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Lilypie Second Birthday tickers

Monday, June 29, 2009

Two Terrific Talkative Twins in a Tub

I have to start off by saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY (won't disclose which one) MOM! She is celebrating a milestone birthday today and feels like crap thanks to her lovely little granddaughters (or was it me) getting her sick. She's got medicine though and she's on the recovery. How can you be mad at these two little darling faces...even when they do give you a cold that turns into a sinus & ear infection?

We had a lot of fun the other night in the bathtub and I was able to capture it.

They were both competing for the rubber ducky. It wasn't a fight. There were no tantrums thrown, but they were certainly both grabbing for it. As you can see from most of the pictures, Kate ended up with it 90% of bathtime. Maybe it's time to invest in 2 rubber duckies.

"Get in my belly, rubber ducky."

My Sweet Hannah

My Sweet Kate


Kate-notice she's standing

Much to her father's amusement, Kate is now babbling "Da-da" also. George eats it up and pretends like they are really calling for him. I'll have to remind him of that if they start doing it at 3:00 in the morning. I got a couple of seconds of it on video. She normally talks for longer, but the camera seems to distract her.


We are feeling much better, I think. At least, I am. It's hard to tell with babies because it takes them longer to recover and being sick doesn't seem to hold them back much. They graduated into the crawler room at church this past Sunday. These girls are not letting their preemie status hold them back from achieving things that normal 10 month old babies are doing. Kate is pulling to stand and has even ventured a couple of times to take some steps holding onto the couch.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Oh, the possibilities...

Now that they are on the go, a whole new world of possibilities and adventure has opened up for them, including the dog dish. Kate is very comfortable in her new crawling ability and she will now venture into rooms without having to be coaxed or following someone in there. She will still usually follow me into the kitchen, but for a while she just loved the new feeling of the floors...until she discovered the dog dish. We don't leave dog food in there so at least I don't have to worry about her eating dog food. However, she likes to splash in the water. After thinking it was cute the first couple of times she did it and taking pictures, she now gets a little swat on the hand and a firm "No".






I also captured Hannah's mobility on video. I apologize (once again) for the horrible lighting, but she was cracking up at Bella playing and I had to make a quick grab for the camera. You can see her body and you can definitely hear her laughing. Kate is in the background playing around and on top of George.

On a sadder note, we made our first visit to the doctor yesterday for a sick baby checkup. As previously mentioned, the three lovely Lantz ladies are sick. Hannah's snot started to turn colors though so I thought maybe we should check with the doc just to be safe. She said it was just a virus. Kate's cough got nastier today. If you think about it, please pray that we would all get to feeling better. We seemed to have shared our germs with the family we were around this weekend, too.

George had to let go of one of our employees this week. While he spent a large time trying to mentor this young man and showing a lot of grace and mercy to him, the working relationship was no longer conducive to us running a business. It was causing us too much stress. Therefore, George is spending his two days off this week mowing and doing yard work in 90 degree temperatures. Oh the joys of being a small business owner!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Father's Day

Kate & Mommy
Hannah & Daddy-there is a smile behind that pacifier

Uncle Michael's first time holding Rachel-she was only screaming because she was hungry


Rachel

Kate & Hannah
Happy Father's Day, George! I wanted a low budget homemade gift that the girls could have a part in making.
You can see the 4 footprints on the edge of the frame. Well, my original idea was to use ink, but I tried that with Hannah and she wouldn't uncurl her fingers after the practice stamp. Amy (George's sister) and I then tried to clean the ink (non-toxic) off of her hands and we had a heck of a time doing that so we decided to just do paint which came off much easier. Since we didn't get home until midnight on Saturday night & the girls were sick, we skipped church and spent the day at my parent's house eating leftover Macaroni Grill and watching cable (something George really misses). All in all, I guess he had a great 1st Father's day.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Two Little Ducks

We had so much fun at bathtime last night. It's more fun now that the girls can sit up, but they don't like to sit still in the tub. They want to go forward and that makes it really unsafe. I love having George home for bathtime because it means they can safely take a bath together and actually have some time to play. I put on a bathing suit and got in the tub with them last night. It was still a little hard to control them because they wanted to explore. If we had the money, I would probably splurge on some tub seats. Here are some pictures after bathtime.


