Sunday, July 27, 2008

Teeth

We're not really having good luck getting clear pictures of the teeth our dear girls have grown, so we picked a couple where you can kind of see them to at least give you an idea of where they are. They both have the middle two bottom teeth in.

Clara's are much higher and prominent than Elena's, because she got them first:


Elena got her middle left (our right) bottom tooth first, and is just getting the middle bottom right tooth in now. With the glare, it's a bit hard to see - it's a little easy if you click to make the picture bigger:

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Take Us Out to the Ballgame

Today the girls napped later in the day, so we chanced a trip to the baseball game in the early evening. They were wiped out by the end of the fourth inning, but we were pretty happy to get to go at all, and to make it even halfway. Clara and Elena had their first taste of hotdogs (just tiny pieces) and they really seemed to love the action of the game. The music, games, and nice people behind us didn't hurt, either.


Christina and Elena study the finer points of the game:

While Clara has fun fishing for ice chips while keeping one eye on the action:

When Clara caught sight of the big feathered bird who is our mascot, she alternated between beaming and making her "ooh, ooh, ooh" sound and face:


She enjoyed looking at the mascot so much we decided to take her over to meet him.

Up close, he was a little too scary, and she had to burrow into Steve to avoid contact with him. Elena, on the other hand, thought he was much more exciting up close and kept trying to pull his feathers.

We bought the girls each a new baseball cap to celebrate their first game. Clara actually loves hers, right now Elena barely tolerates it.

The look so alike, squinting away from the sun. It's the most identical looking we've seen them since Elena started getting bigger and Clara started getting more teeth!

Here's one last silly shot, where we wanted to get all four of us in a picture but were trying to take the photo ourselves:

Hooray for Baseball! The jerseys they are wearing here are courtesy of Uncle Phil and Aunt Owetta. The Diamondbacks are the team back where most of Steve's family lives (in Phoenix) and where Steve and Christina met. Ah...Diamond Dogs. :)





Friday, July 25, 2008

New Experiences

It's something of a tradition to have your picture taken with this statue of a bear in town; today the girls did it for the first time with Christina, Steve, and their grandma. A kind passer-by took the shot; we won't blame them for cutting the bear's head off.


This afternoon we took the girls to a friends' house for a pizza party. Usually, they just have pieces torn off of our pizza. Tonight, they found a little friend who left his pizza on a plate on the ground, and they were in heaven.

Here's Clara:
And Elena (she was loving this; I think the look here is one where she thinks I'm going to take the pizza away from her).

Aside from the pizza, some big excitement at this party was the toys. There was a walker that the girls took turns on (Elena exhibits here):



And most notably, there was also a little tricycle. It's the kind you walk forward instead of pedal, but still, we had no idea that the girls could do it. We only got video of them mostly standing on it (with a little movement) but at one point both of the girls just propelled themselves right across the room on this! We were so impressed.

Here's some video - please excuse the people running around and the loud voices - it was definitely a party!


Tuesday, July 22, 2008

And now, for a contest

Sometimes in the summer you need a little surprise, a little bit of fun. I know lots of you only look at our website or a few others, but many people have sites like this and Christina loves to click around and go see what everyone else has to say. Several of these other web sites held contests a few weeks ago, and Christina won one of them. A complete stranger who is completely lovely(from a website called Twists and Turns) sent Christina all this:



Incredible, no? But wait, here was the kicker:


(Christina tried for days to get pictures of the girls in these shirts, but this is as good as it got - they are matching shirts that say: "My first Twins T-shirt" to support the Minnesota Twins!. I guess this is the start of them being fans for life.)


Now, here's where the rest of you come in. The point of these contests is to "pay it forward" (like the movie, if you've seen it) where Christina now passes on the generosity by sending a package to one of you. All you have to do is add a comment to this post by Monday at midnight. Let us know this: if the girls had been triplets, what should we have named the third girl? We would have a Clara Mary Mae, an Elena Ashley Rose, and a _________?

We'll pick a winner at random and mail you off a surprise.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Pool Party (kind of)

I'm not sure you could exactly call it a party, but the girls did have their first experience with a pool today. Christina bought an inflatable frog pool over the winter, and today she blew it up with all her hot air (yes, we all knew she had enough in her) and she, Grandma, and the girls took to the pool.

