Your Momma Dresses You Funny...

These pictures are from May of 2011, back when the girls were about 2 1/2 years old.
They liked to pick their clothes -- and we let them, unless we were going somewhere other than to Miss Kelli's daycare.  This was when they would wear dresses over pajamas, or over play clothes, or instead of play clothes -- you never knew what combination they'd pick.  Like a gingham dress over some brightly colored stripped pants.

Kayla

Pajamas rarely matched.

Kayla and Megan

We became accustomed to seeing odd looking attire around the house.
But what was surprising was the time we came home from a date night.  Grandma Ruth Bingham watched the girls for us.  They were asleep in bed when we got home, but Grandma apparently had been corrupted by the girls' unusual fashion sense.

Grandma Ruth Bingham

After talking to her for a few moments, I finally had to ask her what she had done to her hair.  She quickly remembered that she still had stickers all over her head.  The girls had decorated her with stickers when they were awake -- and many remained atop her head.

Be careful around our house -- you never know what fashion trends you may unknowingly pick up!

April 2012 Flashback

The girls love dresses. They went through a phase where they only wanted to wear dresses!  Most of the time we indulged them.  They would often go through several dresses in a day, just because they felt like changing.  As I write this, it's December 2012, and they still love dresses -- but the passion has faded a bit.  They still like to change clothes though -- Kayla more than Megan.
They come up with some wild outfits.  Megan has sweat pants on under her dress.  Not so bad...

Megan

Kayla has pants on, and socks and shoes.  She hasn't quite got that matching clothes skill mastered yet....Those are Mickey Mouse socks with her Hello Kitty dress.

Kayla

Kayla

This is how I found Kayla in bed.  She was sound asleep, half on, half off of her bed. How she slept that way I'll never know!

Kayla

The girls got their first big girl bikes!  The first helmets we got were too big.  The girls had fun with them though!

Kayla

Megan, Kayla - Unicorns doing headstands? Or were they that top-heavy?

 We did get them some properly sized helmets, and are saving the unicorn ones for when they're a little bigger.

My mother does not like this picture.  It shows how they learned to make funny faces! But I had to put the disclaimer in, as I know my mother will see this and ask me why on earth I would post that picture when there are so many other pictures with cute smiling faces.  Hi, Mom : )

 Megan, Kayla

They ride their bikes at Grandma's house, which is right behind ours.  Her driveway is flatter and more spacious -- and there aren't as many other kids around to interfere with them.  Our court has a lot of little kids and the cul de sac becomes a playground.  We don't let the girls play in the street unless one of us is in the street with them, letting them ride their bikes.  They know to stop at the end of the driveway.

Wordless Wednesday - 10/31/11 - (Easily Distracted) Halloween Bees

 

Sunday Sunday Sunday

So, you might ask yourself: What is a lazy December Sunday like with twin 2 year old girls?

Oh, you know, nothing special.

Faces of Kayla

Little Miss Kayla sometimes likes to ham it up for the camera.  Even when there isn't a camera around. Lucky for us there often is one nearby in our house, although sometimes in the form of a phone.

Kayla has gotten so expressive lately. Little things will cause her to make the most surprised face -- complete with the perfect little oval-shaped open mouth and wide eyes, frozen just long enough to make it more comical.

She's absolutely adorable when she does it!  It's hard to catch her in full-surprised-mode, though.
She's turned into quite the climber, too!  I keep calling her my little monkey girl.  If we take the tray off the high chair, she'll climb up into it all by herself!

But sometimes, she just wants to lay in a chair and watch Dora or Diego.  She does suck her thumb -- usually only when she's tired, though.  We haven't tried to stop her yet -- figure we'll give it some time and let her be a kid for a while.

Hugging is fun!  And sometimes -- she gets overzealous and hugging becomes near-strangling.  But even strangling can be cute when it's a stuffed animal.  When she's excited she'll run at you and throw herself into your arms for a big hug!

She thinks watermelon is fabulous.  She makes an awful mess with it, with juice going everywhere.  Especially when she smooshes it in front of her.  Here she's actually showing me her mouth, in response to my request that she put it in her mouth instead of smooshing it on her tray.

 And she doesn't care what she looks like eating playing with it.  Here she's quite proud of her accomplishment of getting her finger stabbed through it without it breaking into multiple pieces.  I was actually pretty impressed!

