Halloween and the 18 Month Milestone

Admittedly this post is long overdue, but sharing the pictures on social media have told most of the story.  So nothing here that hasn't already been shared already, but this is for my strong-willed social media rejectors (objectors?).

For their second Halloween, Austin and Malia were dressed as Woody and Jessie from Toy Story.  All along we had hoped that Austin would be walking by Halloween, and he just barely squeaked it in there by about 3 days.  Nearly a month in, he's a sturdy struttin stud.  As the pictures show, it's hard to tell whether he was more amused by his costume, the pumpkins at the patch, or his new skill of walking.  What the pictures didn't show was the cold they both had at the time, in conjunction with lots of teeth breaking through (which is a continuing battle).  But Halloween was a fun day for all of us nonetheless, and we got some of my favorite pictures of the kids so far.  Pretty amazing how far they have come in 18 months...

November 11 was the twins' 18 month "birthday."  This coincided with a doctor checkup, where we got updates on height/weight.

To sum up Malia's progress, she's starting to sneak into the growth charts in height and weight.  She's around 25 percentile for both - not super impressive.  But she's our energetic kid, so the stats don't speak to her physical strength.  Malia doesn't like to stay still.  Ever.  She's a busy little runner and climber, which makes things pretty difficult with the childproofing.  When we block her off from getting into an area she's determined to be, she has an amazing ability to problem solve and overcome obstacles.  For now, this is making life difficult, but I'm sure her tenacity and grit will be an asset to her at some point.  Although she's not terribly vocal at this point in terms of spoken language, you can tell she understands a good amount of what we're saying to her.  She loves being sung to, going through the hand movements correctly every time.  She has had a flurry of teeth breaking through in the last couple of months; just about everything through premolars top and bottom are through the gums.  Malia is a pretty happy kid, and has a silly but mischievous sense of humor.  She's strong-willed and defiant, and pretty much has us wondering how we're going to keep on top of her.  She keeps us laughing, but sometimes it's more of an exasperated, jaded laugh.  Yikes!

Austin's 18 month stats were a little more impressive.  He's in the 75th percentile for weight, and possibly over the charts in height (I'm inclined to say he's probably a little shorter than 35.25", as the measurement wasn't the best).  Now that he's walking, he's learning from his sister quickly about all the fun/trouble that can be had by climbing on top of things.  This hasn't always worked out well for him, as he's taken a pretty decent fall or two, but we're hoping he'll learn his lesson at some point.  All of the walking has leaned him up a little bit, but as of late it seems he's bulking back up a bit.  He's still a great eater, and he absolutely loves bananas.  He'll eat anything you give him just about any time of day.  As always he's the happy kid, and now is growing his vocabulary with more and more words every day.  He gets excited for their favorite DVD, Yo Gabba Gabba Live, and sings and dances along with the music.  Austin also got another haircut just before his 18 months birthday.  The spiked look suits him pretty well I'd say!

A month of milestones and fun!

Finally checking into the blogosphere after a long hiatus, and Austin and Malia's 15 month milestone seems like a good reason to do so.  To cut to the chase, everything with the kids has been going well.  July 11th was Austin's "preemie birthday," marking a year since his discharge from the NICU.  It turns out to be a more accurate birthday than anything else, since their development always seems to hover somewhere between their chronological age and their corrected age.  Now at 15 months, Austin is a moose.  We're not quite sure what his weight is, but it's somewhere north of 27 pounds.  His feet are big, and hands I describe as "lunchboxes," when curled into the fist position.  

A birthday collage Cheryl threw together for Austin.  A smiley boy from the start!

Austin's stat sheet from the NICU, with his original footprints.  The quarter was for size relativity

Handsome little NICU grad

Austin's birth announcement flag, discharge outfit, and a cap knitted by the NICU doctors' wife.  Hard to remember when he was that small!

One day we ventured up to Signal Hill for a long walk, stopping along the park mid-hill.  The kids were amused.

It always puzzled me, the 4-legged bucket swings.  It all makes sense now!

