Happy New Year

In Kaz, they celebrate the New Year as the big holiday this time of year. There is a smaller celebration for Orthodox Christmas (January 7th), but when Kaz was under the rule of Russia, all religious holidays were banned so New Years has been their main holiday. They have Father Frost( looking like a slimmer Santa, but in Blue) and New Year's trees. A lady that was there the last few weeks said that they had a lot of tigers hanging in these trees. This is the year of the tiger on the Chinese zodiac. I wanted to get the girls some tiger ornaments for their tree, but I couldn't find any. To celebrate instead, I got them a play kitchen.
Sasha wants to wear her sleepers as soon as she gets home. Backwards of course!The kitchen came with a toy cell phone. It was the first thing Leeza grabbed. She does love phones. I can't wait until she is a teenager!They won't eat any real veggies, but Sasha sure was trying to eat the plastic ones. I wonder if they have any nutritional value?Leeza set the table for her Fisher Price Little people. It looks like a royal banquet to me!Earlier in the week, the girls played dress up. They like the clothes they got for Christmas.

Weekly Update

I weighed the girls today. Leeza weighs 29 lbs now and Sasha weighs 26. Back before Thanksgiving, they were at 26 and 24 so Leeza has gained 3 lbs in the last month and Sasha 2 lbs. When i carry them both now, it seems like they gained about 50 lbs! Leeza has gotten taller and is now about 2 inches taller than when she came home. Sasha only grew a little taller since Thanksgiving. I actually think both girls have lost a little weight since starting day care. THey do so much more running around the gym. They still have tummies, but not that big.
Sasha has her first ear ache. It seems to be better today.
They are adding words all the time now, but I still don't understand most of their conversations.
They are sometimes calling Frosty by her name, but she is still usually arf arf or even doggie now.
Sasha has decided that she is going to dress herself each day. She is doing pretty good, but can't get pants/diapers up over her behind yet. Leeza has decided that she now wants to choose her shirt in the morning just like Sasha is, but really doesn't want to dress herself. Whatever I pick out the first time is rejected and the second shirt is chosen.
They are both getting picker in their food choices. Neither is doing well with veggies yet.
Both girls decided they want to eat with big forks so they now use plastic adult forks like they have at day care. I have a ton of kid silverware not being used now.
They think it is funny to remove their shoes while they are in the car seat. Mama yelling when she hears the velcro being opened is very funny.

Christmas

The girls had a lot of presents to open, but they were most interested in the small group of presents on the end table that were for me! These got opened first and Sasha carried around my new pillow cases for about 10 minutes before she went back to opening presents.

The living room got rather messy. Opening presents took about 1 1/2 hours because they opened them sloooowly. They had a good time.

Leeza got to indulge her love of hats. Unfortunately there were 2 so I ended up wearing a sponge bob stocking hat and about 4 barrettes. Fortunately there are no pictures of that.

Both girls like their dress up boxes. Sahsa wanted to get back into her sleeper for nap time and the afternoon.

The girls also liked their cabbage patch dolls although the clothes didn;t stay on them very long.

As usual, they also enjoy playing and sitting in the boxes. This was after I cleaned the room up. They messed it back up again in about 5 minutes.

Merry Christmas

The girls had their Christmas party at daycare Wednesday. They made these for their mama.

Oh, the fun of being 2 at Christmas. We braved torrential rains and insane shoppers to go to the mall to see Santa on Christmas eve. Although I was glad we did, I think I was the only one.

I have some Christmas photos that I will post tomorrow. Today was a fun day, but very long so I am off to bed. The girls fell asleep before I left the room so I think they had a very good Christmas!

Hello, Is Aunt Debbie there....

The girls were sick at daycare Monday with a fever so that meant they had to stay home Tuesday even though they were feeling better. They were playing nicely with their new little play computers so I thought I could sneak off to use the bathroom for a minute. Well, I walked back into the living room and there was Leeza talking to someone on the phone. She had dug the phone out of the end table drawer I keep it in when they are in the living room and somehow managed to speed dial her Aunt Debbie! She is fast and has a great memory for where I keep the things I don't want her to touch!
Everyone spent the day in their PJs. Sasha is now wearing a one piece blanket sleeper with the feet cut out and put on backward. She figured out how to pull the duct tape off the diaper. She ended up with a duct tape belt and no diaper so I am on to plan 2. I thought she would hate it, but she loves it and gets mad when I take it off in the morning to put on clothes to go to daycare. They both are having fun playing with their blocks now. Sharing is a litttle bit of a problem, but there are 60 blocks so each can have their own pile.

Weekly update

New things this week:

We now say potty instead of doing the pee pee dance.
Sasha wants to dress herself, but can't quite get her pants up yet
Leeza is getting another cold and doesn't feel very good.

