11 months

This month has been full of new things for these little girls. It has been pretty fun to watch them make the transitions from baby to toddler. I am positive they will officially be walking before their first birthday. Won't it be funny when they prove me wrong!? I can see them doing that just to spite me. They are definitely stubborn! They must have got that from their dad. HAHAHA!
It's funny to watch them and see how similar they are, and how different they are at the same time. Lyla is such a social butterfly. She is so happy to be around people and I kind of think she likes to be the center of attention a lot of the time. Alya is definitely a people watcher. She's very content to watch the things and people around her. But they almost get mad the same. They yell at each other!! and even sometimes hit each other, or grab their sister's shirt and yank her down to the floor!! Usually it's when one sister has a toy or a binky or a cup that the other sister wants; or if they get in each other's way. They both yell at me a lot too. And it's not a crying yell - they are really mad at me, so they will just yell at the top of the their lungs. Alya does it more than Lyla. I think Lyla might be a little more emotional, because usually there are tears involved when Lyla is mad.

They have not liked being spoon fed. They are getting way too independent for my liking! I rarely give them purees any more. They like pepperoni, and pretty much all things meat. They like cheese and they love clementines! Pretty much, as long as they get to feed it to themselves they will eat anything! Even when they don't like it! I gave them green beans one day and every time they brought it to their lips they would spit and make faces, but they just kept eating it - or at least tearing off bites and spitting them out. It was pretty funny!

They have been a little more ticklish this month. Their favorite is when they are sitting in their high chairs and I reach under their tray and tickle their bellies.
They have also been playing SO cute together lately! They may fight a lot, but they definitely play together a lot too! They love to play on Mo's big pillow in the corner of my bedroom. (Don't ask me why!) Our drapes hang next to the pillow so they will often times play peek-a-boo in the drapes with each other. They also like to give each other kisses. They kiss and laugh and kiss and laugh and kiss and laugh until one of them gets distracted with something else! It is seriously THE cutest thing I've ever seen. They have been laughing a lot together as well. When we go shopping the girls sit in the top part of the cart facing each other. One night we went to the store as a family (so Matthew got to witness the overload of cuteness). The girls were sitting in their cart watching each other. Lyla would shake her head and Alya would laugh! Alya would shake her head and Lyla would laugh! And when I say laugh, I mean laugh!!! They weren't just chuckling - they were like full on belly laughing! I'm sure the whole store heard them! And it lasted for about 10 minutes, give or take! :) It was SO funny! Needless to say, we were all laughing before they were done playing. Even people walking past us in the store couldn't help but laugh. It was awesome.

Another funny day...when the girls get fussy they crawl over to me and climb as far up my leg as they can. They will cling onto my pant leg (and sometimes my skin) until I pick them up. One day they were both really fussy and clinging to my leg - Lyla in front of my and Alya to the side of me. Alya ended up working her way behind me, whining the whole way. Once she got behind me I was able to step to the side. (I think I was making dinner or something like that, trying to maneuver around the kitchen with two babies clinging to my legs) Once I stepped to the side they saw each other through my legs and instantly went from fussing to laughing and trying to give each other kisses! They sure know how to cheer each other up, and how to get under each others skin!

Lyla is pretty passionate! When she's mad, she's MAD! When she wants something, so does everything she can think of to get it. She is impatient and bossy, and creative and funny. She can be super cuddly when she wants to be and so loving!

My mom and nephew bought the girls a couple of stuffed animals that Daxton picked out for them. The girls got them on Friday, and I'm a little sad he wasn't able to see their reactions to their new stuffed animals. Lyla was instantly attracted to the kitty and it has pretty much not been out of her sight since then. Last night we were getting ready for bed in their bedroom and her kitty was down the hall. When she was all ready for bed I asked her where her "kitty kitty" was. She stopped what she was doing and looked around and started crawling out the door and down the hall. Once she finds it she sits with a big ol' grin on her face! It's so stinkin' cute! :)

She loves to play in her pool! If I put her just in the grass next to her pool, it's not long before she crawls into the pool herself. She crawls circles through the water and crawls in and out of the pool.

