A couple more vacation pics

We brought the pool to the cabin and put it on the porch. Jacob was first in, and first out (after a little face plant). Claire and Abigail had a blast, and we eventually coaxed Jacob back in. At that point, the girls had enough and Jacob had the pool to himself!The pool was okay, but the bath was an absolute party! Imagine trying to keep 3 1-year-olds sitting! I was only in there long enough to take the pictures.
We took a couple short hikes. The first was in Natural Bridges State Park, we went to the large natural bridge. It was fun, but carrying kids in front is tough!
The second hike was really short, but gave a great view of the gorge.
I love this picture! Jacob and I made our way to the top of the arch through this narrow staircase - my shoulders were rubbing on the side! Check out those blue eyes!

Our Trip to Red River Gorge!

A few weeks ago, we went to Red River Gorge with some friends, Sarah and Eric Brown and their daughter Abigail, for a 4-day weekend. Red River Gorge is east of Lexington, in the foothills. It's beautiful! The next couple posts will tell about some of the fun we had and show some pictures.

The Cabin

We stayed in a pretty cabin that was pretty secluded. We especially enjoyed the deck after our kids went to bed! We played games and just enjoyed the quiet of the woods.The cabin had a nice firepit that we cooked on with the dutch oven one night and made tinfoil dinners and smores the next night. It was nice to sit next to a campfire again! Having baby monitors made the evening even more relaxing for the mothers (the fathers wouldn't have even thought to check on the kids!).

I really liked the stick I found for the picture below - I think you need a stick if you're going to be in a picture with a campfire!

No longer the Sycamore Room

It took us months to finally start painting, weeks to finish painting, and another month to post that we've painted, but the Sycamore room is no more! Check out the before, during, and after. For those of you who haven't seen it, the blue in the middle of this picture is the chair rail, which used to be as green as the wall below it (see below). U-G-L-Y!!!
In the middle of priming. We took a day to tape, a day to prime, 2 days to paint the walls, another day to re-tape around the chair rail, a day to prime the chair rail, 2 days to paint the chair rail, then another day to decide what we wanted to do around the window, and 2 more days to paint it! It really was a project that lasted over 2 weeks! At one point, I tried convincing Dani to leave the chair rails green
Claire and Jacob (and Dani and I) were glad to have the play room back! It looks great!

Claire is walking!

Little Frankenstein has been let loose! Two Fridays ago while we were on vacation in Kentucky with some friends (more on that to come...), Claire apparently looked around and saw the other two babies walking around and decided she'd give it a go. She's really learned quickly and is getting faster and more stable. She is very, very proud of herself (as are we!)

We love springtime!

Dani and I love springtime because we can bring Jacob and Claire outside, sit them on their blankets, and keep them confined to a small space as they are terrified of touching the grass! We love it, we have tossed a frisbee and a baseball a bunch of times with a little 2-person audience. Claire for some reason thinks it's quite amusing to watch.

New things

Jacob is really funny. He has so much energy, that he often doesn't know what to do with it. Normally, it's directed towards his quest to get a telephone or remote control. Once he has one, though, he just starts walking around in circles. He logs more miles than anyone in the family!

Another funny thing I've been doing with him recently comes from Finding Nemo. Remember Crush (dude) and Squirt (little turtle)? There's a little scene that they give each other 'fin', then 'noggin', then 'dude.' Jacob and I give each other noggin, 'dude,' and Jacob thinks it's hilarious! I love it!

Meanwhile, Claire has discovered her favorite cupboard - and it happens to be the one that Dani doesn't want her in because it has glass mixing bowls! She's really discovering how to push Dani's buttons - I feel that this is only the start, too!

More high chair pictures

Looking back through a few recent posts, there have been a lot of high chair pictures. This is likely because Jared takes most of the pictures and he's home at dinner time, Claire and Jacob are happy (because they are eating), and they are not moving around. Here are a few of the latest (and some of the cutest)
Claire has a really cute smile when she's not being crazy!
One of both Jacob and Claire's new tricks is biting the spoon and not letting go. Jacob is especially funny, because he gets this little mischevious look on his face when he does it.
In other news, we're beginning to introduce dairy into the kids' diet. It is so much easier to give them snack foods and foods we're eating because we don't have to worry about what's in them. They've had a little of everything recently, goldfish, cheese, yogurt, chicken nuggets and even some artichoke. Jacob is eating solid foods a lot better (though he still isn't a fan of broccoli, plain rice, or plain potatos), and Claire eats absolutely everything when she's not throwing it!

A few favorite things

Tupperware
It's become basically a daily activity for Claire and Jacob to empty out the tupperware and the mixing bowls out of the cupboards. Dani says it's an activity that keeps them busy so she can do something else and is worth the trade-off! We've found lids and containers all over the house, but somehow have managed to avoid any orphan pieces so far...
We love Jacob without a shirt on! It only happens right before baths because he's a big-time drooler right now.
The new car
We sometimes wonder where our kids get their energy until they get in the car and Jared pushes them around the house, sound effects and all. Jacob is the driver with the road rage (he loves to honk the horn). When he's not behind the wheel, he's trying to be the engine for Claire. She thinks it's hilarious! It is a good activity for 3 people to burn off some energy.