Sasha wants to eat with my fork instead of her plastic ones
Leeza can sing the first line to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She sings the rest, but makes up her own words.

Leeza ate carrots AND peas. OK, 2 carrot slices and about 6 peas, but that counts!

At daycare when I come to pick them up, they come running to me and hug me and now they run off again to continue playing.

There was a traffic jam in the living room today.

Maybe it would help if mama would pick up the living room more often! I didn't realize it was this bad until I saw the pictures. They hug each other a lot. For no apparent reason, they just start hugging. Usually, it is after bathtime, but it can be anytime. How cute is that??? You can tell that Leeza is getting tall!

Daycare week 2

Both girls did better in daycare this week. No tears from Sasha this week at all. She still sticks pretty close to one of the teachers, but leaves me in the morning to go eat without appearing upset. When I arrive to pick them up, they are always in the gym playing and running around. Both girls come running to me with big smiles on their faces and give me a hug. Now both girls go running off again afterwards and I have to call them to get them to put on their coats to go. I guess I am happy since they like daycare, but I also want them to miss me a little.

Sasha is showing signs of being a fashionista girl. She got upset one day and took off her shirt. I realized that the shirt (blue with pink flowers) really didn't go that well with her pants(dark pink). I changed her shirt and she was fine. Now she wants to dress herself, but she can't quite manage it yet. She also wants to change her shirt every morning to whatever one I have picked out for Leeza, but mama just makes her wear the first one I put on her. She also decided that she wants Leeza's purple coat. I mistakenly put it on her one day and now she thinks it is so much better than hers. Leeza doesn't care what she wears as long as she can be running off somewhere in it.

Both girls are growing fast, but Leeza is going through another growth spurt. I did a quick check this morning and it looks like she has grown another inch since Thanksgiving. That is over 2 inches since she came home. I think her feet are growing as fast as she is. She has big wide feet for a little kid. I keep telling her she has Harmon feet. She also has big hands so I think she is going to be tall. I will measure and weigh them on Christmas eve(a month after the last time). I know they are gaining a lot of weight and they feel like they weigh about 100 lbs each when I carry them now.The girls are not as tired this week as they were last week. I think part of it was getting used to all the extra activity at day care and part was I tried to push bedtime back to 8 pm so I could have more time with them. That did not work so they are in bed by 7:30 now. They get up around 6:20 so they need the early bed time. Thursday, they decided to play bedtime with their dolls. They put them on pillows and then covered them up.Sasha even brought a book over and pretended to read to her baby.Poor Leeza's baby was quickly abandoned as she found something better to do.Running and jumping from the chair to the sofa and back again is much more fun!

The Weekend

After Thursday and Friday night, I was not looking forward to the weekend. Everyone was tired and cranky and very clingy. Lots of tears and lots of fighting.Saturday morning started out the same, but once Sasha realized that she was staying home with mama all day, she decided to be happy and things got much better. I got them some large blocks and I let them open them Saturday morning. I showed the girls how to build things and stack them. Sasha caught on right away, but Leeza just wanted to put them back in the box. Just when I thought Leeza was still not to the point of playing with blocks, after lunch she sat down and built a tower about 3 ft high! Of course, after about 5 minutes, she lost all interest and was off to the next thing, but she did show that she was watching me earlier.

Sasha loves to sit for the longest time and color. And also eat the color magic markers. She bites the end off and then hands the end to me and then tries to color with the remining nub. Leeza is coloring some and at least she doesn't eat the markers! She would much rather be running around trying to find something new to get into.

Since mama won't spend the whole day pushing the cars around, Leeza and Sasha have started pushing each other around. It takes quite the effort. I was trying to get Sasha to leave some barrettes in her hairwhich is why her hair looks wild in the picture. I was not successful and her hair is back to being in her eyes most of the day.Leeza likes to use her car to hang out in and watch TV. They are starting to watch some cartoons. Sasha likes anything with music so she can dance to it.

Some hightlights of the week:
1st full week at daycare and work
Sasha got a new tooth( she had been pointing at her mouth alot and I thought she was hungry!)
they asked for apples at the lunch( I didn't even know they knew that word)
Leeza told Sasha to "stop it" when Sasha was hitting her( another new word)
they now stick their hand out when they say no( like they are saying "talk to the hand!")
Sasha ate part of a carrot and they both ate peas at daycare (their 1st real veggies)
they have been calling everything to drink milk, but are starting to say water and juice also
they say "owie" when they get a boo boo.
they know the garbage can is "icky", but they like to get things out of it anyway
They are saying a few 2 word combos like "more milk"
Leeza can say "I love you" although she is just repeating what I say at this point

