Tiny baby parts
I love baby arms, some people go crazy over baby feet or cute little tushies. I’m a sucker for my girls squishy little tiny arms. Despite it being winter and pretty cold outside we keep our house toasty warm so that I can let the girls run around in just their diapers as much as possible. Any less than that is asking for trouble.
Hope you are having a nice weekend.
We Love our Giant Bear
We love our giant bear. He’s not as big as the bears they have at Costco right now, but he’s big. 4′ 2″ and 5lbs at least. And he is the girls best friend, 
although sometimes he probably thinks the girls are his worst nightmare the way they try to rip his head off,
but it’s all out of love. Yes the girls love their bear.
Mr. Bear or dooby dov (Hebrew for teddy bear) has an unlikely story, here’s how it goes…
While I was pregnant I was suppose to walk, helps with circulation. But walking was painful, I didn’t like to do it much. It was late summer as my pregnancy got really difficult and there were plenty of neighborhood festivals happening all over town, a favorite pastime of my husband and I was to wander around these festivals in the hot summer sun enjoying the fair food and music. We had just moved to our new house a few weeks prior. One Saturday morning we heard some noise coming from the direction of the big street outside our neighborhood. My husband went to check it out, it was a parade! That culminated at a small festival of local vendors, crafts and games for kids. He came back to the house to get me and we went to walk around the festival bit. I ate some ice cream, learned that in our town you have to have 2 acres of land to raise chickens, boo, we only have one acre. And entered a raffle for…what you ask? a giant teddy bear! The raffle was sponsored by a local magazine, the East Cobber. I knew that entering the raffle was probably going to get me some solicitation email and maybe a trial subscription of the magazine, but I figured that was about it. A few weeks later I got a phone call, it was a nice woman from the East Cobber, HA! I was their big winner, I had won the bear. Funny, I rarely win anything, I can’t say never because when I first moved to Atlanta I won having my credit card paid off by a Q100, a local radio station and a few years later I won $100 in gas from the same station.
They delivered the giant bear to my house and when I opened the garbage bag it was in I realized it was the actual bear from the festival, gross. Every person at that festival pat the bear as the passed by. That bear wasn’t going anywhere near my newborn babies. It got put in a back corner of an extra room with the plan of donating it one day.
Fast forward five months later. Yael, the girls nanny discovered the bear, and introduced it to the girls, they became good friends right away. The bear was part of the family. The girls loved the bear and I am over my germaphobia. I figured five months of solitary confinement was enough to give all the germs time to die. And it has been proven in mice that living in a sterile environment caused more allergies and asthma to develop, so some germs are a good thing.
Games with the bear never get old. If we make the bear talk and play they talk and play right back,
they love to snuggle with the bear and drink their bottle laying in the bears lap, it’s super soft.
I love seeing pictures of them with the bear then and now. 
It so easy to see how much they have grown. The bear has gotten pretty gross but loved. The girls are constantly drooling on him an spilling their milk on him. We wipe him down as best we can but Mr. Dooby Dov’s days are numbered.
Dooby Dov may not always be center of attention but I’m pretty sure the girls take comfort in knowing he is close by, ready and willing to give endless hugs and snuggles.
One day I’m sure the girls will forget about him and he will sit alone in a corner again before we decide its time for him to move out, but we will always have the photos to remember what a big part of our lives Mr. Dooby Dov was.
With the holiday season upon us I just want to remind all my readers that there are so many children who, for no other reason than luck of the draw, may be without a teddy to hug or a train to push this Christmas. If you would like to make a donation to help a few of these children have a happy holiday please donate toys or money to Amy’s Holiday Party. It is a holiday celebration for close to 1000 Atlanta area children. The party is in its 15th year and includes games, a dance party, pizza, a visit with Santa, new pajamas from Carter’s, and a few new toys for each child to take home. It is a cause I have been involved with since moving to Atlanta five years ago. Thank you for your support.
Thanksgiving Day
I love Thanksgiving, it’s probably my favorite holiday. 
I love it for several reasons, since its not a religious holiday there are no services to attend. It’s not that I mind the services, it’s just nice to get to spend the whole day off enjoying free time with family. And it’s a great excuse to dress babies up in their fancy dresses from Safta. They are from Zara (similar here).
Another reason Thanksgiving is a favorite of mine is because we spend it out in the country at my sister lake house, which is beautiful and relaxing and always one of my favorite places to be. OK, its not exactly out in the country, its more like a country club, but the town is far away from a big city. 
Then there is the fact that Thanksgiving is always within a week of my birthday, so I always get to celebrate my birthday with my family.
And last is the deserts! 
I love pumpkin and pecan pie, whip cream in anything is perfect and there is always enough chocolate left over to last for days. The actual meal is always tasty too, but it’s the deserts that keep bringing me back each year.
So that’s a wrap for thanksgiving 2012, let the games be watched.
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving and spent it in company that you enjoyed. I hope you ate enough gravy to last you until next year and I hope that each day you remember that you can be thankful for the people who make your life special.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Halloween with one year olds!
We had such a fun night celebrating Halloween with our girls and our friends. Our good friends were so sweet to host the get together at their house. The fun started around five getting everyone into their costumes.
We had our two little watermelons of course,
then there was Ragedy Ann
and a little snow bunny. 
My sister stopped by with her kids to see the girls, it was a fun surprise. My niece was Repunzal and my nephew was a sumo wrestler.
