7.29.10 ~ 13 months

Many more milestones and updates this month. The girls are showing us more and more of their personalities...fun at times and not so fun at times :)

Communication: language skills are exploding and this speech pathologist couldn't be prouder of her girls. They are picking up a new animal sound, sign, or word almost daily now. Avery and Brelynn are a bit more verbal and Camille is a bit quicker to pick up the signs, but they're all doing extremely well. One or more will sign: eat, milk, water, more, all done, bye bye, sleep, and bird. They will say: bye bye, done, up, mama, dada, grandma, more, night night, num num, dog, and banana. They will make monkey sounds, dog panting sounds, cow sounds, and horse sounds. I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them now. Even more impressive than their communication is their comprehension. It amazes me the things they understand (and sometimes the things they'll do on command). To recap first words for prosperity's sake...Brelynn's was 'ball', Avery's was 'banana', and Camille's was 'dogdog'.

Teeth: Camille has her bottom two teeth, Brelynn has her bottom two and the top two are just through the gums, Avery has her bottom two and she has three top ones through the gums now. They are getting toothy little smiles :)

Motor: Camille has taken up to 6 steps independently and will frequently take 3-4 steps now before diving out in a superman style dive.  Avery is cruising on furniture and is starting to stand up in the middle of the room on her own. Brelynn is mostly scooting on her bottom and is surprisingly mobile this way. She's starting to crawl a little bit here and there in the last few weeks. She will often roll over now and is able to get herself into a sitting position (on Father's Day for the first time).

Feeding: still going strong on the eating front. They drink 2 bottles (morning and night) and eat 3 meals and a snack or two during the day. Watermelon and avocados are favorites right now. They can all now drink from a sippy cup and a straw independently.

Sleeping: With all the fun of vacation, the girls started going to bed earlier, about 6:30 now. They are sleeping all night and getting up between 6 and 7 usually, but we do get the occasional 7:30 wake up which is heavenly. They are down to only 2 naps now during the day. It's a great schedule.

The big excitement is that my brother is getting married on Saturday, August 7th and the girls are flower girls. We're going to pull them down the aisle in a wagon. It may be the cutest thing in the whole world. Or it could go horribly wrong and still be cute. Either way, more to come on that...

Finally, we tried to get pictures of the whole family yesterday, but didn't get many in focus. Here's the best one we got. I don't know why I'm being such a dork...just imagine my eyes are open and I'm looking at the camera instead of off in la-la land :)

7.26.10 ~ We have a walker!

Camille has been close to walking for weeks now, but she finally took her first steps today! We were playing with our friend, Ben, when she took 4-5 steps several times in a row. The trick...holding on to green onions (maybe she felt like she was still holding on to us? Who knows.) Now we'll have to wait to see how long it takes her to realize it's much faster, and easier on the knees, to walk instead of crawling!  Way to go, Super Cam!

More Sunriver

the girls got to watch the annual baseball game from the sidelines this year. They all liked to hold the frisbee, but then it turned into the dinner plate and we ate lunch :) Yum!

July 10-17 ~ Sunriver 2010

We had a great time at Sunriver again this year. The girls really did well on the 10 1/2 hour drive and we made sure to stop every few hours to let them play. They ate well and slept well, putting themselves to bed at 6:30 each night (and I'm happy to say the earlier bedtime continued once we got home).

We went on walks, played in the house, floated in the hot tub (cooled off of course!), ate yummy food, and enjoyed time with amazing people. One of the girls' favorite things was the swimming pool at Mavrick's and we went most afternoons to wear them out :)