The Crocket Family Blog: January 2016

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

You know what makes my day?

getting pictures of the girls at the park from our wonderful nanny! :D

With their friend Cam.

I love that Josie is wearing her hair clip: that mop on her head is always in her eyes!

Monday, January 11, 2016

James and I had a wonderful movie and dinner Friday night, then spent the rest of the weekend re-organizing stuff, getting rid of old stuff and holiday boxes, and building the new stuff. We took a break to go to a friend's first birthday, and everyone had a great time! I just have a few more things to do tonight and I will have finished everything on my post holiday to-do list! Yes!

I finally assembled the kitchen the girls got for Christmas from my mom. It took a long time, and required several breaks and looking up a few steps on the internet. The instructions were terrible! Thank goodness for youtube videos of basically everything.

This....was intimidating.

Organizing the pieces...which took 30 minutes.

3 hours later!

Fully stocked!

I also assembled the office chair I got James for Christmas, so he is stylish and comfy when working on his projects. Most of the assembly required strength, so James had to take it apart and re-do it with some muscle behind it lol. Oops!

I gave away PILES of the girls' old clothes, and was brutally honest with myself about getting rid of everything. I have had a horrible "keepsake" obsession with outfits but the whole closet just can not be filled with clothes that don't fit for the sake of "keepsakes." Off it went to a friend and I can't wait to see pictures of baby Nora wearing it all!

We all had a great time at our friends' son's 1st birthday. They got a bounce house and it was fun to play in there with the girls since there weren't too many kids in it. The girls can't stop talking about the cake, pizza and popcorn they enjoyed at the party. They are also obsessed with singing Happy Birthday now. The girls took turns playing with the electric car our friends have, and Josie really took to it. She was cracking us all up driving around like she's always known how.

Attacking daddy in the bounce house.

giving some jumps a try!

Alex's turn!

Singing Happy Birthday!

Alex smiling for a selfie and saying "cheese!"

Our friend took these gorgeous photos with her really nice camera!

Its so nice to have one of me with each girl! :)

Friday, January 8, 2016

A visit to the Doctor!

The girls had their 2 year check up today!

For the first time in Alex and Josie history, the girls are the exact same size! They both have a head circumference of 19 inches, are 34 inches tall, and weigh 24lbs!

They did ***awesome*** at the doctor's office. Josie went first and cried a little when the tape measure came out (??) to measure her head, but when that was no big deal, she went along with the rest while Alex watched. We doled out the praise big time for every step (measurement, weight, etc.) especially when she stood nicely on the big girl scale. Alex watched and then when it was her turn, was so proud of herself at every step, even had a little smirky grin when she was standing on the big girl scale!

I am going to highly recommend a pretend doctor kit - we just got one for their birthday and we used it to talk a lot about the doctor looking in their ears and mouth and nose, so when it was all happening, they seemed very ok with it.

Then the girls got the flu shot, and get this insanity: neither of them cried!!! What!? Crazy.

The Doctor was very impressed with their skills, especially Josie's sentence structure and Alex's story telling (how she relates past events to share how she is feeling now). And I was shocked to hear we don't go back until next year. What?! I felt like I lived in that office the first year of their lives, and close to it this year. Wonderful!

Thank you to everyone who is in the girls' lives lately, our village is definitely helping to raise two beautiful, polite, sweet, caring, smart, and wonderful little girls!

Monday, January 4, 2016

Happy Birthday, Munchkins

What a year it has been! It has seriously flown by. Looking at photos from their birth, 1st birthday, and 2nd birthday, I have to wonder which year brought the most change - year one or two? Last year we ended with two little girls who had just starting eating real foods and crawling. So in the last year we ditched bottles, started walking, started talking, talking a lot!, started recognizing their surroundings and interacting on a social level, made real friends and now have opinions, likes and dislikes. I really think this year brought way more change, or maybe a year ago is just too distant to remember.

Alex and Josie had a wonderful pirate themed party this year, with their park friends, family, and some of mom and dad's friends. There was a 5 foot long sub sandwich and enough pasta salad to ensure Josie had leftovers. In true fashion, they flipped on me, and Josie was outgoing and having a blast while Alexandra wanted to be in my arms and played shy. Ah well! Keeping us on our toes.

Alex is definitely showing more signs of entering her "twos" - as always, she has followed the book with meeting milestones right on time and this is no exception. Her way right now please. At least she is polite about it. I can't get over them saying "thank you mommy" for every little thing, its very nice. Josie loves to hold her sister's hand and walk around, and gets super mad when Alex decides she's done playing that game.

The girls are professional gift openers now. Josie even exclaimed "OOH COOL" when opening a few of her gifts: she really likes Duplo, apparently. Once a few Duplo items were opened, she had no more interest in opening anything else.

Josie and Alex ate their weight in Oreo cookies and pirate cookies during the party. I also underestimated how much Pirate's Booty toddlers eat (I accidentally doubled my order yet we didn't have any left!). Alex couldn't wait for cupcakes and then didn't want to eat hers - I guess she is a "cake haver." Josie, on the other hand, dove right in: "cake eater."

Josie reorganizing some napkins

Alex really did want "money" for her birthday.

Starting to set up.

These poofs were too fun to pass up.

The pirate tent from Aunt Laurie was PERFECT!

James got this cardboard ship you can play in AND color!

Home made cupcakes! Thanks to my friend

Missy for helping with decorating!

Wrapped gifts - I found the least Christmassy and most girly gift wrap I could find!

More set up photos!

The pirate ship cupcake display

These adorable little cookies were delicious!

Thanks Etsy for this stuff, its so fun!

This shirt, the story:

I had picked out new outfits for the girls to wear a few weeks back. I ran to the store to get ice and when I came back they were wearing them. They were awful, way too big and not cute. I rummaged through our drawers and found the red striped top for Josie, thank goodness. But nothing similar for Alex. I finally pulled out this red Santa t-shirt and flipped it inside out and with 20 minutes before people were arriving, drew on a skull and cross-bones. Party 911. And, in the end, I actually liked the outfits they were in better than the ones I had picked for them!