Bliss

Bathtub serenade

It's been a while so I thought I'd put up another cute video of my amazingly talented kids. : ) I know what you're thinking. I seem to always know what you're thinking, don't I? "Another video in the bathtub? Don't you film your kids anywhere else?" And to answer your question....I do! But....those videos aren't nearly as fun since, these days, they end up being a shot of the floor in our house with little voices off-camera going "Lemme see, Mommy!" "I can hold the camera, Mommy." "Mommy...you taking a picture of me?"

So! The bathtub it is! Where else can you contain two active toddlers in a small space with no room to run, but they're still having fun?!!

I love how Olivia starts singing....then needs to start over, but she apologizes first. I also love at the end when she's finishing the song, her face gets so serious like she's hitting the highest note ever!

Espanol, por favor!

I know, I know -- enough with the videos already, right?!!! But I just can't help it. I'm on a video kick and I'm taking you along with me! Besides -- have you tried to get pictures of 2 year-olds recently? Trust me -- it's a lot of pictures of the backs of heads or other body parts as they're running away because, apparently, they're just so over pictures. I had to tell you that because I was looking back over recent posts on the blog and I noticed there were many more pictures of Isabella recently. You know....the stationary kid! But don't worry.....there's video of her coming soon, too!!

This video is Sofia showing off her counting skills. If you're impressed that she's counting, can I just tell you that she's counting in Spanish? It's just been recently that D has been speaking to all the girls much more in Spanish so they're getting better and better, but they're quite good with their numbers and colors. Well - the big girls are. You'd seriously be impressed if I was also talking about Isabella. And I'd seriously be trying to get her on Oprah as the smartest kid ever........but alas I'm still planning on heading back to work in a couple more weeks. Unless we win the lottery. But I digress.

So! As promised......Sofia and her Spanish!

Funny funny girls

Now that I've found (well....my dad found) the cable to load the videos from my camera to the computer, we've been taking many more videos.........and apparently we had a lot stored on the camera -- it's been fun watching the girls from several months ago.

Here's a video of one of our favorite games -- "What does ______ say". If you can make it past the animals, you'll get a glimpse of how the girls see everyone around them....."What does Mommy say?" "What does Papa say?" - haha.

Childproof THIS, Mommy!

I had changed Olivia the other day and she was mad when I took her down from the changing table we keep in our dining room (you know....the room most people have and rarely use....makes a great changing room!). So I leave her and her fit she's throwing on the floor in dining room and go about whatever I was doing. Until I hear "Heeeeeelllllpp!" We always check this out because you never know with 2-year olds.

I go to check out what all the fuss is about and I find Olivia.........sitting on the changing table......and she can't get down. I asked D if he put her up there (not that he would put her up there and then leave the room!).....and I put her down only to watch her climb back up the table. I was totally shocked. Out of both of them, Olivia is the one I would think would be least likely to do something like that.

So I did what every responsible parent would do. I grabbed the video camera, of course!




After the repeat performance we had a big discussion about how we don't climb up the furniture like that. Thankfully, she's not tried it again since.

My oh my.

Run baby run!

Sofia is hilarious --- her primary mode of transportation now seems to be running. That kid runs everywhere and it's so cute. She gets this look of determination on her face and runs runs runs. Olivia, never one to be left too far behind (remember the walking?!?!?), is starting to run, too, but it's Sofia who runs everywhere!!

We got it on video.....

A quick video from Saturday when both girls were walking!

The pitter-patter of little feet

Sofia's feet, that is! We've entered a new stage around our house --- cruising. And it came pretty quickly. One moment Sofia's army crawling....then she's crawling on hands and knees.......pulling up to her knees, and then most recently her feet and finally, this past Tuesday, cruising on her own with the help of her toys. Yaaaaay Sofia! (You hear me say that in almost every video we have ---- Yaaaaaay (insert appropriate name here) -- I'm waiting for the day when I do that to D....."Honey - I washed your car for you." Yaaaaaaay D!)

Here are a couple of short videos of Sofia and her newest milestone. (BTW - I figured out the lighting is off just because most of the videos are taken in the evening....and apparently our family room isn't very well lit.....you can see the difference below as one is taken during the day and the other at night.).

