October 2014 - 21 months old

10-2-14 Violet loves the 1-2-3 To the Zoo book. It has a lion on the cover and a little mouse to find on each page. She roars like a lion, but it sounds like the noise you'd make for static! She wants to read it over and over again! Lily says “pillow” and “blankey” now and takes them to various places to go night-night! She lays still for about 5 seconds before she's up and moving again! She says pullow.

10-3-14 Lily yells, DADDY! When she needs him or when he walks in the other room. It's like she's singing it, DAD-DEEEE! And she’s soooo loud! haha

10-4-14 Our sweet cousin, Abi, lost her battle with cancer this morning. We are heartbroken. She will never be forgotton.

10-6-14 Violet is so funny when she's really happy. She'll get so excited that she'll shake! She has done this with her doggy in her mouth and tonight it was at The Dodo restaurant with a crayon in each hand! She's also done it when she finds a particularly great flower or leaf. It cracks me up!

10-7-14 Lily is a parrot! She copied me saying damn! Not just once, but 4 times!!!

Lily loved the Indian food tonight! She's doing really well with a spoon!

10-8-14 We can't believe how many words the girls know, especially Lily! We started writing them all down and Lily knows 115 words and Violet knows 55!! Lily is a chatter box and is ALWAYS talking. Violet knows a lot of words but doesn't say them all day long like Lily so it was harder to get a count on hers. Lily knows quite a few phrases, the funniest being “it's working" or “it's not working" and she's always touching the bottom right corner of the TV. I asked Mary if she picked it up there. Yep. If the TV remote isn't working the kids tell Mary that then she turns it on (it's up where the kids can't reach) and tells them it's working. Mary thought it was so funny that Lily picked up on that! Violet knows a lot that Lily knows plus a few that are her own words. She says elephant and the snake sound, hiss, and Julian from Olivia. Oh yeah, she also says off, as in take off my special thumb bracelet because I want to suck my thumb! Lily tries to say Hoggenmuller, the teacher in Olivia. It's pretty funny! They are learning new words every single day!!!

10-10-14 Lily is so funny with the cat ears headbands we got at Target. She puts them on her eyes like glasses and walks around! Violet is always finding the smallest fuzz or little piece of grass on the floor, picks it up with thumb and finger, then brings it to me. Thank you, Violet! She pays so much attention to details!

10-11-14 Violet got Lily's jacket for her. We said, “Lily, tell Violet thank you!" She said, “You're welcome me."

We went to The Tracy Aviary after nap. There was a little hay maze and the girls loved it! Violet tried to pick up every pumpkin in the maze. Lily ran around like a wild woman! Great fun! There were stuffed scarecrows that you can sit and pose with and the girls weren’t scared of them at all. They kept looking at their pumpkin heads with a confused look on their faces.

10-13-14 My mom watched the girls today and they had a great time! She brought the dress up bag and they got to be Hawaiian princesses today! They must have had a lot of fun because Violet was so hyper all afternoon! She was playing with Lily and kept saying Lily, Lily in her sweet voice! Lily was saying, “I got it!" when my mom was here. We went out to swing and we saw a cool bug, probably a beetle, on the slide. They were both fascinated by it!

10-17-14 Lily has been saying “Here you go" to everyone. It's so cute! Violet has been saying “Lily!" in her high, sweet voice. Sometimes it's when they're playing, sometimes it's when she's upset, usually because of Lily. Violet will walk around and sing quietly to herself. It's so sweet!

10-18-14 We went to a Halloween party at Nina's house. The girls were Elmos and everyone loved their costumes! They had a keyboard on their fireplace mantle that was the perfect height for them. Violet was in love with it! She was having so much fun and dancing to the music she was playing. She was bending her knees and bouncing around! Lily came over and liked playing the piano too!

10-20-14 I had the day off, well my last of 6 days off, and I wanted to do something special. At first I thought the park, and then I thought, “We do that all the time.” I took them to the zoo instead! It was mostly a lot of fun! We saw the lions at the perfect time. The trainers were giving them a check up on the other side of the fence. We were all in awe at the lions when they went on their hind legs! Those are some big cats! When we went over to the polar bear area, I let them out to walk a little. Lily just wanted to push the stroller! I have these great handles for them to hold on to when walking next to the stroller and Violet did a great job holding on to it and walking! It’s great because I have a hard time pushing the stroller and holding their hands. The bad part is that Lily didn’t want to get back in the stroller. She had a fit or two when we got to the hill to go see the tigers. Before we left, I wanted to take them on the train. I brought one of the carriers so I could strap one on and then hold the other sitting next to me. Violet loves the carrier so I strapped her on facing out. Lily was so upset when we didn’t make the first train. She was starting to get kind of cranky and tired. I thought we were going to miss the next train too, but there was one bench left so we got it! Lily did not want me to hold on to her at all on the train! Of course I did, but she wasn’t happy, that little stinker! Next time we’ll do the train first before they’re tired, but overall it was a fun morning and I’m glad I tried out taking them to the zoo myself!