Climbing under chairs

Claire loves to climb over and under the bars under the chairs. She grunts throughout the experience, normally getting stuck for a few seconds, but then goes back for more. She must have learned this from her dad, too (except that she can actually get out).

Remote controls & Phones

If Jacob had his way (which is actually happening more and more often these days), he'd always have a remote control or a phone in his hands. At church, we're in a small class with a family that has a baby the same age. She brought 2 old cell phones and a remote control for their baby to play with, and Jacob ended up with all 3 within 30 seconds of her getting them out for him. He'll carry them all over the house, stopping to press the buttons. If you're holding him and he sees one, he'll dive to get it. The scary thing is that he'll know how to use them better than his parents in probably 5 years!

Anyone else see the resemblence?

Dani and I went to Spiderman 3, and before the movie, the Dolby Digital Sound intro was Curious George. We laughed because Curious George reminded us of Jacob - into absolutely everything! Recently, Jacob's been into standing next to things and shaking them. The list includes chairs, doors, toys, tables, lamps, our legs, Claire (he thinks this is particularly funny - Claire doesn't), among other things. Check out this picture - do you see the resemblence?
A few months ago, I won this monkey at a work function. When we got it, we thought it reminded us a little of Jacob with its big eyes and huge smile. It still does!

I was looking through our recent pictures of Jacob and Claire and I noticed there aren't many of them together. Taking pictures where both Jacob and Claire are (a) in the picture, (b) sitting still, and (c) happy is getting to be increasingly difficult! We'll keep trying, and I'll get a few up in the coming week

Swinging

Mom just got new baby swings and Claire and Jacob love them. I guess even being a grandma of twins makes you buy things in pairs! I think this may have been the first time this year the swingset has been used by someone other than Lydia! Check out Jacob's hair blowing in the breeze! It looks like a mohawk!
Apparently the swing passed all tests.

Fun in the high chair

Claire and Jacob spend a lot of time in their high chairs. They eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and at least one snack every day (depending on their moods and on Dani's afternoon-grumpiness tolerance).

Sometimes, high chairs are used as a place where they can sit and we can get things done. One day, we left Claire and Jacob with some Cheerios while we went to look at the garden. When we got back, Claire had grabbed the bowl of strawberries off the counter and was close to finishing them off. Fortunately, Jacob had already had his strawberries. Caught you red handed!

Claire's favorite way to sit in her high chair is shown below - leaning as far forward as possible and grabbing her feet. We get some funny faces from them!
They have very different strategies of getting food. Claire's strategy (sometimes, at least) is flirting/charming her way to a trey-full of snacks.
Jacob's one and only strategy is yelling loudly. This was his response to his dad asking him to be 'so big.'

Dinner time is a lot of fun with the kids. Dani and I occasionally get a decent conversation in, but it's generally spent trying to get Jacob and Claire to be 'so big,' or to say 'dada' (which they say often) or to say 'mama' (which they, for whatever reason, refuse to say these days). Fun times!

Walking man (and a couple other funny pictures)

Jacob has been learning to walk in the past two weeks and is now getting pretty steady on his feet. He's now to the stage of pulling himself up to walk to certain places instead of just crawling He likes to carry stuff around with him as he goes. It's still a pretty stiff-legged walk and is entertaining to watch. He can go all the way across the kitchen, turn, and go down the hallway now. He also likes to climb stairs which has necessitated a gate at the bottom because he hasn't figured out how to go down on purpose (he went down from the 2nd stair not on purpose the other day!)
Here he's visiting his sister - it won't be long before he can do this without dad's help.
Jacob apparently was born with a long tongue!

Our Little Garden

Jared and I have been doing some work outside this week and he made it possible for me to have a little garden like I have wanted since we got our own house. We got rid of some plants we didn't like and Jared gathered a bunch of random rocks from our planters and made a nice rock wall. We don't really expect anything to survive, but we will be glad to see if we can grow anything. We have planted cilantro, chives, basil, jalepenos, and cherry tomatoes. We also planted some regular tomatoes in a planter. Wish us luck!

Birthday Babies!

Happy Birthday Claire and Jacob! April 18, 2006, we welcomed our little babies into the world, and how they've changed since!
Because they are allergic to dairy, they got pumpkin cupcakes.
Jacob was very cute in his birthday hat
As was Claire. Both eventually preferred the Kix to the pumpkin cupcakes.

Birthday Babies!

The Presents!

Claire loved playing with the paper. The presents inside weren't as much of a hit (until the next day)
Jacob is learning how to play baseball! First step is how to hold the bat (2nd step is how not to hit your sister).
Nana got the kids a play table and they love it! They play with it very differently, Jacob gets all the sounds going at the same time, Claire waits for the song or noise to finish before trying another one. Dani can now sing every song it plays.

We are noticing that toys are very loud, but they love them! Nana especially liked getting the loud ones for our kids. We're planning on bringing them over every time we visit!

Happy Birthday Jacob and Claire!

You'll have to wait for pictures and details of Jacob and Claire's 1st birthday party Monday. But I will put a few pictures up that are fun to see.

Dani on 4/16/2006:

Dani on 4/11/2007:

She looks so happy (and cute!) to have the kids no longer in her belly! More to come...