Here's Sofia and her first time cruising....or marching, as she started out. It was hilarious - when we would hold her hands and let her walk, she would pick up each of her legs straight out in front of her. When she got behind the wagon, she couldn't lift her legs straight out so she had to settle for the marching you see her try in this first video. Too cute!

And Olivia.....enjoying Sofia's cruising.....

Olivia can move it move it!!

I think we can say it's official.........Olivia is mobile! We've been working with her for a few weeks and we can tell that she's been progressing, but it seems like it's been over the last couple of days that she's really taken off. She's "army crawling" and sometimes it seems like she's using her arms more than anything else, but when she sees something she wants, she goes.

The girls both seems to like to bounce things off the floor - or if they have a ball, they'll sort of toss it and then go after it. As D says - they like to "hang out around the fireplace" -- that's apparently where they spend most of their time either dropping things behind the grate or bouncing things off the slate tiles on the floor.

In other development news -- we have more teeth!! It's been quite a while since their first teeth, the bottom two, came in......back in February for both girls. I was starting to wonder if any more would ever come in - haha! It's been hard work trying to get a look at their gums.....and forget getting a finger in to feel their gums. Those bottom teeth really do work...ouch!! Over the past several days, every chance I get, I would try to get a look in their little mouths. Tonight I finally got to see for both and it looks like for Olivia, she has both top teeth coming in. Poor kid - that really must hurt. One tooth has broken through and you can tell the other one is close. I didn't get to see long enough to determine if any others were also coming in. Sofia appears to be getting a top tooth and possibly the one next to it (that's not her other top, front tooth), but she was harder to work with and I finally made her mad. And she bit me. Can't blame anyone but myself, right?! One of the top ones is definitely coming in, though. It will be so different to see their gummy smiles change, but still sweet.

Tonight we bought the girls some new blocks --- you remember - the wooden blocks with the ABC's and numbers on them in the bright colors. For such a simple toy there's hours of entertainment and lots of learning. Each block has a color on it - a capital and lower-case letter, a picture of something starting with that letter, a number and then some other symbol - usually something math related......you know + - x = . Very cool. Of course -- what do the girls want to do???? You guessed it - bang them on the floor.

Here's a cute video where you can see how they spend their time chasing toys around the kitchen......and make a note......you see TWO mobile kiddos!! (The video starts out with only Olivia in the shot). Oh - and you get to see Sofia with her latest --- sitting up from her tummy.

We're in to squealing

The girls were so funny last night. They're really starting to interact with eachother more and more, but until this point, they've really either been stealing toys from eachother or copying one another.

We've always said that Sofia's favorite toy is whatever is in Olivia's hand -- and that continues to be true, only now Olivia is taking up for herself more and more. And for the copying.......if one sees the other clapping, she has to clap. If one plays peek-a-boo, the other one plays too. And so on, and so forth. And they're really starting to imitate us as well --- we make faces at them and it's hilarious to watch them trying to make similar faces back, or the other morning, D had lotion in his hands and was rubbing his hands together before he put the lotion on his face --- the girls were watching intently and he noticed they started rubbing their hands together, too. This whole interaction thing is really quite cool. I mean....they're little people!

Last night we pulled out the red wagon. Olivia loves to stand up so she was standing at the wagon while Sofia was sitting inside, facing Olivia. They started giggling at eachother and squealing back and forth at eachother. As always, when I pulled out the camera, they were a little distracted so this video isn't nearly as funny as they were before I started filming, but it's still quite cute to see them interact with eachother. And to test the strength of their lungs. Boy are they l.o.u.d!!!!

Backwards, forward and a little bit sideways

As an aside -- it's not really that dark in our house.....seems like my videos are always dark.......bad lighting, I guess, but we do have light!!

Sofia has just started pushing herself backwards in this toy and it's quite funny. I have never seen the sideways thing until the day of this video, though!

Foreshadowing?

Ah to be the weekend. It's been a good one so far - here's looking forward to another great day. The girls are doing great. On Thursday, D left the girls with his sister for a couple of hours so he could run some errands. (Who wants to sit with little ones at the DMV, right??). Although it's still family, it's the first time we've left the girls with someone other than our parents. I was interested to see how they were going to do and I was glad to hear it when D said they didn't even cry when he left. I knew they would have a good time playing with Daniela and Gabriela, and that Tia E. would take very good care of them. It was funny, though - D said when we went to pick them up, Olivia was mad at him. He said she wouldn't look at him or smile at him for a few minutes. I guess payback has to come somewhere, right?!?!

