18 months!  While I can’t remember what life was like before these two were part of our family, it seems like time is flying – Maggie and William are growing and growing!  To be perfectly honest, we’re still not quite used to being the parents of 3 kiddos – we love them so much, but we feel like we can’t keep our heads above water most of the time.  We have to constantly remind ourselves to just stop and appreciate the enormous blessings we have been given!  God is so Good!

Maggie and William are SOOO different.  William has always been very careful and gentle- he takes one bite of food at a time with 2 fingers and finishes each bite before taking another.  He plays with one toy at a time.  He gently takes his pacifier out of his mouth and carefully sets it on the ground before picking up his sippy cup to take a drink.  He gets truly heartbroken when things don’t go his way.  Maggie is a little more intense – she has always crammed fists full of food in her already full mouth; she chunks her pappy or sippy cup or toy to move on to the next thing, and she walks around with as many things as she can carry.  Maggie loves every minute of finger painting, and William cried the entire time we painted his hands to his prints on these canvases.

They fight like cats and dogs one minute and then giggle and play the next.  There is plenty of screaming/eye gouging/hair pulling going on at our house!  As much as they fight, though, they truly love each other - they wake up each morning and chat back and forth from their cribs – it’s so sweet!! 

William is ALL boy.  He wants to be outside all the time and just stands at the door or brings you his shoes when he’s ready to get out.  He LOVE LOVE LOVES anything with wheels and gears – I am convinced he’s an engineer in the making.  He’s thoroughly inspected and pushed the shopping cart, stroller, cars, and trucks miles and miles in our house, and he just jabbers as he goes.  There’s no doubt he understands exactly what he is saying – I just wish that we did!  He will bend down to get eye level with us and talk and talk with hand gestures and head tilts and then waits for us to answer once he’s finished.  One day soon, those words are going to start making sense to us!  Here are some of the words that we do understand:

Thank you

Gracias

Bye-bye ninas

Hi

Mira

Look

This!

Ardilla

Agua

Pappy

Chupete

Bite

Nana (banana & NanaJ)

Light (Ite)

Airplane (pane)

Shoes (sue)

Outside (side)

Momma

Dadda

Tree

Dog

Pretty (piddy)

Nose (“No” as he points to his nose and whacks ours!!)

Mouth

HO-HO-HO (for santa!)

Baby
Hot (always said 3 times in a row)

Maria

Yurika (Keeka) – he LOVES Keeka!!

DonDon (NonNon)

Toothbrush (boo-bah)

His favorite song is “Old McDonald” – he E-I-E-I-O’s all day long.  He also mumbles the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Away in a Manger.  William is the best snuggler and his excitement when he sees Jim or me absolutely melts my heart.  He will just barrel into us, bury his head, and hug us as tightly as his little arms can squeeze.  William sleeps best with his blue bear and pappy, and we’re pretty sure he wakes up every night and sits quietly in the crib to get some quality time with Blue Bear. 

 

As sweet and tender as he is, William’s got quite a temper – when he doesn’t get his way, he screams at the top of his lungs!  Maria’s granddaughter let us borrow her Fred Flinstone car, and the other day when he wanted Maggie to get out, he grabbed her by the collar, pulled her out onto the floor and proceeded to slam her head over and over with the car door!  His terrible twos are going to be epic, and I think it is upon us!  We'll just refer to him as "passionate" going forward!

 

 

I’m trying to think of what else I want to remember about William at this age…he has 8 teeth (4 on top and 4 on bottom), he hates vegetables and is a pretty picky eater, and his cheeks are just more than I can stand – I just want to eat them up!

Maggie is our little sweetheart and is at least as girly as William is boy.  She can’t wait for the day that she has enough hair to hold a bow, and she walks around with a purse or bag all the time.  She loves jewelry – necklaces especially!  Mags loves books like her sister and will bring book after book for you to read to her.  It’s hard to get through an entire story with William around, though! 

Mags LOVES her big sister, and the feeling is mutual.  Kirby and Maggie will disappear into Kirby’s room and just play and play.  This is no doubt how Mags has developed a love for all things girly!  Maggie is super hooked on the pappy, and she has a little silk cat blanket that she can’t sleep without.  She walks around with it all day, too, rubbing the silky part back and forth across the space between her mouth and nose. 

Maggie loves to eat, and she has the biggest belly on the littlest body I’ve ever seen.  She runs everywhere and leads with her tummy – it’s precious!  When she eats something yummy she and William both do the “food dance”  - we’ve got to record them!  Maggie loves to lift up her shirt and rub her belly.  She also loves to rub and pat us – she’ll just walk up, pat our back or shoulder, and then bend around to our face and give us the biggest smile you’ve ever seen.  Maggie has lots to say, too, and here are some of her words…

Amen

Momma

Dada

Maria

Thank you

Yurika (Keeka)

DonDon (NonNon)

William

Nose

Mouth

Eye

Head

Duck

Cat (and meows)

Dog (and barks)

Trumpet like an elephant, complete with trunk motion with arm!

