A Year and A Half

Has gone by since we welcomed these two little angels into our lives!  It is so hard to believe.  They are changing every day, turning more and more into toddlers and less and less into babies.  The girls turned 18 months on November 17 and had their well visit on November 18.

Here is how they are measuring up:

Julia
23 lbs, 5 oz (58%)
32.75" (79%)

Caroline
22 lbs, 12 oz (52%)
32.25" (64%)

Not bad for two little gals delivered at 37 weeks and 2 days!!  Caroline is still following the pattern of being smaller than her big sis although her head is a little bit bigger.  They both have 14 teeth already which seems like a lot.

The girls continue to be angels most of the time.  Julia has taken to throwing little fits sometimes when she doesn't get her way.  But that usually happens mainly when she is sick or tired.  Most of the time she is very helpful and loves to help clean up toys and put things in their proper places.  She'll go out of her way to pull out a bag that a toy goes in or take a toy all the way to another room to put it away.  Her gross motor skills are ahead of Caroline's.  She climbs stairs now on her feet for the most part now while holding onto the wall instead of crawling up them.  She can climb into our high bar stools and loves to climb into her high chair when it is time for a meal.  She loves to eat and continues to be the better eater of the two.  She likes to be right where the action is at all time.  Her verbal skills are a little bit ahead of her sister's as well.  Colin nicknamed her Hooper and it has really stuck.  We have morphed it into things like Hooperpotamus and other not as clever names.  What can I say, it suits her.  Can you tell which one is Hooper?

Caroline loves to dance and has a few signature dance moves (the wiggle and throw your hands up). She also has a favorite kids' jam that she'll immediately dance to when it comes on Pandora.  She is more of a loaner and if the four of us are doing something together she will often be off doing her own thing.  She is more independent and will play by herself without requiring as much attention as Julia does.

They both love stuffed animals and are very attached to the animals that they sleep with at night as well as their lovies (thank you Elizabeth and Lawrence).  They LOVE to be read to and will both sit in a lap and demand book after book.  We read so many books each day it isn't even funny.  They have one book that they particularly love (thanks Uncle Bub and Aunt Jenny) with pictures of baby's first words and objects of certain colors.  I will ask them where the "fill in the blank" is and they always find it with ease.

Their verbal skills are definitely behind where Colin's were at this age but they do say plenty of words.  No stringing words together yet though.  Although I take that back because they can say "pass gas" and will say it at the appropriate time after they have done it.  Are they gifted to already understand that is funny?

They love to hug, kiss, give back pats and be held (especially Julia) and are great sleepers.  I think we will keep them.

One of the neatest things to witness lately is how they interact with each other.  If one is crying the other one will bring her a toy to cheer her up.  Lately Caroline will go and hug Julia if she is crying completely unprompted!  Last month I gave Caroline a candy corn that she greedily shoved into her little mouth and gobbled up.  Then I gave her another one and asked her to go give it to Julia fully expecting her to eat that one too.  She didn't and took it right over to her sissy.  I repeated the experiment a couple of weeks later with Julia this time and had the same outcome!  I was amazed.