Two chatty 21-month-old girls

Estella and Cordelia turned 21 months old recently and have discovered that they like to talk -- a lot! Both of the girls are very chatty, but in different ways. Cordelia says her words very deliberately, putting several words together and speaking relatively slowly. After she speaks, she looks at us until we repeat what she said back to her. If we repeat it correctly, she will nod once and the conversation will be over; if we repeat it incorrectly, she will say it again and wait for us to confirm. Estella, on the other hand, speaks very quickly, repeating the same word or phrase over and over again repeatedly until we respond to her. When we repeat back what we think she has said, she either gets a great big goofy grin on her face and says "Yeah!!!" or sticks her lips out in an exaggerated pout and says "No!" then repeats the word or phrase several more times while we try to figure out what she is saying. Unfortunately, many of Estella's phrases right now sound the same to me, and I haven't yet figured out what "Ai-sha, ai-sha, ai-sha, ai-sha" means. So I'm hearing a lot of that right now! Both of the girls have a several-hundred word vocabulary, and they are speaking more and more every day. Their favorite phrases right now are "Momma hold me please" (Cordelia) and "I want to do it!" (Estella).


Looking back on the past twenty-one months, it is hard to imagine that they would grow up so fast! Here are some pictures of the girls as they've grown:

These are pictures we had taken of the girls when they were just a few days old. Cordelia is on the left and Estella is on the right.

Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) at three months.

Six-month-old Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right).

Nine-month-old Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right). I still enjoy dressing them up in adorable dresses!

On their first birthday, Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) were both cruising around furniture and getting ready to walk. Independent steps came in the weeks after their first birthday, and by thirteen months both girls were walking more than they were crawling.

Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) at fifteen months.

Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) at eighteen months. This was a time of transition from baby to toddler. They look so old here!

Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) at twenty-one months. We couldn't get Cordelia to straighten her legs -- Dale would straighten them and she'd curl them back up and laugh at him as if they were playing a great game together! And Estella doesn't have a cast on her right hand -- that is her sock. She loves to take her socks off and wear them on her hand. What amazingly fun kids we have!

Easter

The kids went to one big Easter egg hunt this year, with a playgroup that we've been in since Adelaida was only a few weeks old. This playgroup has about 12 active families, all with kids born within four months of Adelaida (12 girls and 1 boy -- not exactly gender balanced!). Several of the families have younger children now as well, and it is so nice to see our kids playing together and growing up together.

The first Easter egg hunt with this group had the one-year-olds crawling/toddling around a back yard, with eggs "hidden" in plain sight and the moms eagerly encouraging their children to pick up the eggs. Oh, what fun that was!










The group's second Easter egg hunt was marginally more difficult. Several eggs were at least hidden behind rocks or at the bottom of a slide, and all the kids had a pretty good idea of what to do with the eggs. (Yes, Adelaida is wearing the same Easter dress as she wore the previous year. It was such a good dress, I got as much wear out of it as I could!)

We weren't able to go to last year's Easter egg hunt and really missed out on seeing the kids all together and dressed up for Easter.

This year's hunt was at a friend's house in the backyard. Twenty kids, more than 200 eggs, and the kids definitely knew what to do! The egg hunt itself was complete chaos, with kids running everywhere, screaming in joy whenever they got an egg. It was fantastic.

Here are some pictures from this year's Easter egg hunt party:

Adelaida and her friends playing on the playset


Adelaida, Shreya, Ann, and Mireille dancing on the "stage," with Cordelia on her way to join them


Time for the egg hunt! Estella considered picking up several eggs, but rejected all of them until she saw this little orange egg. She was so excited, she picked it up and just wanted to carry it around the rest of the hunt. She wouldn't put it in her bucket and refused to pick up any other eggs. Just this one little orange egg, and she was happy!


Cordelia found an egg! Of all our kids, Cordelia was the clear master of the Easter egg hunt. She found about a dozen eggs -- she would pick each one up, shake it, drop it in her bucket, and quickly move on to find another. She was even finding the hidden eggs!


Estella with her orange egg. You can see Dale in the background, carrying her bucket for her. All she wanted to carry was that one orange egg!






Cordelia's bucket is getting pretty full!


Estella still has her orange egg.


Dale and I walked around with Estella and Cordelia for the Easter egg hunt, and kind of lost track of Adelaida. By the time I saw her, she was running around with some friends and another little boy was walking off with her bucket! Her bucket had only three eggs in it at that point, but another mom said she had been finding a lot of eggs, so I'm not sure exactly where all of her eggs ended up. She didn't mind though -- she was perfectly happy with her three eggs!

Ann, Mireille, Orla, and Shannon check out the loot from their eggs!


We tried to get a picture of all the kids, but of course failed. Fourteen kids posing for the picture, two in the background, and four (including two of mine!) missing from the picture. Not bad, all things considering!


Estella, Cordelia, and Adelaida. Estella is still holding her orange egg, Cordelia has a bucket full of eggs, and Adelaida lost track of her bucket. Happy Easter!

State Fair Field Trip

(This is another post from several months ago... I'm trying to catch up!)

One of the things we love about the girls' new school is that they take field trips. Adelaida's first school field trip was to the state fair in September. She had a great time, and loved that all of her friends were there with her! Here, Brazill, Adelaida, Jobin, and Paul watch a sheep-shearing.


We watched cows being milked, visited the McDonald's farm, and ate fair food. But the best part was definitely riding a horse! Adelaida was put on a horse named Bear. She was a little apprehensive at first, but soon started waving to all the people around the track. She was loving it!


"Hi Momma! I'm on a horse! A horse named Bear!"


She had a great time, and I can't wait to go back next year!

