Way too close to two!

Something about saying our babies are twenty months just makes them seem way too close to being two!  They are getting so big and so fun and so crazy! It's hard to believe how much they've changed in the past two months!  Looking through pictures I couldn't believe how much they've changed since the beginning of April! They are in the middle of a huge language explosion and I think we hear at least one new word a day from one of them.  They have the cutest little voices and it is getting a lot easier to understand them now.  They have a lot to say and are starting to get a little ticked when we don't understand what they are saying. They say each other's names all the time and it is adorable!  They like to say lots of names and will request that we sing the "hello" song from music class to various people (Abigail, Grandma, Grandpa, etc).  A couple nights ago Ellie decided we needed to sing hello to the milk too. =)  Silly babies we have!

running down the driveway

exploring at the Children's Garden

fun on our friend's porch swing!

ringing in 20 months with a bang--2 ear infections & the stomach bug =(
but making the best of the doctor appointment by ripping up the paper!

They also really like to all be together and whenever they are split up they can't stop talking about their siblings.  One day we went to the Y pool & Isaiah had a bloody mouth that wouldn't quit so I took him outside to the playground to play while Michelle swam with the girls and she said the girls could NOT stop talking about him and barely even wanted to swim.  And last week when I took the girls to the doctor and didn't bring Isaiah they asked about him about 50 times.  Over the past month or so they have also started to differentiate between Mama & Mommy.  The girls have it down and Isaiah transitioned from calling us both mama to now calling us both mommy most of the time or switching them. =)  Here are a few videos of them playing & then a quick snapshot of each of our beautiful babies over the past couple months!

Isaiah

gotcha mom!

concentrating hard

this boy LOVES sandboxes

his "Oh!" face!  He loves to pour water on his head &
tries to do it to the girls too, who are NOT fans!

Isaiah continues to be quite the little chatterbox!  He is particularly chatty in the car.  I wish I knew how to upload some of the recordings I have taken of them in the car on my phone because it is pretty hilarious and cute.  He finally has the language to show us how much he knows and it is a ton!  He knows and is willing to say pretty much any animal sound we throw at him.  And he and the girls can now fill in & request animals when we sing Old MacDonald or Down on Grandpa's Farm in the car.  Isaiah also really likes counting and says probably 75% of the numbers from one to ten and will say them in order to count with us.  Most of them only vaguely sound like the number because he is still missing a lot of consonant sounds, but he has the right vowels and inflection.  Two and six are his favorites I think.  He had his annual evaluation for early intervention a few weeks ago and as we expected he no longer qualifies because all of his scores fell right in the average range!  Hooray!  Here's a quick clip of him just jabbering away & clearly trying to tell me something!

Isaiah is still our little explorer and wanderer and the other day at the park he just decided to conquer this big grassy hill and made it all the way to the top.  Of course then he was stuck and too afraid to come down so I had to go rescue him! He's been kind of funny at the outdoor pool.  He loves the pool and is very brave and repeatedly puts his whole face in the water, but then gets unexplicably nervous at times walking around the splashpad area.  Isaiah has big feelings and when he's happy he's really happy and has contagious belly laughs, and when he is sad he is really sad!  As I was looking through pictures for this post I noticed that I have WAY more pictures of him crying/melting down that I do of the girls, and I think it's because it just happens more often and sometimes over the most ridiculous things.  Isaiah and I have been spending a lot of quality time together at night as I attempt another round of our co-sleeping night weaning plan.  It has been going pretty well and he's had multiple nights recently where he has slept from 7/7:30 until about 5 before waking up and needing help falling back asleep.  I'll take it!

Avery

getting dirty (probably as a ploy to get to go in & "wash hands"

happy girl bouncing on mommy's knees

super cutie

peeking...