Kate-such a precious picture

Kate

Kate-always on the go

Daddy brushing Hannah's hair

Hannah rubbing noses with Daddy

Hannah & Daddy


Showing off their flip flops

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

NICU Ministry

About a week and a half ago, we made our first official "NICU ministry" visit. It was simple, nothing fancy, but still very precious to us. My mom, the girls, and I put together some gift bags, one for a boy and one for a girl. They had preemies onesies, a Babies R' Us gift card, a restaurant gift card, and a letter explaining our NICU journey and some encouragement from the Word. I also made banana bread for the staff. There were only a few nurses there because they didn't have many babies, but they said they had one particular boy who could especially use the gift bag. They would give the girl gift bag to someone that would be coming in the future. We stayed and visited for about 15 minutes and then went on our way. Like I said, nothing fancy, but hopefully a blessing to a family in need of encouragement. As for future visits and expanding this ministry, I still have to talk with our preschool director at church and see if it's something that the church would like to have any part in. Here are some pictures:

Waiting outside the hospital
Getting in to trouble while we wait outside of the hospital


Hannah was refusing to look at the camera so my mom snapped a quick uncentered picture. I still haven't figured out how to crop and re-center. Anyone know how?

Grandma Schaefer & Hannah

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Hannah & Kate

Here are the two of them together. As for their interaction, they love to look at each other while they eat and smile. Every now and then Kate also likes to take a toy that Hannah is playing with and I have even caught her taking Hannah's pacifier out of her mouth and putting it in her own mouth. Enjoy!

Reading our bedtime Bible story
The Lantz Women
Kate & Hannah

Follow the leader
Backs of the dresses they are wearing below
So cute! This was the day mommy had to get them bathed, dressed, and ready for church all by herself. We were only 15 minutes late...maybe it's because I stopped to take pictures.



WWL-I have been placing them in their pack n' play lately to contain them and this is what I came back to the other day. They are already trying to imitate their daddy's wrestling moves.


Kate

Kate is MOVING!!! She hasn't mastered the real crawl either, but seems perfectly content to scoot around on her belly and can get places fairly quickly. She likes to follow me and has discovered that there is more than one room to the house. She doesn't venture off on her own yet, but she will follow me into different rooms. Kate weighed 17 lbs. 11 oz. at her doctor's appointment. She measured 26 1/4 inches long. Not only has she learned to be mobile, she also knows how to sit up on her own (meaning going from a crawling position to a sitting position), can pull to a standing position using a person, and loves Gerber puffs. I still have to feed her most of them, but she tries to feed herself. She's enjoying the new array of foods that they can eat now (meat, yogurt). While the doctor okayed us to eat pretty much anything (with obvious exceptions), we are holding off on the sweet stuff because I don't feel that there is a need for that right now. They are babies. Let's just stick to the basics people. While she loves to talk to herself, we haven't had any babbling yet. I think Kate is going to be our little sensitive child. They like to move so much and it makes it difficult to change them so I have started giving them little spankins' and telling them "no" when they are flipping over on the changing table. She sticks her lower lip out at me and starts to tear up. Hannah just laughs and think her spankins' are funny. How rotten! I also had to lower Kate's crib because she's sitting up by herself and I'm sure the standing by herself will be following in the not so distant future.






Crawling Kate-look at her go! Yes, we have many run-ins with the table.


Pacifiers have become our friend again at bedtime & naptime.


We tried to keep the sunglasses on for the picture.


Grandma Schaefer & Kate reading a bedtime story

"Woman, are you crazy?" This is the face I get when I feed her a puff or tell her no.

Digging through the toybox.




Feeding herself-another recent skill






Isn't she beautiful?