Pierce Best Babies

The best pictures we could get of the three of us. :)

Oh, Kara. You are such a sweetie (with plenty of silly moments too) and we love you so much!

PS - The girls are starting to enjoy dress-up. These are the tutus from their Halloween costumes, and the red shoes we got to go with their Christmas dresses. They love the shoes so much that if they see them, they must wear them, and the first couple days after we got them they pretty much refused to take them off. :)

Oh, Anna. You are such a goofball (with plenty of sweet moments too) and we love you so much!

Sorry for the lack of blog posts! We had a lot of fun (and took a lot of pictures) this past week+. The Friday before Christmas Andrew's parents and brother came to celebrate Christmas with us early. They left Monday, Tuesday night we spent some time with Andrew's extended family that lives in town, and then we left Wednesday to spend Christmas with my family, returning yesterday. It was a ton of fun and the girls loved every minute of it, even the layover at Midway (the 15 or so moving walkways we encountered were great fun for them). We are all happy to be at home and get back to normal, though; we enjoyed our quiet day and new toys. Here are some oldies but goodies of our at-home activities when Andrew was gone at the beginning of the month until I sort through the hundreds of holiday photos.

I discovered them resting like this before their nap one morning. Cuties.

Pan/bowl shoes. Keeps them in the kitchen sometimes, though it's a bit hard to walk with both shoes on.

For some reason they randomly walk around like this sometimes - not sure where Anna got it - Kara got it from Anna. It cracks me up every time.

All babies love phones...Anna loves making everyone else talk on the phone. :) They are seriously way too into sharing these days...if I give them anything, they immediately point that sister and mom and dad and whatever Little People person all need one too, be it a toy, bite of food, etc. If I say "Anna..." she'll point to Kara until I also say "Kara..." It's silly, but nice.

Guess the phone was for dad.

Andrew knocked over this chair on his way in the door and it made a perfect little seat for them. These pictures are from the beginning of the month, and maybe it's just perspective, but they look much bigger now.

In these pictures Kara has the cell phone. Last Friday Kara also had the cell phone, and when she was done with it the buttons no longer functioned. I looked it up online and I think it's because it got wet (chewed). We've been trying to dry it out with minimal success. Now some of the buttons work but they all go to 0 when you push them. Moral: don't let orally fixated 1 year olds play with your cell phone!

Not only does Anna like sitting on Kara, she also likes sitting in her lap.

Hugs...

Kisses...K to A and A to K.

I am a little worried that the girls are going to crush our new baby with love. Not only are they obsessed with tiny babies - seriously, they do not leave a baby's side, try to share everything with it, hold hands, etc. - but they have recently been fighting over who gets to kiss pictures of newborns on our computer. We have friends in Ann Arbor who just had a little one, and saw another newborn on a blog. They push and push each other to get the prime spot standing directly next to the computer screen so that they can kiss the baby. Whoever is not standing next to the computer, even if on my lap and urged to blow kisses, cries and cries. It's ridiculous. Is this what our house will be like come June?

PS - they love Winnie the Pooh now. I let them watch some YouTube clips in times of desperation and they previously loved Cinderella songs (the mice are their loves), and the Lion King Circle of Life (lots of animals), but now like Winnie the Pooh the best. Highlights include the intro song that has all the characters, the "up down touch the ground" song (which they are more than happy to demonstrate upon request) and the song where he climbs the tree and bumps his head (which they request by pointing to their heads).

We are going to be a family of 5 (or more??) come June 25th or thereabouts. I'm just about 13 weeks pregnant - we heard the heartbeat today. Just one (though they didn't look for a second), and the doctor thought I seemed too small for 2, but also said you can never really tell. We'll see at 20 weeks I guess.

Pros and cons either way. With twins: we'd definitely be done after this pregnancy and it won't be 2 against 1 when they're born, we already have 2 of most stuff. But my mom says I'll "kill myself" with another set of twins, which very well may be true. With one: easier of course, for pregnancy (and way smaller belly) and beyond (we reassured ourselves it would be easier next time a million times when the girls were younger), but 2 against 1 issues make me think I'd want another, and I told Andrew last time that it would be so boring in my belly with only 1 kicking, plus they'd be so lonely in there. Who wants to stretch out?

I think it's one, and I think it's a girl. Well, not sure about that, really, but Kara and Anna both independently told me when I asked if it was a boy or girl - "girl." And I made sure they could say "boy" later, which they could. We'll see about that too. :)

Here are some never before seen US pics of the girls to get you ready for the new one(s).

Kara and Anna way back when...

Today it was 20...whoa. Haha. No snow, and don't worry, it will be back above freezing again on Thursday. I had to tell the girls how cold it was a lot of times today to get them to keep their bodies and feet covered, though. They like shaking their little bodies and heads when we say "brr."

Another fun activity while Andrew was gone...the girls brought me their boots and coats and proceeded to run around the house in them. So silly. Last week was not nearly so cold.