Working

No pictures. Sorry! I have been leaving work a little early, but even with that by the time I get home with the girls it is almost 5pm. By the time I get changed, fix something and feed them, it is almost 6pm. I was pushing bath time back and letting them play longer, but I went back to their old schedule today. This morning was the first time ever I had to wake them up in the morning. Leeza was still very tired. She layed on the bathroom rug while I was trying to get them to go potty and tried to go back to sleep. I think they are getting a lot more exercise running around at day care. Their day care is in a former school so it has a large gym that they go in twice a day and run around and play in. They both were clingy and tired tonight when they got home which also means they were cranky. It probably didn't help that lunch was chili which has beans which is a vegetable so neither ate any. They get breaksfast, morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack so they still got to eat several times. I am also feeding them breakfast before they go since they do eat a lot more than normal 2 years olds. But skipping most of their lunch still ended up with 2 tired hungary kids tonight. They were a little better after I fed them, but even though I put them to bed about 30 minutes earlier tonight than last night, they were a sleep within minutes.

Leeza is loving daycare as she has a lot of kids to play with now and lots of attention. Sasha is doing fine, but she has cried 3 of the 4 mornings I have left her. She stops within minutes of me leaving, I also watch her through the door to the gym(they are in the gym when I pick them up)so I know she is having fun, but she still wants her mama. She is so much smaller and one of the younger kids in her group so she just has a little growing up to do.

Back to Work

I go back to work tomorrow and the girls start daycare full time. I think they will like it and it will help them run off some of their energy! I'm not so certain I will like being back at work although getting a paycheck again will be nice.
This is the girls first gingerbread house. Aunt Debbie helped the girls to build it. Although I kept hearing her tell Leeza, one candy for Leeza and one for the house. I kept seeing one candy for Leeza, one candy for Leeza, take one candy off the house and have Leeza eat it, and then finally one for the house so it is a good thng we bought some extra candy to help decorate it.

Notice the extra purple coloring onthe car today? The girls made good use of the crayons. They colored their cars, their dolls, their faces, their trays and probably a lot more places I haven't found yet. During naptime, I switched them back to the color magic markers!

Sasha is really liking coloring although she doesn't bother to stay in the lines or even on the page. Leeza colored for a little while and then had fun putting the marker caps on her fingers.

Bye Bye Debbie and Niki

Debbie and Niki left early this morning, but not before the girls gave Niki one last workout. They were tired today as they have had a very busy last few days. Debbie and Niki's visit was short, but I am very glad that they got to met the girls and the girls really liked meeting them.

I pushed the girls around in their cars for a little while today, but they need to learn how to move the cars themselves. Since she couldn't get mama to push her in a circle all day, Sasha spent the morning figuring out new ways to get in and out of the car. This one is going in feet first through the back window. They are also good to use as a fort and store all of your stuff inside of them.

This one is just kind of hanging out the back of the car.

And then there is always just go inhead first and see what happens!

Leeza just sat in her car with her baby and watched some TV. She was tired today.

The girls are really developing their plan of attack for destroying the Christmas tree. SO far they are just touching it and seeing if I say anything, but I caught them talking here and plotting against me and the tree. The cup in Leeza's hand "accidentally" fell inside the fence area about 5 seconds after this picture was taken. Leeza wanted to go in and rescue it, but I stopped that plan.

Vroom vrooms(Sasha's word for car)

The girls got to play with their new cars today. Niki and I put them together. After deciding that the instructions were horrible and the cars should come pre assembled, it took a while to get all the parts together, but we got it done before nap time was over.

Sasha needs a few extra things for her car- a few books, some stickers, her baby doll, a plastic bag, some paper etc

The girls have had fun with their visit from Aunt Debbie and cousin Niki. They will miss them when they leave. I will miss having someone to help push the girls cars around and around and around.

Visitors

The girls Aunt Debbie and Cousin Niki are here for a visit this week.
They put our tree up for me and surrounded it with a playyard fence. We tried to get some pictures of the girls dressed up.

This one looks like they are discussing decorating the tree. When they really are talking how to undecorate it!

They think the decorations are very pretty.Leeza looks so grown up here.

One of the better pictures of the two of them. you cannot get 2 two year olds to both smile in a picture. It just does not happen.

I started to give them ornaments as bribes to pose, but that didn't help much.

Leeza did pose well for some gum drops.

Sasha liked the dresses.

If only Sasha would be looking at the camera, this could be so cute.

We also spent some time playing on the slide. It is so much easier when there is more than one person.

Sasha had to have company to slide including her stuffed rhino and 2 plastic cups.

Wheeeeeeee! Frosty is starting to wonder when the fencing will ever stop. Now the living room is gated from the dining room. She is on one side and the girls are on the other. They are getting better, but Leeza is still too rough for Frosty.