D also noticed that Sofia was quite interested in a doll at Tia E's house and that night he told me he wanted to buy a doll for them. "They need to start playing with girl toys" he says. It's funny to me that he would think of things like that - he's not implying that we need to direct them to be more girly - he just wants to make sure they have toys that little girls play with in addition to all the other toys with the music and the colors and the lights. So - off we went this evening to Target in search of their very first baby dolls. I wasn't sure what we would find - it's been forever since I've been in search of a doll, but I knew what he was looking for. Go figure that we find the perfect doll that's just their size......and it's actually twins!! Twin dolls for twin babies - haha! So of course we have to purchase them. We brought them home and I proceed to remove all potentially hazardous objects......little socks, little plastic pacifier, little head bands -- and the dolls were a hit. For about 5 minutes. Although - I've learned.....in baby time, 5 minutes of full attention to one object is a good thing!! (p.s. - it's also a toy that makes absolutely no noise -- bonus!!)

Sofia is all over the place now. I've taken to moving our ottoman to help block off the family room to keep her contained. Her newest find has been Barley's food and water bowls. They are in a little stand in the kitchen and several times today I've seen her make her way over there for those bowls. She's also taken to pestering Barley. I had to go in to work today for a bit and D called me and told me that Sofia wouldn't leave Barley alone! She pesters him by taking his favorite toys...(as an aside - I can tell you I almost passed out the other day when D actually sat there and let Sofia play with one of Barley's toys. If you know D, then you know exactly what I'm talking about! He just looked at me and shrugged and said "What can you do?") so she takes his toys and it's so interesting to watch Barley try to get them back. He's so careful with her and you can tell he's not going at her very hard. We do make him stop when he starts pawing at her -- he doesn't realize how his claws can hurt. She also seems to follow him around the kitchen. She'll make her way over to him and try to grab his collar. He'll get up and move elsewhere. She'll watch him and then make her way over to his new location and try to pull the fur on his paws....he'll get up and move elsewhere. And repeat. It's hilarious, but I know Barley just wants a nap!! And it'll only get worse!!

Olivia is getting better and better on her tummy. She actually tolerates it for much longer periods of time these days and she's getting better at entertaining herself. She pushes up on her arms but she's not yet figured out how to go forward. She's great at going backwards and also at spinning herself around. She usually pushes herself backwards until she's reached a piece of furniture or a wall and then she's content to stay there.

So here's the foreshadowing part. I've mentioned this toy the girls have - it's an activity center with a little chair attached and they can "walk" around the table when in the chair. I call it the round-about toy. Both girls enjoy playing in it. The other day, Olivia was playing in the round-about toy while Sofia made her way around the kitchen. She kept getting closer and closer to Olivia. I had the video camera out because Olivia had been pushing herself backwards and just happened to get this funny clip. Excuse my talking - I wasn't in my "official filming" mode when I try not to talk behind the camera - haha!

So.........foreshadowing? I hope not! By the way.....I had to put the camera down to help so I missed the part where Olivia started clapping. Ha!

Copy cat

Here's a video of D and Olivia. Apparently there's some cartoon character D grew up watching and D is imitating the laugh. Olivia has become quite the little copy cat lately when it comes to making sounds and noises and tonight at dinner she was hilarious!! (Oh - and it's a way to show off my snazzy new bberry. I've never had one with a camera or video and I'm already finding it quite handy!) Hope you laugh like we did!

Our little inchworm

Mobility is just around the corner in the A&D household..........we realized today that Sofia has figured out how to get from here to there and can go pretty quickly when there's something she wants. We finally got her on video.............albeit bad quality video - we realized afterwards that the nightvision setting was on, so please excuse the quality this time. As you can guess - we couldn't get a repeat performance so this will have to do!

I love her look after she gets that case.....at first it's like "I did it!" and then it turns to "So...now what?"

P.S. -- we've seen her move much quicker than that video......for more important things...like my watch or something Olivia has in her hands.