Preschool Olympics

I'm catching up on some posts that I should have written months ago. This one is from last August, when we were watching 400-m dashes and floor routines and talking about medal counts. A wonderfully innovative mom in our playgroup decided to organize a preschool olympics for our (then) three-year-olds. We met at a park and watched our kiddos race and fall down and giggle and laugh together. What a fun memory!

I also took this opportunity with my camera to take some pictures of the kids playing at the park and just being kids.

Adelaida and her friend Shreya played together in the sand before the races began.


Adelaida and Shreya also discovered a double slide, so they could slide down together, without being separated for even a moment. If they had to go down one at a time, I think they would have chosen to stay together and skip the slide. These two girls are together as much as they can be!


The park had a great little-kids playset and Estella and Cordelia explored it a little bit. They discovered the slide and I was moving as fast as I could, helping one girl down the slide and back to the steps, then getting back to the slide to help the next girl down the slide. I think this is where Cordelia first discovered the slide, and she absolutely loves it!







This was supposed to be tug-of-war. You'll notice the seven-year-old and five-year-old (on the ends) pulling while all the three-year-olds stand around and watch, some holding the rope and some not. We tried really hard to explain the game to them, but I'm pretty sure none of them got it.


A minute later, the rope had traveled several feet toward the seven-year-old's side. Adelaida is still standing exactly where she was told to stand, and Adia has run off. Five three-year-olds are still holding the rope, and some even pulling on the rope (although I'm pretty sure Gracie is pulling in the wrong direction...)!


Moms Maura, Varsha, Chandora, and Eva demonstrate the three-legged race. Given that tug-of-war was too hard for these kids, how do you think the three-legged race went? At least the moms had fun!


Now it's the kids' turn for the three-legged race. The contestants are Lilly/Hannah (five-year-old and seven-year-old sisters), Orla/Shannon (twins), Gracie/Koen, and Shreya/Adelaida. Three of those pairs stayed on the starting line until they were told to go; Adelaida and Shreya got a little head-start -- they had seen the moms do it and started down the course as soon as they were tied together! They did pretty well, until Adelaida fell and the other kids caught up to them.


Who knew being tied to a friend could be so much fun!?


Estella and Cordelia were just over one year old and not walking yet. They mostly hung out on the picnic blanket and cheered while the big kids raced.

There was some baseball, and maybe a few other races, and so much giggling and laughing (and very few tears!). At the end of the day, all the kids were declared winners and were given medals while standing on a podium. We were all so proud of our little athletes!

Balloon Fiesta 2012!

Balloon Fiesta is a very special event in Albuquerque -- hotels are booked months in advance, airfare to Albuquerque spikes, morning rush hour accidents quadruple, and crazy people all over the city get up hours before dawn to drive through bumper-to-bumper traffic to Balloon Fiesta Park. Oh, and several hundred hot air balloons rise above the city for one of the most majestic sights I've ever seen.

Dale had to travel for work during Balloon Fiesta week, so I begged and pleaded and dropped several hints with my family and finally convinced my wonderful sister to come out to visit us for a week -- to help out with the kids and cook dinners for us and simply be a second adult in a house full of young kids.

Rachel and Simon arrived at the beginning of the week and made my life immeasurably easier from the beginning, despite some hilarious incidents that might not have happened under different circumstances. I live in a house with three kids, so I've become accustomed to devoting only 90% of my attention to any one child at a time -- the other 10% of my attention is split between the other two kids, even if they aren't immediately in front of me. I also instinctively leave every area child-proofed, making sure that the kids can't get into anything that I don't want them to get in when I'm not around. My dear sister Rachel comes from a house with only one child, and as such hasn't developed these multiple-children skills (yet!).

On the second day that Rachel was visiting, she gave Simon his nightly bath, then pulled him out of the bath and took him into her bedroom for lotion and pajamas -- without first draining the tub (a mistake every parent of multiple kids makes ONCE). Enter Cordelia, freshly bathed herself and in her pajamas. Cordelia took one look at the bathtub full of water and toys and decided to climb in! I heard her splashing in the water and ran in to pull her out of the bath, but not before she soaked her pajamas and diaper.

The next night Rachel gave Simon a bath again, promising to drain the tub before taking him back to her bedroom. She was so intent on making sure that the bathroom wasn't unattended that she didn't think about her bedroom. I had been cleaning up after dinner downstairs, and when I walked upstairs and past Rachel's bedroom, I heard Adelaida telling Estella to be very still. I looked in and saw Adelaida rubbing something white into Estella's hair. Adelaida had found Rachel's face wash and decided that it was going to be Estella's shampoo! She had poured out half the bottle, most of it ending up in Estella's hair, plus some on the floor, some on the bed, and some on Rachel's clothes. It was such a mess! Needless to say, Estella had another bath, where we tried to rinse most of the face wash out of her hair.

I think Rachel learned a few lessons about surviving with multiple kids in the house that week!

Really, other than those two incidents, the week was disaster-free and I so appreciated having my sister around for moral support while Dale was gone.

At the end of the week, Dale returned, and we decided to go to Balloon Fiesta. That involved getting up very early, bundling everyone in warm clothes, and trekking through Balloon Fiesta Park with four tired kids.

Balloon Fiesta was amazing, as usual. Walking on the launch field, with balloons inflating, standing, and taking off all around you, is an incredible experience. This post shows some of the better pictures we took that morning, and looking over these pictures the positive memories (seeing the dawn patrol balloons burn and ascend, watching the special shapes balloons fly, and watching a balloon go from fully deflated to rising) outweigh the less positive memories of the morning (flat tire in the double stroller, cranky Simon, none of the kids wanting to ride in the rented wagon, Adelaida pouting). And as usual, I have more pictures than I have words to describe this incredible event!

















All in all, it was a good experience and I hope we can do it again this year.