My beautiful girls, as photographed by a dear friend

My friend and a very talented professional photographer, Kim, came to our house bright and early this past week at 7:30 a.m. to take photographs of the girls to mark their first birthday. I am so grateful for Kim's patience and willingness to be there that early. As always, she was fantastic with the girls and captured some absolutely beautiful photos, a few of which she posted on her website. I'm truly in awe that she managed to get these photos in the first place - between all the crawling, walking (and falling), picking up dirt and grass and God knows what else they found on the ground (and attempting to eat all of the above) - there were very few opportunities for "Kodak moments."

Perhaps it is because I'm feeling a little emotional about their upcoming birthday - perhaps I've just become a very sentimental person - or just because Kim has such an amazing way of capturing beautiful moments - but when I look at the photos, I get a little teary eyed. Not only out of pride and adoration for what Anna and Margaret have become - two lovely, little girls (Girls!) who make me smile and laugh every day - but for missing, in a way, what is now behind us, their infancy. Then I remember that the girls are sleeping 12 hours per night, with relatively few interruptions, and then I feel okay about moving on. Ha. I'm looking forward to this next year of their lives - I think it's going to be fun. All of you parents who have dealt with whining, tantrum-throwing toddlers can now laugh at my naivete and bright-eyed optimism.

Kim and her wonderful and very smart husband, Anthony, are moving to New Jersey at the end of July because Anthony is attending Princeton University for his PhD. I'm incredibly sad to see them go. Kim has such a kind, fun-loving nature, and I will truly miss her. Thank you, Kim, first and foremost for your friendship, and also for sharing your immense talent with us.

Random Thoughts

I can barely remember what Anna and Margaret were like as newborns. Those first few sleep-deprived months are a total blur to me. I wonder if God intentionally programmed us to have total memory loss of the early days of taking care of a baby, so that we forget just how tiring those days were. When our niece, Claire, was born in December, I held her just hours after her birth, all tiny and swaddled in a hospital blanket, and felt terrified and clueless, like I had never held something so little and helpless before. I can't believe I was responsible at one time for taking care of two tiny little newborns.

There is, however, one thing about Anna and Margaret's early infancy that I vividly recall, and that is the endless demands of nursing 2 newborns. It's hard not to forget how challenging it was to breastfeed 2 infants every 3 hours around the clock, especially when each of those nursing sessions took an hour. It took me weeks to figure out tandem nursing (photo of that here), and so when you add that up - 2 infants, 1 hour session each - that left me exactly 1 hour to regroup before the cycle restarted. I lived by the clock and our strict schedule of feed, nap, feed, nap, repeat. Though we had a parade of visitors and non-stop family help for the first 10 weeks of our girls' lives, I feel like I spent much more time on my bed in my room, remote control in hand, nursing a baby and flipping through useless daytime television. Speaking of which, Tyra Banks is completely bizarre, and watching America's Next Top Model is like watching a train wreck. Horrible, but you can't turn away.

When the girls were about 4 weeks old and I had reached what felt like a rock bottom of exhaustion, I recall (sort of) jokingly telling Joey that I wish the girls could just go into the kitchen and find themselves a snack to eat when they were hungry, instead of relying on me for their only nutrition. Well, good things come to those who wait, right? The other day, I was playing with Anna in the living room while Margaret was, presumably, doing her daily emptying of the Tupperware cabinet. I heard a soft crunching noise, peered around the corner of the cabinet, and noticed that she had gone into the snack cabinet, pulled out a bag of cheerios, somehow managed to pry the chip clip off of it, and was helping herself to a huge handful of cheerios.

They're helping themselves to snacks, drinking whole milk out of cups, and walking to where they need to go. And while I revel in their independence, my heart still says - stop, slow down. Don't grow up yet.

The recipe for warming our hearts =

Saying "bye bye, Da-Da" while waving your tiny little hands goodbye as your father walks out the door for work in the morning. Keep that up, girls, and he'll buy you anything your little hearts desire.

Goofy

Happy Monday! To brighten your start to the work week, here are our goofy little gals. Our living room is a Fisher Price wonderland, filled with toys that sing! and squeak!! and flash!!! (and don't turn off when you want them to), but yet they decided this power adaptor cord was far more entertaining. My funny, weird girls.



Oh, and as you can see from the video, Margaret is quite mobile now as well! Their new little walk is pretty funny - they both hold their hands either out to the side or in front of them to balance themselves. We call it the "Frankenstein walk." A drunk Frankenstein, more appropriately.



So, they're walking, and babbling more, and tearing apart our drawers and cabinets faster than I can keep up with them, and the newest lovely behavior is throwing themselves on the floor and screaming/kicking their feet when I take away something they want. Like the bottle of floor cleaner that I confiscated from Anna's hands this morning, after she so quickly swiped it from the under sink cabinet (time to put on cabinet locks, dumb parents!). Seriously, tantrums already? Hello toddlerhood, here we come - yikes!

With all our love

Happy Father's Day, Joey! We love you so incredibly much for all that you are and all that you do.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

With love,
Kate, Anna and Margaret

Someone always manages to get hurt

When I was pregnant (and we had time on our hands to think about these things), Joey and I took a look around the house and realized that certain pieces of furniture were going to have to be moved once the babies got mobile to avoid any serious injuries. One of those items was our coffee table - a rather heavy wooden table with a glass table top with very sharp corners. So we invested in a not so pretty but very cushy leather coffee table instead. That table seems to have quickly become Anna and Margaret's favorite thing to stand next to, walk around, pull magazines and remote controls off of (and a full cup of coffee one morning - quite a scary moment), etc. The space in between the couch and the coffee table also seems to be a frequent location for wrestling matches - which start off with giggles and always seem to end with someone in tears. I therefore spend most of my day acting as a referee. Here's how I found the girls one day:




On an unrelated note - Anna is walking! Well, walking in the sense that she's taking about 6-8 very clumsy steps forward before flying face first into the carpet - not the most graceful move. She seems incredibly proud of herself as she walks around with this goofy little grin on her face (I have yet to get a video of it, but I'm trying!), and she remains undeterred in her progress, even after dive bombing the floor several times. I'm particularly proud of her since she was the one who crawled a good 2-3 weeks after Margaret. Talk about evening the playing field!

Now with video!

I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with trying to upload a video - and I can't say it took pure genius to figure out my error. I think being a stay at home mom is turning me into a technology dinosaur. Next thing you know, I'll be asking Joey how to turn on our television.

I had this co-worker in my last job who had an irrational fear and hatred of computers. It never failed - at least twice a week, while trying to upload photos to his computer - I'd hear him screaming in his office, "Where's that darn UBS cord?!!! What do I do with a UBS cord anyway?!!" And I'd sit in my office, clench my fists, and mumble, "USB, you idiot." He also - and I swear I'm not lying - asked me how to highlight a word to change its font.

I think I'm becoming that idiot.

Anyway, I digress. Here are just a few videos from last month. Two of the three involve the girls only in diapers. I swear to you all, we haven't turned into total rednecks while living in Tennessee, and our children do wear clothing - 75% of the time, at least.

While we were at my parents' home, the girls developed a strange obsession for pushing around this little stepstool.


Nana teaching the girls how to go down the stairs (or attempting to change their tendency to propel themselves down the stairs head first)


My ladies on the swings at the park (featuring a bonus "Look Ma, no hands!" move by Anna)