 So Malia's preemie birthday and discharge milestone fell on July 23rd.  Always diminutive, the footprints remarkably small in the photo, pulling out the mementos gave us pause.  Glad our little peanut is doing great!

Malia's stat sheet and footprints... Man, those feet were tiny!

Malia's collection, the picture doesn't do justice to the dress size... super tiny!

What a difference a year makes!

Here's Malia's collage, she's also come a long way in a year and a quarter!

Loving the Signal Hill playground

Austin and Malia's favorite toy of the week has been their caterpillar crawl tube.

We make it to the OC Fair last week, pretty fun times for the twins

Austin has been growing hair so fast, he needed a second haircut.  It wasn't all fun for him, but didn't delay the smiles for very long either.

All smiles, once again

Water babies: Belmont peninsula edition

Pictures don't lie, that was a full bite of beach sand.  And he couldn't be happier about it!

Malia was also a fan of sand.

Little wahine.

Heritage Park fountain in Irvine.  Chilly water, but still fun.  This is Randy, who many in the family says Austin is the "white" version of.  You decide...

Malia started walking just about 2 weeks ago.  We had wondered when it would come about since all the precursors were there.  By now she's quite adept, but here's a quick video of the early day when we could officially call her a "walker."

The family acquired an RV recently, and we had some fun down at the Newport Dunes.  Malia thinks she's ready to drive already

And finally, made it up to Claremont to celebrate my dad's 66th birthday.  With it being their 15 month milestone, I broke out the good camera and got some good ones.

Double the fun

Love this smile

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Summer Fun!

Lots of fun in twinland these days; just wanted to post some pictures and give a quick update on Austin and Malia.  

The first couple videos and pictures are from an extended weekend trip we took with the family out to Palm Desert, and stayed at a timeshare called Shadow Ridge.  The pool area was well-equipped for the kiddos, and I wasted little time to get them on the water slide.  Clearly they weren't as amused as their dad, but didn't seem like they were opposed to it either.  As usual they enjoy the water in their floatie pads, so we're hoping they'll take to swimming when they get big enough.

Austin's first water slide experience

Malia's first water slide experience

One of the rare moments where Austin wasn't trying to drink the pool water

Cheryl was thrilled to get Malia's hair into a "Bam-Bam" pony tail

Several weekends have been spent at their cousins' pool.  The shots below were taken sometime in June, and you can tell the kids are thrilled.

Austin and Malia's first July 4th holiday kicked off with a neighborhood parade in their choo-choo wagon.  They enjoyed it, but as most of the pictures depict, I think they were a little overwhelmed by the crowd and other kids.  

Visibly tired after a long choo-choo outing.

So progress-wise, both of them are doing very well.  Austin is still a huge ball of muscle and chub, but now that he's crawling more proficiently he's leaning out a bit.  He's nearing 26 pounds these days, but we'll see how that holds up once he's walking and a little more mobile.  Malia is around 18 pounds right now, and quite the scooter when turned loose on the floor.  She's so close to walking that we expect it to happen within the next couple of weeks.  She's got the balance and stepping thing down, just not enough confidence to do it without holding on to things.  Austin is standing pretty well these days, but a ways off from his sister in that department.

Health-wise, everything is going along pretty well.  Malia had a follow up laryngoscopy again about 2 weeks ago, where they found one of the cysts had returned, so she's due for another procedure in a couple of months.  This latest procedure was followed by an ear and sinus infection, which made life a little difficult for a couple of days, but she's getting better now.

Both kids are teething like crazy, which is exemplified by the copious amounts of drool in all of their photos.  Nights were difficult a couple of weeks ago, but out of nowhere the babies have given us a reprieve at night by sleeping nearly the whole way through.  It's quite shocking to wake up in the morning realizing that you haven't gotten up once, but it's a welcomed change and we hope to benefit by longer sleep intervals in the coming months.  

So that's all for now.  Today we're off to our friends' lake house to celebrate a bunch of July birthdays, including my own today.

Happy Summer!