Belated Birthday Post

It feels a little silly to do a One Year Birthday post over a month after the fact, but I can't NOT do one!  It will just be a very abbreviated post with lots of pictures to make up for it.  I already did a post about their birthday party, so I didn't completely miss the boat.  I just didn't do a 12 month update post.  Or a 13 month one for that matter.....  Okay.  I just suck.  I know!

I now have toddlers.  There is no denying it, but I'm still going to call them my babies.  At some point, I'm sure that will change, but not quite yet.  They are still my babies.  At their last weigh in on 1/12/15, Ayden was 24 lbs, 10 oz and 30.75 inches tall.  Rylee was 19 lbs, 10 oz and 28.5 inches tall.  Ayden is exactly 5 lbs heavier and over 2 inches taller!  He is still wearing size 4 diapers and mostly 12 month clothes, but some 18 month tops.  Rylee is all over the board in sizes.  She still fits some of her 3-6 month clothes, but also is wearing some 12 month items.  I will never understand sizing in baby clothes.  Ever.  Rylee is wearing size 3 diapers.

They are both walking all over the place now, although they weren't taking more than a step on their actual birthday.  It's amazing to see them toddling everywhere!  Rylee walks a little bit like Frankenstein.  She kind of rocks side to side with each step and has her shoulders raised.  It's very adorable, if I do say so myself.  Rylee claps ALL the time and waves.  Ayden has started to clap a little, but he's pretty content to sit back and watch everyone else instead.  They both now dance to music, which is really just bouncing up and down, but it's fun to watch them get excited.  Ayden makes all sorts of sounds: mama, dada, baba, nana, yaya....but no actual words yet.  Rylee says dada constantly.  When I ask her to say mama, she says dada.  That's pretty much what she says all day long.  She has finally started to say yaya though, so at least there is another sound in her.  And she says cheese, to go along with her cheesy face :)  That's our first actual real word: cheese.

My mom came over on their birthday and went to their doctor appointment with us.  Not very nice to have to get their 12 month shots actually ON their birthday.  They still had a good day though.  Here's the promised pics from the big day that my babies turned ONE:

When your birthday is 2 days before Christmas, you get your presents wrapped in Christmas paper.

There's that cheesy smile!  Roar!!!

Ayden just wanted to eat her shoe.

Yep.  He's eating her shoe.

Rylee's says "See ya later!"

He has such a beautiful smile.

Best picture of the day.

They got a zebra from Tony's parents!  When you bounce up and down, the zebra moves forward.  It's really cool.  They'll have to wait a few years before they are actually big enough to operate it though!

They also got a car from them.  However, it also has been put up for the time being, until Ayden can stop trying to eat EVERYTHING!  He's quite the little beaver.  He thinks the horn on this car is a teething toy, and it's too nice a car to have him chew the horn off already.

My mom got them these fun little bikes.  They can ride them like a motorcycle, or they can convert into a walking push toy.

There's that face again!

Bullet Point Update

Things are way too hectic around here for me to be able to sit down and keep up with my blogging!  I am over a month behind on my blogroll.  I'm trying to keep up, but I am so far behind.  I haven't even done the babies One Year post yet, and they just passed their 13th month.....

Here's a quick bullet point update of what's been going on in our neck of the world:

• We all had colds over the Christmas holiday.
• Once we got over the colds, Rylee had some sort of stomach virus that included a 3:00am full on puke in her pack n' play followed by 2 weeks of extreme diarrhea.  Oh the joy!  We were going through 3-4 outfit changes every day there for awhile.
• The babies have colds AGAIN, so we have lots of fun, slimy snot.  Rylee likes to lick hers if I don't catch it in time and she's got a good stream going.  Ayden on the other hand, wipes his by rubbing both of his fists across his nose and all over his face, resulting in snot covering both hands and his entire face.  Disgusting.  Ayden also has a cough this time around, although it's not all the time, so I'm not sure it's anything to worry about yet.
• Last week I looked at 6 potential houses to rent in 2 days.  Between Tony and I, we looked at 11 houses over the last 2 weeks.  What a stressful process!  It was race trying to get our applications in before anyone else!  We finally did get a house that we both like and will suit our family.  It's actually bigger than our house now.  The best part is that it is only 18 minutes from Tony's office rather than the hour and a half+ that we currently are.
• So now I am busy trying to pack, which isn't going very well with two babies that aren't napping well.
• Our official move in date is February 1st, but if the current renters are out sooner, we may get the keys sooner.  That's what we are hoping for, so we can have the next two weekends to move instead of trying to get it all done in one weekend the following week.  Super Bowl Sunday kind of gets in the way for Tony this weekend on Feb. 1st.
• The sale of our house is set to close on February 13th.  Looks like it's actually going to happen!!!  Yay!
• Oh!!  We have TWO walkers!  Ayden started walking a day earlier than Rylee, but she has passed him up by being a little better at it than him.  She is also coming to a stand without the aid of a piece of furniture or person now.  Ayden still needs to climb to a stand by holding onto something.
• Speaking of climbing...Ayden is starting to figure out how to do that.  He is keeping us on our toes!

Okay, I think that's the major things going on around here lately.  I may be behind in my blogging, both writing and reading, but I wanted you all to know I'm still here!!

Here's a few pictures of the kiddos:

Our big boy!

She is so proud of her new walking ability!

We took advantage of a nice day for a walk

We Have A (Almost) Walker!

Whelp, Ayden is now taking steps!  I posted a video on Facebook and Instagram, and everyone says he IS walking.  I hesitate to actually call it walking though.  It's more like taking steps.  He took a record 5 steps on December 27th at my family Christmas gathering, but then he didn't do it again until the past few days and it was sporadic.  As of last night, he is now trying to walk everywhere!  He's very unstable and wobbly, but he has gotten as far as 7-8 steps now.

I am learning that this new stage also comes with more bumps and bruises.  I'm fairly certain that he gave himself a black eye this morning when he fell into a chair.  We'll see what it looks like when he wakes up from his nap, but it was a huge welt when I put him down.

Rylee isn't too far behind.  Now that Ayden is taking steps and trying to walk everywhere, she is also becoming more brave.  She hasn't taken more than 2 steps though, as of yet.  I'm sure that will change very, very soon.

And the next stage begins.....

*******

I am going to look at a house this afternoon for us to possibly rent.  Online it looks like it could be the perfect house for us!  It's 400 sq. feet bigger than our current house, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, large laundry room, garage with shelves and workbench, covered patio, huge kitchen with lots of counter space, central air conditioning!  It's not available until February 13th, which would be PERFECT timing!  The closing on our house got pushed back about a week or two (don't know the exact date yet), so the timing is perfect for us.  

The only problem is there are other people looking at the house today as well, so we already know we have competition for it.  Fingers are crossed.

Microblog Monday: House Update

Talk about busy lately!  I still need to do the 12 month/one year update for the babies!  It's coming soon.  I promise.

Here's the scoop on the sale of our house:

• The inspection went well with just a few minor repairs requested that have pretty much been done as of today.  I asked my mil (our realtor) if it was normal to have such a short list of things asked to be fixed after an inspection.  She said absolutely not!  Usually people have a whole list of things they ask for, but the couple buying our house know what a great deal they are getting.  
• The appraisal was done on Friday and the gal said everything looked great!  She didn't see anything to note that was wrong with our house.  
• We spent a day in Eugene looking at different neighborhoods and checked out an apartment complex. We've officially ruled out the idea of apartment living.  There just wasn't enough room for our family of four.  It gave us an idea of what we would be looking for - nice neighborhood that we could take the babies for walks safely in, preferably a fenced yard, minimum 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and close to Tony's work.
• We will actually start looking at possible houses to rent next week, with the hopeful goal of moving February 1st.
• Closing date on our house is February 13th.

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