She's the ultimate girly-girl.

Okay, maybe this was a rare moment caught with a bow in her hair.  She left the bow in her hair for quite a bit that morning, probably because she found it on the dresser and wanted to wear it.  Everything's better if its not mommy's idea, right?

She's almost always the helper girl.  If we leave something within her reach, she'll pick it up -- and if we scold her, she doesn't stop -- she just proudly brings it to us so we can put it up.  She's pretty good at sharing things with her sister -- if you give her two sippies, she'll take one to Megan.  If Megan puts her sippy down, Kayla will often pick it up and take it, giving Megan hers.  Any opportunity to trade -- after all, Megan's might have something better!

And she'd would love to be Mommy's little kitchen helper if we'd let her!

Always a cutie, even when she isn't doing anything special.  Here she's showing us the buttons on her top and telling us what they are.  Over and over. She doesn't have many outfits with buttons on them, being a choking hazard and all, so this was pretty special to her--the buttons on her top, instead of mommy's or daddy's!

She's definitely a daddy's girl.  His hat is a much-loved toy, although she hasn't quite got the hang of it yet. In her defense, it is a tad big for her still.

She is absolutely precious to me.   I cannot even imagine what life would be like now if she weren't a part of it. She's got me by the heart.

She's pretty good at making other people smile, too.  After all, who could resist this face?

Faces of Megan

Mighty Megan prefers to be held a lot of the time.

That started from birth and hasn't stopped. She's always reaching to be picked up, and asks with a persistent and insistent "Up!  Up!" and who could resist her cute little demand plea?

She does have a determined streak in her.  When she wants to do something, she doesn't like to be told no.  Like sneaking food to the dog from her high chair, for example..

Eventually I predict that determination will work into a beneficial attribute.  Right now, though, it's inconsistent.  She's very quick to say "Hep, hep!" when she wants someone to help her do something -- often before she's tried to do it on her own.  She's learned already that people will do things for her if she asks them to.  Manager in training, perhaps?

She's quite vocal, learning more words every day.  She's very good at picking up what people say and do, and mimicking it.  I'm not sure where she got this one, though -- it's certainly not something I do!

We have to watch Megan carefully, and be careful where we leave the laptops. Megan looks quite at home here, though, in this rare moment where she was able to get to a computer without being on someone's lap.  I have no doubt she'll have more than her share of early exposure to PC's in our household, but so far, it's limited to watching clips of preschool TV shows on the internet, and seeing pictures of herself on daddy's screen saver. 

She's pretty good at identifying the usual body parts.  Here she's demonstrating her skill at identifying her belly button.

When Megan gets determined to do something, that tongue comes out.  My daddy had that same tendency.  Here, she's determined to climb up into mommy's lap in the recliner, but mommy won't put down the camera to help.

Here she's intent on using that spoon.  Even if it is backwards...

She loves being outside, and loves to ready-set-GO!  She often plays keep-away-from-Mommy when mommy wants her to come here.

She has a passion for reading already.  She's even doing well with pointing at items as we count them.

She has an artistic streak to her eating style.  A while back, she balanced toast pieces on end.  The other day, she worked hard to balance a piece of cheese stick on the top of her sippy cup.  She succeeded!

Megan often makes it hard to get good pictures of her.  As soon as she sees the camera, she comes over wanting to see the pictures on the screen.  Every time she sees one of her or Kayla, she identifies it as Kayla, though.  Apparently, she can't distinguish herself from her sister yet in photos.

She's not shy, although she looks it in this shot.  What's really going on here is that she wants to sit on the other side of the chair, and so she's climbing behind Kayla (in pink) to get her to move.  This is just one example of Megan forgetting that she's little, and pushing to get her way.

Megan is quite playful at times.  Of course when she's not she has no problem saying "no!".  Here she's playing a game of peek a boo from behind the chair.  She thinks she's hidden.

She tends to play in her crib for a while before going to bed.  One morning we found all her babies from her bed lined up along the wall, watching her sleep.  (I haven't decided if that one's cute or creepy.)

She brightens every day for me, more than I ever expected.  Life would not be the same if she wasn't with us, an I'm so grateful that she is!  I'm smitten.

She's good at capturing people's hearts.  It's hard to resist a cute little face like this -- who once again, is after the camera!