She has one tooth so far. It's the one on the bottom right. I think she might be working on the second tooth as we speak, but for now, she just has one. It came in on July 26. She was eating food and she kept pointing at me, so I eventually pointed at her and she grabbed my finger and stuck it in her mouth and bit. I felt so proud - which might be a little weird! Haha!

One night Matthew was laying on his back by the girls' high chairs and Lyla just climbed onto his belly. Then onto the kitchen chair, then onto her high chair and tried to climb onto the table. She is getting pretty brave! She loves to be standing. Every time we go on a walk, she will stand up in her stroller. Sometimes I buckle her in and when she realizes that she can't move I get in big trouble! :)

She is a funny, funny girl! She has been telling a lot of stories lately. She LOVES books! I try to read them a bedtime story and sometimes they get a story at nap time. She always helps me turn the pages - every page. Then when we are done reading, she goes back through the book turning one page at a time (literally - sometimes she gets more than one page and she can tell - so she will separate the pages until she has only one) over and over and over again! There have been a couple of times when she is off playing by herself I have caught her with a book in her hands turning pages and talking - or should I say reading?

I didn't actually weigh the girls this month...maybe I will try to get around to that, and then I can update these stats, but I did get a chance to kind of measure the girls. I just had them standing on the ground and held a tape measure up so I'm not sure it's real accurate, but it's gotta be close, right!? Well, Lyla has consistently been smaller than Alya in all aspects - other than the one month she was about 1/2 inch taller. Well, this month she has passed her sister up in height yet again. She measured 29 inches!

Alya is just so stinkin' cute! As you can see, she took a liking to the hedgehog that her cousin picked out for her! And same with Lyla, she has been attached to it! These little stuffed animals have gone everywhere with them. I have named him Sonic and she is learning that when I ask where Sonic is, I am talking about her hedgehog.

She thinks everything that Lyla does is funny! Usually when I hear a baby laughing, it's Alya laughing at something Lyla is doing and Lyla just loves to perform for her sister! I think sometimes she does things just because she is getting a reaction out of Alya.

For a while, Alya was very ticklish under her neck. If I would even act like I was going to touch her neck she would react to it. It was so funny! She hasn't been doing that as much lately, which is kind of sad, but I hope that maybe it will be a ticklish spot in the future!

Teething for Alya has been pretty rough. She has been fairly uncomfortable for the majority of this month. I feel kind of bad for her. I had no idea that they made teething tablets that you can feed your baby and they just numb their whole mouth. Well, when I found out about them, I went and got some. Alya hadn't napped well for the day and she was being really fussy at dinner one night, so I gave her some teething tablets, and the pain must have almost immediately subsided because she fell asleep at dinner. She slept in her chair like that for probably 10 minutes before I took her down to bed. Poor girl! She got her first tooth - the bottom left tooth - on July 30 and got her bottom right tooth August 12.

It has been really fun to watch her process learning to walk. Lyla has just gone for it - if I set Lyla down in front of me, she'll just start walking. She's taken about 6 steps, but they are pretty unsure steps and if we don't catch her she falls. Alya sits back and watches Lyla and you can just tell that she is picturing herself walking before she tries it. Last night, we were getting the girls ready for bed and Matthew set Alya down on her feet and held his hands out a couple of inches to get her to walk to his hands. She took a few steps and then just kept going. She walked right past his hands and started to turn in a circle. She had to have taken at least 10 steps, and then she just stopped and continued to stand there. She was SO sure of what she was doing! It was pretty awesome!

We measured Alya the same time we measured Lyla. It looks like she is around 28 1/2 inches!

I love these girls with all my heart! I love learning with them and helping them to learn. I love experiencing things when they get to experience them. It's so crazy how fast things change; 5 months ago they could barely sit up on their own, and before I know it they are going to be running around and not wanting me to help them do anything. They already don't want my help with a lot of things! They change much too quickly!

Oh, how I love them!

And, there you go! :)