44 weeks - from caterpillars to butterflies

Everyone who knows her knows that Alex loves butterflies. This isn't some sort of projection thing or imagination - she really gets excited to see butterflies, wants us to hold her up to touch the stickers of butterflies on her wall, and touches the butterfly images on her and her sister's clothing.

A time lapse video my friend Missy took

recently of a monarch from her garden

When I was thinking about this post today, I planned to write about re-emergence. What brought this on was hearing the public high school down the street having its Friday night football game and thinking how it would be fun to go when the girls are older. I realized that our family is re-imagining itself. We are coming out of the cocoon of having newborns and getting back into the world, but not as we were in it before. Either the time away has made us reassess priorities, or given us time to come up with new things to do, or we are focusing on things we can do with children and as a family. I think its a bit of all of those. Before I had the girls I was trying to think of how to shoe horn a baby into my life, and now I am realizing I don't have to - my life has changed.  I wont say its as dramatic as going from a caterpillar to a butterfly, I'm not trying to say I am better for it in any way, just different. And its nice that I will have lived my former self and my current self in this lifetime.

I got so many good ones of Alex today!

Now lets talk about the unpleasant side of being a butterfly - this week, week 44, has sucked. Its awful. On Sunday we realize Josie had a bit of a runny nose and by Monday she was full on sick. Alex followed shortly on Wednesday. They had very stuffy noses and a cough. James got it about the same time as Alex, and says its one of the worst sore throats he's had. No wonder Josie was so miserable over the weekend. Let's all remember that we also changed the time, so coaxing miserable babies to stay up an extra hour every night has been extra challenging. And we aren't done yet: Alex has one of her top teeth poking out and she is just wailing in pain every few hours and has had a really tough time falling asleep for naps and bed time. AND we are in the thick of a wonder week which means the girls want nothing but for us to hold their hands and walk them around so they can practice their new skills. I have never been more excited to be a working mom in my life. Our poor nanny Brittany just looked defeated every night when I came home. Apparently today, week 44, we should start seeing a turn for the better, and this "leap" is over in 20 days. 

For Stephanie

We are keeping things, for the most part, relaxed this weekend. We are, for the first time, taking family Holiday photos today so we can join the masses in sending out adorable photo Christmas cards. (Let's be honest here, my favorite photo Holiday card comes from James's former co-worker Dorothy who gets a silly portrait done with her brother - its awesome!) But, I realized we hardly have ANY family pictures and I am in almost no pictures with the girls, so I felt it was important to get a few shots of all of us together and looking nice. 

Teething break

James has plans to go sailing with a friend so Becky and I will probably take the girls to the zoo, where I am now a member, in an effort to distract them from their misery. I am also meeting a new babysitter this weekend so we can have someone on back up for when our nanny isn't available. I hope she works out!! She might run out the door after an hour with these ladies in their current state - hah!!! 

Let's hope they live up to these shirts today!

And for making it through this one, a video of Josie last night!

Weekend Wrap Up

My kids (Josie, specifically) continue to give me grey hairs. Josie was clumsy this weekend and bopped her head a few times and was not acting herself. My first-time-mom reaction was to race to the E.R. but there were no signs warranting an E.R. visit, there wasn't even any swelling, so I talked myself down and reminded myself (by reading Baby 411) that every kid hits their head when learning to walk. But the mood change and super clinginess was disconcerting.

Well, cut to Sunday afternoon and sure enough Josie has a full on cold. No wonder her balance and her demeanor were off. All night I heard her coughing and sniffling over the monitor, poor thing! She's pretty miserable but was back to acting very much herself this morning. Here she is taking a peaceful nap on my shoulder....(spoiler alert - not peaceful at all)

Here is a video of her earlier this week showing off her amazing toy nabbing skills:

Anyway, I wont be surprised in the least if this makes its way through the family pretty quickly. I was lucky not to catch their cold last time they had it (James wasn't as lucky) but I can't escape every time - especially when she's shoving her fingers into my nose and mouth (new favorite pastime) 

We dialed our weekend back big time. We had our Halloween party on Friday that was fairly successful but of course tiring. We skipped the freezing cold raining swim class and only made it out to one of our 4 activities Saturday. But I am glad we did make it out since the girls got to meet a few really good friends of mine. Sunday we went up to attend our friends' daughter's 5th birthday (can't believe she is 5 already!!) and the girls got to attend their first "princess birthday party" They had a good time and enjoyed "story time" with Elsa and Anna. 

Pumpkins carved by Becky, James, Roxanne and another Becky

My pumpkin this year - came out pretty good!

The girls enjoying the pop up tunnel Grandmere Rachelle got them!

She's totally shy to go through this - and will only race through for a cell phone at the other end!

Determined no matter how under the weather she is!

Halloween morning!

Riding around in their new umbrella strollers. Man these things ROCK!!!

So light and easy to maneuver and compact! Glad we picked these up!

43 weeks and almost 10 months

I love my mom's guest blog. Its neat to see a different perspective on how the girls are growing up. She's right - lately I've had this looming feeling that the girls aren't babies anymore. I think this will be the 3rd or 4th time I say this here, but its true. They are out of "baby sized" PJs, and my heart broke a tiny bit when I realized I couldn't shop for PJs under the "baby" tab on the Carter's website anymore.

We went to this neat event thrown at Descanso Gardens called "Rise of the Pumpkins" where artists carve tons and tons of pumpkins and it was packed with kids, and we saw SO MANY little babies there, and that's when you look at your "baby" whose sitting in an umbrella stroller and looking at pumpkins and people watching and you realize wow - Alex and Josie are so big!! 

Last night was Halloween so we had a few people over while we handed out candy. We had a total of 5 kids under 2 over  - and two moms with babies on the way. Compared to my friend Karen's baby and their nephew Noah, and all of the Emerson babies born after them (like, 20), the girls are like teenagers. 

TEETH!!

Its pouring rain here this morning and 55 degrees (12 Celsius). Today is also the girls' last swim class, which is at an outdoor pool, I think we are going to PASS. In fact I am glad its raining because otherwise we may have been dumb enough to go, I got a get out of jail free card on this one. I called the pool asking if class would go on for babies under these conditions and they said yes. I said "that sounds awful" and the teenager I was talking to on the phone said "yup."