Kisses - they love to run and hug each other and give each other kisses. You can see how happy Kara is! :)

The girls and I had a really fun week without Andrew here. It was a struggle in some respects, and I was definitely tired when he came home (more because it's harder to take care of myself when I am constantly taking care of the girls), but we bonded and enjoyed each other. What really helped was that they decided that they wanted to start eating a LOT of food. This alleviates pretty much all of the stress I experience during my days. They slept well (for them) too...only 2 wakings a night. The worst day was actually Friday, because once Andrew got back and spent time with the girls they got all riled up and wouldn't eat and didn't sleep very well.

We didn't do many outings (just 2 for the 4 days he was gone - the playground where they chased around other children and stalked a little fairly immobile 15 month old boy, and Trader Joe's, where they went crazy for the balloons and we got their new favorite, potstickers). We did spend a lot of time hanging out in bed. They got up at 6:30 or earlier every day, even though they were going to bed much later than usual, but I could usually keep them in bed with me, just snuggling, playing, etc. for about another hour. They liked hanging out in bed after other feedings too, so I got a few pictures.

I got to dress them matching, since Andrew is the main barrier - he gets them confused if they match. :) The only way to get Kara to pose instead of lunging for the camera was to tell her that if she let me take the picture, I'd tell her when I was done and let her see as soon as I took it. This mostly worked, after a few tries. (And Kara's not a foot taller than Anna, Anna's reclining).

My sleepy stoics...I love when they check each other out. They actually got so used to spending time with me and with each other that the first night Andrew rocked them to sleep one by one (in the other room) the one who stayed with me got separation anxiety and freaked out. Then once he got the first one to sleep and laid her down, she woke up when she realized sister wasn't there and acted the same way. I thought it was really cute.

Silly Nan with the baby Jesus from their Little People Nativity, their new favorite toy (thanks Nana and Pop!)...in this second picture, if you click it, you can see she chipped her top L tooth a little at the mall when she fell on some steps. Oops!

My sweetie Kara, who wanted to snuggle all the time Andrew was gone, and lately just in general. She had the Mary from the nativity - she and Anna traded.

That's a (not so little) taste of our week, for Andrew's benefit more than anyone's...I have lots more pictures of our fun indoor activities, but will save those for another time.

I think most of our pictures lately are of the new activities they create for themselves. Here are a few more...

One of the first times Kara climbed up into this bin and hung out; driving trains - a daily pasttime...they get going pretty fast!

Oh, and Anna loves sitting on her sister. Kara loves it too, but it was a little hard to get her to look up at the camera, what with her being squashed...they weigh about the same seemingly 500 pounds each. :)

Me, Kara, and Anna, not Kara/Anna and 2 sippy cups! (love how Kara's lunging to get hers back in the first pic). Andrew's gone Monday-Thursday for a conference in Nashville. I am kind of in denial about how this will play out. This will be the longest he's left us. When he was gone for one night a couple months ago the girls did not sleep well, but it was just one night... They've actually been sleeping in our bed lately, which is where I'll let them sleep when it's just the 3 of us, and doing really well (which is probably why we've been letting them stay - a couple of never-before-seen 6 hour stretches will do that to a parent who hasn't slept a full night in a year and a half). Hopefully they can keep up the good work with sleeping, or at least do better than every 45 minute wakings like last time.

The 3 of us will miss Andrew lots! As I've mentioned before, he is the best dad, and I may be exaggerating, but I haven't personally seen a more involved dad. He does all diapers any time he's home, feeds the girls meals when he's home, and is the bedtime routine go-to guy (bath, PJs, books, rock to sleep). Oh, and lets me sleep in a little by taking the girls until he has to leave for work. I'll certainly have a lot less down time with him gone. I'll try to make up for the hugs and kisses they'll be missing, but won't be able to make up for everything they love about their sweet daddy!

PS - We had a great Pierce family outing today to the mall. The girls tried on shoes (Kara's feet have grown nearly a size and a half in 2 months, Anna's a size, and I think A is catching up with K in height...they really are getting huge), which they loved. They kept looking at the shoes and pointing to them and looking at themselves in the mirror. Then we got pizza, which Anna was so excited about that she put about 4 big bites in her mouth before she realized she couldn't actually chew that much and spit it out. Whoops! Pizza and shoes...girls after mom's heart.

My lovely little accessory queens. :)

A couple weeks ago they started enjoying sitting in their toy box (and throwing out all the toys). Love them being contained for a bit! They also love wearing their glasses (sunglasses they popped the lenses out of). Also a couple weeks ago, Anna put them on by herself for the first time and tracked me down in the other room to show me how proud she was of herself with a huge smile! So cute.

Ear muffs...the old standby. Wonder if they'd keep them on outside.

Is Anna becoming our new accessory queen? She loves to pile on the necklaces. And on the left, her first little tattoo. I wasn't sure what she'd think, but she loved it. She loved showing everyone the little mister on her leg, and she still looks for him even though he's long gone. Poor Kara, I am not a temporary tattoo expert and messed hers up, so she didn't get one. She looks at her leg and wishes she had one like Anna did.

PS - The spider has been gone all this week. Tragic...he'd been there for months before I even showed them (he never moved so I thought he was dead and left him). The girls miss him. I think we spend more time looking at where he used to be in the closet and talking about how he ran away than we did looking at him when he was there. Oh girls!