we stop him halfway down the hill to slow him down! He enjoys the sand box, playing with water, sidewalk chalk, and digging in the rocks and dirt. The swings at any playground are his FAVORITE thing ever!!
Mark LOVES to dance and sing and pretend he is in a marching band or rock n roll band!! It's adorable and he has gotten good at singing a couple songs or making up his own. He has been asking for a trumpet lately but loves to play the kazoo, guitar, keyboard and drum. He still loves to read books too. We started a dance class this month and he is still unsure about it. He loves it half the time and then not so much other times, we will see!
So......no matter what is going on in his world, happiness, sadness, anger....a show is ALWAYS going to make him stop and run to the nearest couch!!!!!! He totally loves all of the shows I mentioned and he is constantly relating things that happen in the shows to everyday life. We will see a caterpillar and he will say 'the Wonderpets saved a caterpillar in Greece' or if he sees a picture of a cow he will say ' Butterscotch and Puddin' are cows from Bubble Guppies' and so on and so on and so on and so on ALL DAY LONG!!!! It's incredible to me that he can remember so much and it makes me happy that we can relate it to reality. He is extremely sensitive to scary things so we are sure to only watch happy shows. One time we started watching a Wonderpets with a chimp that goes to space and halfway through he started screaming and crying 'no chimp!' so I turned it off right away and for weeks afterwards he would say no chimp and start getting panicky until I reassured him we will never ever watch that episode!!
Mark will still eat a lot of different foods. He loves hash browns, pancakes, protein shakes, chicken, hot dogs, pears, carrots, apples and peanut butter. He will definitely eat anything that has chocolate in or on it! He loves to take long naps during the day but if they are too long then he will wake up in the night, turn the light on and start partying!!! He will jump on his bed or flip his mattress on the floor and sing as loud as possible! Which of course wakes up Elizabeth and then she joins in on the party too!! Somehow this almost never wakes up Annie, thankfully!
Mark is a sweet boy who loves to smile and laugh. He is so ticklish too! He always gives Annie a kiss goodnight, he loves playing with boys more than girls and especially older boys. We feel so thankful to have this little boy in our lives and to hear his laugh all day long! We love you buddy!!!!!
Elizabeth:
Some of Elizabeth's favorite things are dancing, playing pretend anything, hoarding random items from around the house and then sorting them, coloring, and watching Bubble Guppies, Curious George and Wonderpets. Elizabeth loves to have dance parties all the time! She has got some sweet moves too. Just last night she came up to me during a dance party and said 'look Mom, I'm doing the pull up', she then proceeded to do a pretend pull up (like she was working out, basically pumping her arms up and down)....yup, she totally invented her own dance move!!!! It was hilarious!! Don't worry I'll get some video of it tonight and post it asap! She loves dance class until we actually get into dance class, then she likes to watch and sometimes participate. She can be a bit shy. She loves watching and reading about dancers and ballerinas and is so excited every week to get her tights, leotard and dance shoes on that she usually can't nap before class on Tuesdays!
Elizabeth loves it when we play pretend. We will pretend to be different animals, we will pretend to be at a restaurant where she is the chef, we pretend to be dinosaurs, pirates and lions. Elizabeth really loves to play with just about everything. Blocks, Legos, trains, cars, sand, water, dirt, rocks, stuffed animals, puzzles, bubbles, play dough, and she hasn't gotten over the whole I 'm going to take anything I want from my brother and sister thing! Sometimes she will remember to trade which is surprisingly effective but she has a hard time being patient for her turn.
Mostly Elizabeth will gather things from around the house and then play with them together. For example she will lay her necklace on the floor in a circle and then put randoms inside it. She is famous for stuffing many things inside of other things and getting them permanently stuck in there! Her latest one is stuffing a tiny maraca inside a recorder. We still can't get it out! The funniest thing is when we tell her it is time for naps or bed and then she panics and starts picking up as many items that are closest to her that she can fit in her hands/arms and carry upstairs to bed with her!!!! She is very quiet usually when she falls asleep and wakes up. She will just play in her bed or room happily. She still loves all her stuffed animals, lately her lamb has been her favorite go to cuddle buddy.
Elizabeth loves to COLOR!!!!! She will color with crayons or on the magna doodle and loves to play with stickers and paints too. She will draw and then tell us what she has done. Many times it's an animal of some sort and sometimes it's close! She and Mark love to draw letters too and again, sometimes they are very close! She loves to play in the sand too. She could spend a long time out there some days She loves to help her Daddy when he is working outside too. In fact she is a good helper in general. She loves to help unload the dishwasher, sweep and rake.
Elizabeth is by far the pickiest eater we have! She loves dairy, chicken, carbs, some fruit, almost no vegetables but will drink anything with her favorite being protein shakes! She loves pancakes, hash browns, cereal, toast, apples, corn on the cob, cheese, and she enjoys desserts but not near as much as her brother! Elizabeth's hair has still never been cut and can be WILD! People still constantly comment or touch her hair but she's so used to it that I don't think it bothers her. It is gorgeous and we love it!! Elizabeth can make Annie laugh like no one else!! But she is also very impatient with her and loves to yell at her 'stop looking at me Annie, or stop talking to me Annie'...just a preview of the teen years I suppose! We treasure the moments when she is being sweet to her.
It still takes Elizabeth some time to fall asleep but when she does she is a great sleeper. She too will take long naps and then either get up early or be woken up in the night by Mark. Her and Mark are still very attached to their blankets. It's always interesting to see what I will find in her bed once she has fallen asleep since she drags the oddest things in to bed with her! Elizabeth really, really loves her Dad but most of the time she will come to either one of us and be ok. She still hates being pinned down by anyone!! She freaks out even if it's just for a second. Elizabeth loves to give a play by play of what's happening throughout the day and is such a good talker!!! Just yesterday she discovered a Cheerio that was stuck together and when she put it in her mouth she yelled 'they're free, they're free in my mouth!'!! She also feels free to tell us all the time when she is scared of people or things. Which can be a little embarrassing in the store when she says loudly to me that she is scared of that man behind us! She is very good at naming her emotions and I think that helps her be a little less frustrated throughout the day. For the first time since they were born we have noticed that one of the twins has advanced in one area more than the other. We always expected it because they are boy/girl but had never run into it until now. Elizabeth's speech over the past 6 months has soared compared to Mark's but since the past month his has started to come along more too.
We love our sweet Elizabeth so much! She has the cutest smile and is willing to smile all day long. Her tantrums are equally cute most of the time:) We feel so incredibly lucky and blessed to have her in our family!! Love you princess!!
Here are some pictures of the two of them together over the past 6 months or so:
Eating dinner on the porch:
Playing in Daddy's car:
Baking together, such cute smiles!
Listening to Grover on the Ipad:
Falling asleep by the door together:
Playing at the park together:
And Daddy has taken several pictures of them on this thing at the park here in our neighborhood:
