9.5 month update

Ah, Tadpole. The smiliest, happiest, most hyper, most fearless baby I've ever seen. I have a feeling she'll someday follow in her parents' footsteps and become a rock climber, but I sometimes worry she may get into something even more extreme. She weighed in a little over 19 pounds at her 9-month appointment this morning.

She is so full of energy and so athletic. While her brother is stronger than she is, and clearly will be physically able to walk soon, I suspect Tadpole will beat him to it because she's not afraid of anything and willing to give everything a try. I LOVE taking her to swimming lessons, she's so enthusiastic and excited. One of her newest things is kneeling, then sitting back on her heels and bouncing up and down, waving her arms with excitement. She's starting to learn to wave hello and good-bye, but I don't think she understands what she's doing yet.


Turtle is a sweet, serious, moody, loving boy. He is very studious - when we show him music videos or clips of "Shaun the Sheep", he just sits and watches and studies everything. He likes to read books. He sits in my lap and listens while I read each page, and when I say "turn the page", he does. He LOVES turning the pages in books, and looks at everything I point out. He has a lot of patience, except with his sister. She annoys the heck out of him. He is obsessed with stealing her pacifier, and if she takes something from him, he gets incredibly frustrated and screams, trying to hit or push her. He weighed in at a little over 20 pounds at the doctor's today.

I taught both Turtle and Tadpole to "gimme five", which is the cutest thing ever. Turtle spontaneously taught himself how to clap a few days ago, and has been doing it randomly ever since. Sometimes we can get him to do it when we want, but otherwise I'm not sure why he decides it's clapping time. He was afraid of swimming for a bit, but is doing much better now.


These babies get into SO MUCH TROUBLE if I don't contain them. We have a gate up to close off our living room from the kitchen, so we can keep them in a safe place, but we often leave it open, especially when we are spending a lot of time in the kitchen and can keep an eye on them. The result is often something like this:


Uh oh, Mama caught us climbing into the dishwasher. What do we do now?

Help put away the dishes of course! Seriously, though, they LOVE the dishwasher, I don't know why. Maybe because it's not always open, so when it is, it's a real treat? This was the first time they ever actually climbed up on it, though. Whenever I see them playing here, I immediately take out the silverware holder, so don't worry, there aren't any sharp knives or forks in there!