Once the rest if the dads arrived we gave the kids some snacks and headed out.
Livia’s grandma made sure to take about 1000 pictures of her dirt granddaughter.
but she better get more iCloud storage for next year because she will have to take 2000 pictures!
There weren’t too many trick or treaters out before sunset but to was fun to take an evening walk with the girls since its not often we get to do this.
But it was fun to walk around the neighborhood and look at all the decorations.
the girls had fun discovering pumpkins
and meeting Superwoman (this is our friend Alex, but I’m not sure if the girls recognized her in her costume)
After the trick or treating fun we headed back to our friends house and all had dinner together.
Once the babies fell asleep we ate all the candy they collected.
AWESOME
Happy Birthday Jordan and Talia
Baby girls, today kinda snuck up on me. Sure I knew it was coming but all of the sudden here it is. You are one, one year old today. My little wiggly babies are now little waddling girls. I never wanted to be the parent that called their not so much babies any more baby, so I will try from now on to call you my girls even though you will always be my babies (at least until you stopping waking up at night and crying until I hold you.) I was a pretty independat and adventurous kid and I hope you two grow up to adventurous and fearless. You are already amazing us with your climbing ability, now you just need to learn what goes up must come down, hopefully feet first.
I have had so much fun taking care of you for the past year, your abba and I may not have been perfect at it sometimes, but I hope you two didn’t mind. I hope you had a fun first year. I tried to show you as many new things as possible in this short year. And while we have decades of fun ahead of us this first year was important to me and I loved every minute of it.
You went from being wrinkly little helpless people to opinionated, smart, funny and friendly little toddlers. At a year old you can walk fairly well, as in across the room before you fall down, you each have six teeth, four on top and two on bottom, you both have lots of curls. Every now and then you repeat a word perfectly, you give me your spoon when I ask for it, you know how to balance on one foot when getting undressed for your bath, which you love so much. You love animals, pictures of them, stuffed ones, even the real ones. You love music and you dance to the rhythm in the cutest little way, you love playing outside.
Jordan you are a mommas girl and Talia you are quite obsessed with your Abba. I’m not sure how or why that happened but all the parents of twins said that it would. It’s ok, we love you each with all our hearts.
It was the most amazing thing to watch you change before our eyes this past year, I miss the little babies that we brought home but I love the little girls who crawl to be in my lap more than I could imagine possible. I can’t wait to see what this next year brings for each of you, for your freindship, for our family.
Happy first birthday girls, mommy and Abba love you and we are proud of you every day.
Always learning something new
We are lucky enough to have a nanny who loves them and takes amazing care of them while we are at work. She is always creating fun activities for the girls and showing them new things. The other day she brought the girls special markers! Special magic markers for one year olds.
And they colored their very first pictures! These are pictures of Sukkahs, a hut Jewish people build in their yards to celebrate the fall harvest! The holiday started last night and goes for eight days. Happy Sukkah!
One month left
We stuck close to home this holiday weekend. Avoided the traffic and took advantage of some parks close by. It’s one of the things I love about living in Georiga, the state has an amazing parks and recs department. There must be thousands of state parks with. Arguing levels of facilities and activities from the most primitive to practically luxurious. With in an hour from the city you can go hiking, climbing, rafting, canoeing, boating, skiing, bike riding and picnicking, of course, which is our favorite. A summer or two ago our neighboring city, Roswell, Ga, which is only five minutes down the road built a splash park next to an existing playground/amphitheater/picnic ground. Basically its the zero entry part of a swimming pool with water spraying in varying heights out of the floor. On a hot day, it’s about he greatest thing invented, it’s getting wet and staying cool without the effort of swimming! Which wit babies, especially two is a considerable amount of effort.
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Lucky for us the splash park is staying open all through the month of September, so hopefully we will get a chance to visit again a time or two.
My only complaint, the floor is made of textured concrete, not nice for crawling babies and I can imagine no fun for tripping toddlers either, flexible rubber would have been a better choice.<
When a baby wakes up
Have you ever seen a baby wake up, it’s really cute, there is scrunching and stretching. If you havn’t seen it try to make it a point to one day. It’s pretty special. Honestly most things babies do are fun to watch.
We have had some recent night time sleep breakthroughs in this house. Back in July Jordan got a bad cold which made it hard for her to sleep. We did everything we could to make her comfortable, a cool mist humidifier, natural vapor rub, saline drops and nose suctioning. But she would still wake at night and not want to go back to bed. I’m the same way when I have a cold. So we would feed her and let her play, at any hour of the night for as long as she wanted to. Eventually she would fall asleep in the bouncy seat, which helped her breathing some because it sat her more upright.
Then we went to Israel and between the jet lag, Talia getting sick wih a cold and more jet lag on the way back the girls got to play when ever they wanted for over a month. Well, mama’s tired and needs to sleep, six hours, straight through, on a regular basis. So two weeks ago, once the jet lag was gone and everyone was healthy, we decided
to nix any night time bottles, I would get them and give them a passifire and rock them but no food. A few days layer I stopped visiting at night all together. And as of a few nights Jordan sleeps from about 8 until about 6, yeah, and Talia usually wakes up around four, but I check her diaper change her if necessary and put her back down and she will go back to sleep until 6 also. Last night she slept all the way through until 5:30!
So no more of this
Almost wordless Wednesday
