21 Months old!

I can't believe that Paige and Virginia are 1 3/4 years old! Only 3 months until their second birthday. Hard to believe. Wow. They are really turning into little people these days. Unfortunately, with that the terrible twos seem to have come. We've had some monster fits thrown this week. It could be a really long next year. But I'm hoping that once they can talk better and get their wishes known more clearly their fits won't be as bad. Wishful thinking, I know.

The girls are learning more and more words these days. They still don't use many of them on their own, but will try to say more words when you ask them to say them. And even though they don't have a whole lot of words, they talk all the time when they're at home. They just still speak a lot of jibberish. Maybe they understand each other sometimes, but I can't really tell for sure. Here are some of their words:

• More (this one they use on their own, all the time)
• This
• That
  
• Cat
• Dog
• Mama
• Dada/Daddy
• Ball
• Yes
  
• Ash (in reference to Ashtree, but only when prompted)
• Turtle (only when prompted, in reference to the turtle pillow Jefferson lays on all the time)

They are also getting more independent- which leads to a lot of the fits. They know what they want and if we don't give it to them or let them do what they want, they scream and cry. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

But when they're not throwing fits, and most of the time they're not, they are a lot of fun. They're starting with pretend play. My parents got them tea sets for Valentines' Day and the girls love pouring cups of tea and bringing it to you. And they'll bring you cup after cup of tea. They also love playing outside, as you can see from my last post. Making them come inside is sometimes the reason for fits because they have so much fun out there. We're very happy to have a deck on our house because we can let the girls play out there and not have to worry about them running off.

For the most part they're good little eaters. They have their moments where they scream through meals, but for the most part they'll eat most of what we try to feed them- which is normally whatever we're eating. We're having lamb chops tonight for the first time, so we'll see how that goes. They also go through phases where they don't want to eat any meat or any vegetables. That's always fun. But normally there is at least one thing in every meal that they will each eat. They love Goldfish crackers and Cheerios. I think they have one or the other or both of those almost every day.

A couple of stories for you.
Yesterday I was home with the girls while Ben was at work, just like I am most Fridays. At some point during the morning the phone rang while the girls and I were playing in the living room. They know that Ben's voice is on the answering machine, so as soon as Paige heard the phone ring she said, "Daddy!" I was thinking about answering it, even though it was a 1-800 number, but after Paige did that there was no way I was going to answer it. I had to wait for the answering machine to pick up so that she could hear her daddy's voice.

Today we went out to lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant. We normally give the girls chips while we're there, but we always break them up for them. Well today Virginia reached over and grabbed a chip out of the basket. I thought I'd wait and see what she did with it and make sure she didn't shove the whole thing in her mouth. So what did she do? She immediately started breaking up the chip and putting it on her plate, just like we would have done. Then we gave Paige a chip and she does the same thing. It's amazing what these girls learn by watching us.

In other news, my friend Beth's little girl, Kendall, came home from the hospital today! She turned 3 weeks old on Thursday and is already home. Her gestational age is only 34 weeks 2 days, so that's quite impressive that she was able to come home already. She is on an apnea monitor for now to make sure she doesn't forget to breathe when she's sleeping, but hopefully she won't be on it for too long. I think Beth's facebook status from today says it all, "It's like Christmas with the best present EVER." Congratulations Beth and James, we're so happy that Kendall is home with you now! Enjoy every minute of it. Oh, and happy 21 month wedding anniversary!