Cow (and moos)

Fish (Ish)

Outside

Shoe

Pappy

Nana (banana and Nana)

Hi

Bye

Bite

Agua

Ball

Book

Milk

Uvas

Okay

Night Night (Ni-Ni)
Off (Op)

Si

No

Stop that

No Ma’am (can't imagine where she hears these negative words!!)

Mira

Look

I know there are more that I can’t remember right now!  She likes to call out the animals to sing in the next Old MacDonald verse - She and William are a great team for that song!

Mags has the same 8 teeth that William has, but in the last 2 weeks, she’s gotten 2 top molars!  We didn’t even know they were there – she’s so tough!!  She has one war wound – she fell out of the doorway into our garage the other day and chipped her top right incisor – think Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber – bless her heart!  My Uncle Jim said he'd fix her right up when she gets older.  Despite her little dental disaster, she gets more and more beautiful every day.  Her sweet nature and precious face make me so happy.  I love my little Moopers to pieces.

Christmas

What a Christmas!  Kirby LOVED Christmas this year - from the songs to the decorations, from the trees to the lights, from Santa to sweet baby Jesus - she was in Heaven.  She gets excited about watching paint dry, so this season was almost more than she could take!  When "Mary" brought "Baby Jesus" down the aisle at church on Christmas Eve, I thought Kirby might actually pass out she was so excited - I pray she keeps that excitement forever and ever :) We celebrated with family and friends are were reminded this year more than ever of the blessings God has given us - most importantly - His Son!

Kirby and Py went on their annual shopping trip complete with a train ride and visit to the Rainforest Cafe.  He takes her shopping to buy us all a present - whatever she decides she wants to give us, they find.  Last year I got a humming bird, Annie got a train, Jim got a fish, and Maggie and William got cats.  We're celebrating Christmas with my family this weekend, and I can't wait to see what she picked out for us this year!  What a fun tradition for Kirby and her godfather!

On Wednesday night we headed to SA for Christmas with Nana and Papa.  We played and visited with old friends and ate some of the yummiest food!  I'm not sure Nana and Papa's house will ever be the same after the tornado that is the Grays and the Hills blew through, but we sure had fun!  The kids were so good and played and played together.  The big kids did, too - we learned how to play 99.  We also learned that Pam uses her fingers and toes to add :)  Here's the weekend in pics!

Tea parties with Jack and Katie...

Porch time with the girls...

Breakfast at the big kid table...

Cute cousins!  Kirby and Hadley get along great because Hadley wants to be a mom and Kirby wants to be a baby.  Ha!

Yet another unsuccessful family picture attempt :)  

Precious little Tails...

Happy little Moo...

  

Yummy yummy cookies for Santa...

Stockings hung with care...

 Crazy Christmas morning...

Fun, fun Christmas toys!!

The Hills

The Hills came to visit this weekend - it was so good to have them back in Houston even if for just a weekend!  The kids were thrilled to see each other, and the adults were thrilled to have a night out without kiddos!  The girls got along so well, and when we came in last night, Kirby and Hadley were asleep together in Kirby's bed - soooo sweet.  Kirby can't wait until Christmas to have another sleepover with Hadley!!

Opening weekend 2010

The babies loved the deer camp!  

One of the families there brought glow necklaces for the kids to wear when it got dark, and my dad gave Kirby his "head light" and hat - she had a ball running around with her big girl "friends" exploring forts and trails! 

 

 Is Maggie a clone of her daddy or what? 

William is totally asking why he's dressed like such a goober, and Jim is no doubt blaming me! Better than freezing, right?

Halloween 2010

 They say a picture is worth a 1000 words...I sure hope not.  I promise, we really did have a great time this Halloween - not that you can tell from these pictures!!  It really was so fun to trick or treat with Nana in San Antonio!

 

Here are some more pics to prove that I'm not lying!  

Halloween Partying...

 Playing outside in the amazing weather...

 

Pumpkin Patching...(never wait until the day before Halloween to go to the pumpkin patch - there were only 15 pumkins left!)  Mags found a great one despite the limited selection.  William, of course, was only interested in the wheels on the wagon!

 

Trick or Treating...Jessie was literally giddy running from house to house yelling YEE HAW!  It was precious!  She turned around after getting candy at each house and said Happy Halloween, and at lots of houses struck up conversations with the people.  Maybe next year she can go as Chatty Kathy!