Avery continues to be our most physical kiddo.  She LOVES to wrestle and over the past few weeks has adapted her strategy to get her siblings to wrestle her.  She used to give them hugs and then take them down, but lately she's been going for the submissive strategy and just lays on the floor and calls their names to entice them to come wrestle her.  Avery loves to climb on top of the big cozy coupe truck that we have, which makes us nervous, but she has been a little better lately about only doing it when we are there.  Her big crash when she stood up in the jog stroller and tipped it seems to have made an impression because now as soon as we see her thinking about standing up in a stroller we ask her what happened when she stood up in a stroller before and she immediately says and points to her nose, which is what she hurt in the fall.  Speaking of physical skills, Avery is basically diaper free now except at night.  She still has accidents and we are still working on getting the poop in the potty thing down, but overall she has been doing very well.  Two weeks ago she refused a naptime diaper and I told her she could try it and she has been dry every time since.  Of course then she got sick and had diarrhea for 5 days straight so that meant diapers all day every day so we'll see how she does now that she's better.  She loves to wash her hands and would do it a hundred times a day if we let her.

Avery is putting two words together pretty consistently and is pretty insistent with helping us understand what she is saying when we don't get it.  She has quite a screechy "no" these days and the other day she said no and crossed her arms.  We have no idea where she got that from!  Avery likes to pretend to make food for us and when you ask her what it is you are guaranteed to hear her say "noodles" because she loves a book we have from my mom about babies eating noodles.  She knows the book too and will pretend to get noodles in her hair and on her nose and in her toes too.  Avery is obsessed with babies and everywhere we go she asks if we are going to see babies.  She is sooo sweet with any babies we do see like at music class and is very very gentle with them, softly touching their hair.  It is pretty cute.  She is also pretty into her "Humphrey dog" as you can see in this video.

Ellie

our little thumbsucker =)

another happy bouncing baby (er...toddler!)

Super Ellie & her sidekick monkey!

just a stunningly gorgeous pic of Ellie!

and an extra pic that captures her truly cheesy smile!
(she LOVES getting to ride on the front bike seat with me!)

Ellie has the best cheesy smile and she gives it up freely pretty much any time you ask.  It is sooo fun and totally adorable!  Ellie has really gotten into jumping lately and a couple times has actually gotten both feet off the ground.  They all like to jump but Ellie & Avery have actually cleared their feet from the surface.  Ellie has also gotten really into and quite good at climbing!  I think she is probably a better climber than Avery though not quite as adventurous as Avery at climbing new things.  Ellie is also talking a lot and putting two words together a lot of the time.  She has the best pronunciation of any of them and is therefore the easiest to understand.  She busts out new words all the time that take us by surprise.  The other day her new word was "shadow."   Ellie is also really good at filling in familiar books.  They all do it now, but Ellie is probably the most consistent.  So we read the book but leave off the last word and she fills it in every time, even if she is off wandering around the bedroom.  Their favorite book to do this with is called Mommy, Mama & Me.

And just as Avery is obsessed with babies, Ellie is obsessed with baby dolls.  She loves her babies and likes to bring them with her wherever we go.  She also gets pretty territorial about whichever baby she is into at the moment and this has led to her new favorite phase "No, Mine!"  She has totally overgeneralized it and will say it when she just means no sometimes, but she does have the most developed sense of ownership I think.  Last night we gave them new water cups and this morning Ellie knew whose was whose despite the fact that she & Avery both had red cups, just with a different lid.  We were surprised!  Ellie is still the queen of snuggling and thumbsucking and she is still in a mama mama mama phase.  When she's not being clingy though she is super fun to play with.  Ellie has started to pretend to cook in their play kitchen and she and Avery in particular like to pretend to grab food from a book and take and share bites of it.  It is pretty adorable. Ellie has generally been pretty anti-wrestling, but over the last few weeks she's been coming around to it and latched onto a new game where she likes to ride on Isaiah's back. =)  Avery tries to entice Ellie to ride her back, but 90% of the time Ellie says "No.  Aya (Isaiah). Back."  It's adorable.  If you've been following us on facebook you've probably already seen this video, but it's so cute it's worth watching again!