We didn't want to scare the girls, so we didn't put the top of the frog on, and left it just a green bottom. Even so, the girls were a bit wary:


Elena was ready to splash from the side, but it took a bit longer for Clara to want to get in on the action.






Elena graduated soon to stepping in the pool, but she hated sitting down and so mostly stayed in a position like this:

Clara did end up finding her own path to fun in the pool. She would hold a shovel in each hand, arch herself back in Grandma's arms, and stare up into the trees.


Beautiful!


Two more shots from the day - a funny face Clara in polka dots:
And a splashy Elena:




Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Children's Museum

We remembered to bring cameras to the children's museum today, so here's a glimpse into the fun that Clara and Elena get up to when we take a trip there.

The theme of the museum at the moment appears to be water - water evaporation, water flow, etc. At one of the little fountains, Clara gave Grandma a lesson in the way water separates to move past a stationary object (a foot!).


Clara is exhibiting her new crawl here - she has mostly a foot-propelled army-crawl kind of thing going on, but as you can see here she's starting to get her knees into it. Now what does this pretty ball do?


Oh, aha! Grandmas know everything.

Grandma shows Clara her reflection, and Clara claps at the mirror doing such a good job reflecting such a lovely face.


Elena decided to see if the stairs at the museum work like the stairs at home.


They do! She can climb these, too.


Not only can she climb them, she just about wants to climb the rails, too! Look at those tippy toes!


Who's that beautiful girl who also made it to the top of the stairs?


Elena patiently waits to see if Clara can master these stairs.


It was some tough going, so Grandma helped Clara just a little bit.

Here's a picture of a happy trio at the museum (Christina was happy behind the camera, too).


When we got home, Elena still had stair-fever, so Grandma helped her learn how to go down them safely (on her bottom).


What a fun day! But we were all worn out, so early bedtimes for all.

Grandma's Here!

Grandma (Christina's mom) is in town for two weeks, and we are all having a fantastic time. The girls adore having Grandma to play with and read with and to help feed them, and Grandma is getting her share of smiles, hugs, and love. Clara especially has a bond with her Grandma - when she sees her she breaks out in a huge grin and waves her arms and legs.

We've been doing lots in town together (going to the Farmer's Market, having picnic lunches, shopping, playing in the park) but often we aren't bringing the camera out. We'll do better - but here are some shots from our trip to the carousel.





The girls are loving the carousel more every time we go. They stretch out their arms, say "Oh, oh, oh!" and smile huge smiles as soon as the ponies are in sight. They know just how to keep us going back again and again!
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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Raspberries!

Clara's and Elena's appetites are really growing - they eat much more food with us than they ever have before and we're having a great time introducing them to new tastes. Today, Steve introduced raspberries, and that was a real winner with the girls. Here are some shots (you may also notice peas, cornbread, and fig newton on the trays; other elements of their Sunday dinner!).


Elena gives the raspberry a try:
And wow! Does life get more delicious?
Clara gives it a go as well:

Smart girl that she is, she uses one hand to put the berries in her mouth, and the other to hold her "reserve" berries, in case we decide to stop supplying her with this new delicacy.


We've been signing some basic words at home for a few months now. Sometimes the girls do the traditional sign for "more," but Clara has come up with what we believe is her own sign - she lifts her hand in the air, lets her wrist really act like a hinge, and waves her fingers back and forth. It's like she's in the water and is pulling something toward her. It's hard to get a good shot of that, but she was sure doing that to try to get more raspberries!

Two bonus shots of fun mealtimes in our home:

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Wisconsin Wedding Part Two (or Our New Favorite Photos)

A very talented photographer named Matt was taking pictures at the wedding we went to in Wisconsin, and he captured on film a moment we were sharing with the girls out on the hillside. We adore these pictures - that happiness is what we feel almost all of the time, and even though this was just an average moment of playing with the girls, these pictures elevate it to a memory we won't forget, even when Elena and Clara get to be "big girls."





Photos soon to come of the TEETH that have entered our family! Clara started about a week ago, and has her two middle bottom teeth and is just about done getting another tooth on the bottom. Elena just started this week getting one of her middle bottom teeth, and another bottom tooth to the side. They are having a hard time getting these teeth, but we know they are handling it the best they can. In fact, all that teething covered up the fact that little Elena actually also has an ear infection (just like her cousin Grace out in Virginia!) that we only discovered today. Poor girls - growing up is hard!