The First Solo Somersault

Several months ago, A's Physical Therapist suggested we work on doing somersaults to increase her range of motion. Seeing how we have hardwood floors, this made our hallway rug the new "gym" area.

Both L&A have enjoyed numerous pseudo-somersault experiences--them tucking their head to their chin and forming an upside down "V" with their head on the ground, while I rotate them over into a somersault motion. Giggles galore and shouts of "more, more" always followed these episodes.

Well, what do you know but A just randomly tucks herself down tonight as we are getting ready for bed and she does a complete solo somersault. I don't know who was more shocked...her or me! She paused afterwards and then exclaimed, "I did it!" (a catchy new phrase we use around here a lot).

Sadly, she was unable to recreate the perfect solo somersault again even after numerous tries. But she will...she is one persistent cookie!

And shoot, wouldn't you know it, my camera batteries were too low to take a picture of her tries to post here. So sad...

Oh how time flies...

Okay, first off...apologies! I can't even believe it's been so long since my last entry! Honestly, it makes it on my "to-do" list quite frequently but somehow it never gets marked off...go figure. What a bad start...I'm so sorry.

Secondly, in answer to the questions surrounding our big excitement from a couple weeks back--here are the relevant bits from an article my dad found about it on the internet and sent to me the next morning (such a good researcher, huh!?!):

Standoff ends with suspect's surrender
A five-hour standoff ... ended peacefully Thursday with the surrender of a homicide suspect.
... police converged .... about 5 p.m. Thursday to serve an arrest warrant, evacuating about four or five nearby homes and offering residents shelter at a nearby park...
Police interviewed several other occupants of the home before negotiating the suspect's surrender around 10 p.m. There were no shots fired or injuries.

It was a very, very bizarre experience. It was about 10:50 pm when all our neighbors were let back onto the block. It was so surreal to see everyone coming in at the same time (sort of like a parade only without the same emotion!).

So on to better things...

How cute are these photos of A?!?! These are from when we went to Kara's with my friend. The pictures were taken by friend (much better photographer than me--plus it helps that she has a nicer camera too!) You wouldn't guess it but she is actually entertaining herself by looping through those bicycle locks (those stands that that look like interlocking "U"s. ) She would go under one section--no need to duck and then step over the next section. It was super, super cute! And I'm so glad my friend was able to capture her glee from the experience.

We've definitely entered the stage of cute words. Here are a few to leave you with...

"nah-me" = blankie (L came up with this; J says it's root is "mommy")

"ah-ya" = water (today was our 1st rain of the season and both were saying "ah-ya" "ah-ya"

"nee-no" = window

"oh no!" = said with extreme emotion (and a slight Norwegian accent!) by A--you'd think it was the end of the world when she says it

"Addy do it" = a clear marker that we are trying to be independent!

"Mommy's house" = my craft studio (used by L)

Until next time...all done, all done.

Anything else?

Everytime I speak with my parents on the phone, my dad always says "anything else?" as if there is nothing exciting to report here. Well dad, here it is...the BIG one! Tonight we were officially in "lock down" in our own home.

Apparently (unbeknownst to me!) there were cop cars blocking off both ends of our block this evening keeping all traffic (even foot traffic) off of our street. In thinking back, I did notice a man walking down the middle of our street in front of our house. He was sort of checking things out around our house. I just figured perhaps he was with the city and it had something to do with the approval process from the city for our home addition.

Well, Jeff walks in the door and goes immediately to our back door, shuts it, locks it and says we are instructed to not leave the house. I, of course, am a little perplexed. Apparently, when he came home he wasn't able to turn down our street so he parked on a side street and started walking toward our street. A police woman stopped him and was not going to allow him to pass through. For whatever reason (did he look pathetic? or perhaps because he had food in hand because he was getting home late?) she decided to escort him to our house but told him not to leave the house. When he asked her what was going on she said they were "serving a warrant".

Two and one half hours later (and still going strong) and having spotted 7-9 cop cars as well as many handfuls of policemen (including ones in fatigues with bullet proof vests on) followed by a SWAT team marching in unison down our street (oh and did I mention there were police dogs too!?)...I'm pretty sure this is more than an incidence of "serving a warrant".

More details to follow (if I find out anthing more!)...but honestly, you'd think they could be a little more upfront with us! How much danger are we in?!?

Well, all other news of the day will definitely not live up to the above! Today was our regular physical therapy for A. Since the weather has been so nice since last Spring, we've been doing the sessions at the park near our home.

