Strike a Pose...

Allie and Brooke had their pictures taken yesterday at Portrait Innovations. I must say that they are pretty darn cute! BUT, next time I will make sure and NOT schedule the pictures during nap time. Brooke would not smile for anything, and she would not sit still either. I'm surprised we even got some good shots of her appearing still. Poor photograper....got his money's worth outta us! But, somehow we still go some great pics of the girls.

Can you BELIEVE that A & B will be one in exactly one week from today!!?? It just doesn't seem possible to me. It is so amazing to look back from their 2 pound days and see how far they have come. God's grace and mercy have been abundant through our girls and their growth over the last year!

Here are some pictures from yesterday. Yes, there are ALOT of them! Too hard to narrow down!

Allie and Brooke

Allie

Brooke

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Yes, WE ARE!!! I'll give you one guess what dad was doing on Saturday! That's right....watching some good ol' college football. Actually, he was watching some football (or listening to football since A&M wasn't televised) WHILE painting both bathrooms. Now, that's multi-tasking! The girls and I ran some errands while dad was hard at work. Since it is officially football season again, the girls have a new Saturday uniform that they'll be wearing for a while. I figure they’ll just take turns each week switching out uniforms so that one girl isn’t wearing the same team all the time. Gotta be fair afterall! Here are the girls in their new Saturday outfits:

The Rivals meet face to face!

Allie representing the Texas A&M Aggies, and Brooke representing the Texas Tech Red Raiders

Did Allie just multiply? YIKES!

Brooke admiring herself in the mirror. Of course, when she got through"admiring," there were lots of slobber spots and handprints

Brooke can't stand bows in her hair! Guess she's gonna be a tom-boy ;)

Brooke stole Allie's bow and straight in her mouth it went

Brooke standing up all by herself on the fireplace. That's an accident waiting to happen.


Allie posing all pretty in her Aggie uniform. "Gig em" or "Whoop" or whatever those crazy Ags say!


Allie practicing her cheerleading moves!

Um, where did my bow go? Hmmmm.......I wonder.

Oh, there it is. Mommy had to steal it back from Brooke's mouth.

Now, a short video of the two "teams" battling it out for each other's bow. Notice who wins ;)

Splishin' & a Splashin'...

Allie taking her first Big Girl bath. I wonder if there will be this much enthusiasm when they are five?

Ditto for Brooke!?

Brooke very upset that she was left in her crib a bit too long. This is so fitting of her. She hates to be corralled. She is going to be our wild child!

Little Drummer Girl...

Brooke really isn't into this whole baby 3 food. Look and see for yourself...

Allie being her usual goofy self. She did not crawl into the bucket, however. Dad thought it was funny to get her in there with some toys...as thought...hilarity ensued!

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun...

Oh boy, has another week past already without a new post? Sorry about that! I would say that we will get better and post more often, but I can't promise anything :) Let's see, what exciting things are going on with us? Allie and Brooke are getting back on a "regular" schedule. See previous post if you are wondering what I'm talking about. Allie has been doing great lately with her crawling attempts. She is still army crawling really well, and she is rocking more and more in a crawling position. I'll bet she is crawling very soon. Watch out Brooke! Remember all those times you stole Allie's toys and quickly crawled away, knowing that she couldn't catch you? Allie is going to get you back! Brooke has been crawling for about 2 and a half months now, so Allie has lots of toy stealing to catch up on!

Can you believe the girls will be one in a few weeks? That absolutely blows my mind to think about! It is amazing how much they have grown in one year. Brooke is about 18 pounds now and Allie is about 19.5 pounds. That's quite a bit bigger than the 2 pounds where they started. We are beyond blessed at their progress over the last year. We knew that there would be delays, but our girls are healthy and happy and bring us SO much joy! God's mercy and grace is MORE than abundant!

We had so much fun last week with some new twin friends, Kaelyn and Shae, and their mommy, Ashley. We all met for lunch and then had fun playing at the mall play area. We all had so much fun! Here are some pics from the last week:

Cutie pie, Shae (Ashley, correct me if I'm wrong :)

Kaelyn sitting on the foamy floor trying to decide where to play first!

Brooke taking in the big play area between Kaelyn and Shae.

Brooke taking a breather before crawling all over the place!

Allie is cheering on all the girls!

Both girls sitting on the sidelines away from the all the madness

Poor Allie...gotta get crawling soon so she can keep up with the others!

