Yay for Christmas Break

School is finally out for the semester- woo hoo! This week has been filled with lots of school stress for me, and I am very glad to put that behind me and have two whole weeks off with my family to enjoy Christmas. It also dawned on me this morning that the twins will be 1 in just 10 short days. A year ago I thought I would be in the hospital until February, so having the babies in December was a shock. This year, I'm excited that I'll be off work on their birthday to be able to spend the whole day with our little family of five- Abby included. Here's a picture of Jack and Harper having a book club date while I was taking care of some work this week.

While I was worrying about school things, the kids were all over the place. They are learning so many new things now and it's amazing to me the things they figure out. Tony and I got a picture from Durinda of Jack climbing on a diaper box he had pushed over to the baby gate. When I got home from work that night, I realized that Jack was standing on his tip toes and touching the top of the gate- he was trying to press the button to open the gate. How did he know that's how the gate opens? Jack has also learned to recognize the "toot toot" of the train horn at the beginning of the kids show "Thomas and Friends"; when he hears the train horn, he crawls over with a big grin on his face and plants himself in front of the tv.  Today he also started dancing when he heard the "Thomas and Friends" song- it was too cute!

Little Harper has also been learning new things; her newest skill is pointing. She has started pointing at all sorts of things and I know it will only be a matter of time until she starts using that pointing to demand things. Harper also did something this evening that stopped me in my tracks. Because both kiddos have a couple of teeth, we bought them two "my first" toothbrushes. I gave a toothbrush to each kiddo after dinner and sang a song about brushing teeth, then I said "brush your teeth" to which Harper put the toothbrush up to her hair and used a brushing motion. We will give Harper a hairbrush and ask her to "brush" her hair to distract her while we change her diaper. I was amazed that she transfered the idea of "brushing"- we are in trouble.

Both kids seemed to like the toothbrushes, so we'll continue to let them "brush" their fledgling teeth after dinner each night. I can't believe Jack and Harper are so big and I can't wait to see what they learn next!

I'm also including this picture of Harper sitting in the toy box. I have a picture of me sitting inside my toy box when I was a little girl and I thought this might bring back some memories for my mom...