It's so odd because A is completely fearless on this suspension type bridge they have on the "big kid" play structure, but has no desire or tolerance for the slides at the park (although she will go down our slide in the backyard--granted it's only like 4 inches off the ground!! LOL)

A is also going thru this really big nurturing phase. In the mornings when I go to get her out of her crib, we (as in she does this) will spend several minutes gathering up all her bears and stuffed animals and then she'll cover them up with her blankets and says "nigh, nigh" before we can leave the bedroom. It's cute, but it does become rather frustrating when she does this as we are trying to leave the house!

Pictured is her pushing her bear on the "big kid" swing after she just finished getting pushed by me. Special note: this bear was given to her by my grandma when she was born. It used to sit in her incubator at the NICU and it was HUGE in comparison to her. It's hard to think back and remember this was our reality especially when you look at her playing with it today.

L is more into climbing all the "big kid" structures. While a picture of this would have been great to capture, I honestly am too busy spotting him so he doesn't have a tragic fall. However, I did capture him going down his favorite tunnel slide. He will go on this over, and over, and over, and over again. He can't get enough of it!

Today we practiced emotions other than sad. Sad is a very well understood emotion around here. When they were younger our developmental therapist started talking about one of them being sad when they would cry. She said it was important for them to start to understand and identify emotions. Well, what happened is that they totally keyed in on that one (and only that one!). We'll be out in public and someone will be crying...both L&A will start saying "sad, sad" and I'll have to say "yes, she's sad" in order for them to stop saying "sad, sad" over and over again.

So tonight we started to to focus on happy (with big smiles and laughter) and scared (with a shocked expression and a covered open mouth). A did an awesome job duplicating scared. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture a really good one with the camera, but you get the idea ;)

Now, to clear something up...yes, I have now written 2 days in a row...to be clear this is most likely not going to be a regular occurrence!

During this time (now that the kiddos are asleep) I actually had planned on preparing for my class I'm teaching tomorrow night (I know, procrastination is such a bad thing!), but due to the whole "lock down" situation, I'm stuck inside (my craft studio is behind our home). Luckily, my class wasn't tonight! I can only imagine several women trying to come down our street saying they are here for a scrapbooking class. And in our backyard no less---how shady is that!?!?! :)

Instead, I am using this "indoor" time to fill you in on our exciting day. :)

Just wanted to make sure I didn't set expectations too high, early on!

With that, I bid you adieu. All done, all done!

The Explanation

So for those of you who know me well, you know this is a pretty big undertaking for me. How in the world am I going to find time to properly maintain a blog?!? But here's the deal...

for awhile now I've been contemplating doing a blog in an effort to keep L&A's grandparents and other long-distance relatives (pretty much encompasses all relatives! LOL) current on the lives of our dynamic duo...our beloved Baby A and Baby B...a.k.a Lucas and Addison.

You may be asking yourselves...what's the story behind "more...more...all done"? Great question! I wanted to select something that captured L&A. Now they may be twins, but they are so, so very different. But one thing that they do have in common is that they both learned "more" and "all done" as their very first baby sign language. And even though they now verbalize these 2 words (A LOT)...they still do the signs along with the words. These 2 phrases are heard dozens of times each day...and with great enthusiasm. For example: you could start tickling L and he'll say "more, more" and you'll tickle some more. Then when you stop, he'll say "more, more". This will continue for a good couple of minutes until all the sudden he'll exclaim "all done, all done", "all done, all done" over and over until you stop. :) This scenario is actually pretty endearing...so much so that I've recorded a 30 second snip of it (it's great to listen to when he's acting up and throwing a tantrum--ahhhh, the terrible 2s!)

Okay so that's the background...now for a look into L&A's world.

A friend of mine invited us to go try out a new Cupcake Bakery (Kara's Cupcakes) with her today. They have maybe a dozen different types of cupcakes to choose from as well as super cute matching mini cupcakes in the same flavors. Of course, I couldn't resist getting L&A each their own mini cupcake. L got a Vanilla Chocolate Cupcake, A got a Sweet Vanilla Cupcake (the girl isn't crazy about chocolate--weird, huh?!) and my friend and I both got a Chocolate Velvet Cupcake. The frosting on these were amazingly light and fluffy.

In traditional fashion, L thoroughly enjoyed himself getting frosting everywhere (check out the frosting on his glasses!); while A was a dainty 'lil thing and barely had any evidence she even ate a cupcake! And of course, pinky is slightly raised--who's ready for tea?

Lesson learned today--a tasty, sugary snack = no nap!

That's it for today...all done, all done! ;)