Brooke giving a quick pose for the camera!

Allie

Brooke and either Kaelyn or Shae. Definitely can't tell them apart without seeing their faces :) I bet their mommy can though!

Allie reading up on some educational information...

Brooke: Thanks, mom, my hair is a mess and there is snot running down my face!

Look at Brooke's sweet little face staring right into the camera! Allie looks intrigued by something on the floor.

Please note that the following captions were typed by dad :) Ya never know, someone might have wondered about that!

Allie mesmorized by the little orange bath toy...or is she in shock at the sight of Dad's Big Foot hairy legs!?

Brooke chilling in her little summer outift. For the girls reading this...it is a cute outift...for the guys reading...how about the Cowboys sticking it to the Broncos?


We finally found a good use for the Boppy! Some how, some way Mom was supposed to use that blue monster wrap around pillow thing to feed the girls at the same time...never happened. So many easier options...


Now that is one way to make sure Allie stays sitting up! The kids really enjoy our "Dining room." Mom N' Dad sacrifice each night eating on TV trays in order for the girls to have a play area that is all their own!



Both girls are trying to feed themselves. And what I mean by trying, I mean sticking the bottle in their mouths for about .4 seconds and then slamming the bottles down making a real fun noise that could make the hardest soldier have flashbacks of a mortar attack!

Winnie The "Poo"...

Okay, everyone. Let’s talk poo. No, not as in Winnie. As in baby poo. This weekend was quite a tramatic one, and it involved poo. Now, this may not seem like a great blog topic, but we figure we’ll keep you updated on the good as well as the bad. So, if you are not interested in hearing about baby poo, you can skip to the next paragraph because I’m gonna talk poo for a minute or two. As of Friday, neither Allie nor Brooke had gone to the bathroom in 8 full days. That’s a LONG time! I had already called the doctor a few times, and we were giving the girls adult prune juice to try and get them going. So, I called again Friday to let them know that nothing was happening. They wanted to see the girls to make sure there wasn’t some kind of obstruction. The girls had been on a medication for about a week for their cough and stuffiness, so we concluded that this was the cause of the problem. The doctor gave us some powder (basically a laxative) and told us to use suppositories. Finally, Friday night Allie was able to go. But, it wasn’t until after A LOT of pain and crying (for Allie and mom and dad). Imagine the size and hardness of a golf ball. Got the idea? Well, she proceeded to go about 8 more times Friday night and into Saturday morning. I know she felt SO much better! Can you imagine? But, Brooke still was without relief. We tried everything with her that we did with Allie. Let’s just say that hers was bigger and harder than Allie’s (which didn’t even seem possible). She was in SO much pain that I called the doctor on Saturday morning and asked if I could bring her in right away. So, I took her in and she helped her out. I’ll spare you the gory details of how she remedied the situation, but it was PAINFUL for Brooke. She cried….I cried. Now, she has also gone about a dozen times since then, so dad and I have been changing lots of diapers this weekend! But, I’ll be happy to change diapers if my girls are not in pain. Small price to pay! Lesson learned here: next time the girls are taking medicine to dry them out, give them LOTS of liquids!

Anyhoo, sorry about the novella about poo. Not much else happened this weekend b/c we had to stay home and change diapers. Luckily, by this morning, they were all back to normal. So, they got all dressed up in their Sunday best and hung out in the church nursery. There were about 20 other babies in the room with them, so let’s just hope that we don’t catch another round of colds :)

Here are a few pictures for you to enjoy:

We left these pictures out last post. This is Brooke's gorgeous mohawk!

Allie's identical hairdo! Sunblock makes hair very greasy and easy to sculpt!

Brooke taking a jumping break to pose!

Allie looking pretty excited to jump!

This is what Brooke loves to do: crawl OVER (not around) Allie. Just wait until Allie starts crawling! Actually, she just started Army crawling this past week, so we are pretty excited about that. She has even gotten up on all fours and rocked a few times. Big improvement and another step toward crawling! The physical therapist was pleased with her progress!

Brooke playing with - not drinking from - her sippy cup.

Same for Allie! They are identical after all :)

This was Brooke's VERY FIRST time to pull herself up to a standing position in her crib on Saturday. Big girl! Needless to say, a few minutes later, dad lowered her crib to the lowest setting.

A look from the back side

She's not looking too confident of her new-found trick!

Brooke showing off her pretty church outfit

And again, identically cute is Allie!

So cute!