10-21-14 Violet calls all crayons “lellow" and roars (her static lion sound) like a dinosaur. Lily is so independent. She can put her own shoes on and is really good at eating with a spoon. They are both pretty good at cleaning up and putting things away. I think we might try out the toddler rails on their beds soon.

10-25-14 We went to a pumpkin patch this morning! It was really fun! There were rows and rows of pumpkins. Violet kept saying, “Apples! Apples!” Lily walked around with a purpose like she was searching for the perfect “punkin.” Soon she was pushing the wheelbarrow. We bought two toddler sized pumpkins that the girls picked out. Mama picked a cool white pumpkin (I’ve never seen one before!), and Daddy bought a dark orange, almost red, flat pumpkin! Once the pumpkins were in the wheelbarrow, the girls had to get in to! When we left, we drove around Farmington Bay a saw a bunch of awesome birds and a few big bullfrogs. We had a very busy and fun morning. As Lily says, “Busy day!”

After nap, we put on their Elmo costumes to take some pictures outside. They are soooo adorable in their costumes! They really look like little Elmos running around. We went to Charlotte’s second birthday party and then to Kristi’s house for the India reunion party. It was so fun to see most of the people we traveled to India with! The girls were in my tummy at the time!

Violet calls every pumpkin she sees apple! There are a lot of little pumpkins around and pumpkin decorations. She points every one of them out and says, “Apple!”

10-27-14 Violet has been biting. Mostly she’s biting Lily. Let’s hope this is a short phase!

Violet loves wearing the teething necklace I used to wear when they were little. She puts it on as soon as she wakes up or as soon as we get home. It has a quick-release closure so I feel ok with her wearing it all the time. She’s a very fashionable girl!

The girls have been playing together so much lately! They make each other tea, cook in their kitchen together, throw the balls back and forth, and love stacking blocks together. It just melts my heart to see them play so sweetly together.

10-28-14 They can go up and down stairs only holding on to the railing now! We like holding their hands unless Lily says, “No help!" She's so independent! Her bottom left incisor is coming in and Violet's bottom right is coming in. We are so excited for Halloween! I’m thinking about bringing them to my school for the parade!

We decided to wait on putting up the toddler rails in their cribs. They’re not trying to get out anymore! We’ll keep the pillows on the floor around the crib though. We’ll wait on potty training too. Sometimes they seem ready, sometimes they don’t!

10-29-14 They are so funny! They pick up so much cute stuff from daycare. Now when we say, “Let’s go to the table for dinner.” They say, “Me!!” and raise their hands! They’ll do that for other things too.

10-30-14 Lily took the last step down with no hands today! She was so focused on getting where she wanted to go that she didn’t even realize she wasn’t holding on to anything! She’s also saying sentences like, “No mama, not Lily turn!” when it’s her turn for a diaper change. She’s been saying, “Book sit, book sit,” when she wants to read a book. It took us about a day to figure that one out. It sounds a lot like bullshit!

10-31-14 It’s Halloween!!! We had a super-fun day today! As Lily would say, “Busy day!” First Daddy brought the girls to my work and they stayed for the parade. I took them to Mary’s and they had a blast with their friends eating donuts and playing all day! At home, the trick-or-treaters starting coming before Daddy even got home from work. We ate some chili and then went out trick-or-treating! We went to our new neighbors first and they did great with knocking on the door. They got their candies and then wanted to go inside! They did that at the second house too and after that they got the hang of it! After the first house, Lily stopped to look in her bag. She took out the candy with a look of, “what is this?” on her face! Priceless! They had so much fun walking up the stairs, knocking on the doors, and getting their treats! Everyone loved seeing two cute little Elmos! Before we were done they both stopped on the sidewalk and started taking everything out of their bags! Once we got home, they dumped everything out of their bags and then put it in and then dumped it out again! We gave them their first sucker and they loved it!!! Their reactions were so funny! Violet was super-hyper and kept putting her sticky sucker back in her bag. Lily pretty much devoured hers and wanted another one. They are so funny! They ran to the door when the doorbell rang and greeted the trick-or-treaters. When it was bedtime, they were at the banister looking down and smiling at the trick-or-treaters. What a fun, busy day!