they are walking!!

This week was a lot of growth and the walking switch turned on. It is so odd. Whitney started really walking on Friday afternoon, the 18th and Tucker learned this afternoon to really walk on his own. I thought the stuff at the beginning of this week was exciting, but nothing compares to later this week.

Tucker is really grasping fine motor skills, too, this week. He is able to dip his spoon right side up into the bowl and get it to his mouth right side up. We've been practicing with applesauce. He can stack the rings on the rocking stick, put megablocks together without more than one repetition, clean up about 10 toys once the clean up song gets going, and laugh like a bowl full of jelly. His whole body shakes and it still makes me laugh.

Whitney mostly practiced walking this week. She tried and tried and tried until she figured it out. Then Tucker saw her and decided to give it a try. They both laugh when they walk independently, especially if they are walking toward each other. Apparently it is some new game. What really amazes me about this walking thing is that it took about 3 months of working on the walking skills before they really got all the skills put together, and then they put the skills together in an hour. Literally. This morning Tucker was taking 2-5 steps independently and then by tonight he was walking laps around the dining room/kitchen independently. And apparently the first time parent is having so much fun watching the babies grow up.

Today we went for a hike. While the rest of the country has bad weather, we get sun. It's lovely and freezing cold. Literally. The ground this morning was frozen when we went hiking. The fun part about the hike is that the babies wanted to get down and hike, so they did. Tucker liked it a bit more than Whitney, but she likes to smash leaves, so that made up for it. Tucker looked so silly cute in his hat. But today was the babies' first hike.

This week we watched the crane work on taking out a tree next door. I got a little bit of taste of the power being out (I didn't realize how much I love my microwave) while they worked. It was pretty interesting stuff. Even the green waste garbage man watched. He emptied our can then stayed put while the crane brought the top part down. The babies watched all the trucks come and go (the power guy, the tree guys, the crane guy, the green waste guy) for 45 minutes.

Jim brought home cupcakes from work for the babies. Lovely, the mommy says, who would rather the babies not have sugar. But it was much more fun than their one year birthday. Tucker didn't want to make too much of a mess, but Whitney enjoyed her chocolate. I guess it's because earlier in the week Jim got her used to the taste. One night I asked Jim to give them their bedtime snack and told him to give him whatever he wanted. Bad idea, the "whatever you want to feed them" thing. He gave them some of my Valentine's truffles and gummy bears. Definitely a nutritious bedtime snack. I don't recall wanting to share those, nor was I excited about the sugar given. It just so happens he was leaving for a meeting right at bedtime. Not fair!! The babies were wound up during story time. Whitney was dancing and turning the pages super fast. Lucky for me they didn't cry when they went down.

This week has been lovely. We finally figured out what Tucker needed to go to sleep without crying for at least 1/2 hour. He needs to be wrapped up in his snuggle blanket while sitting up, then he can fall on it and lay on top of it. It puts him right out. Jim kept insisting he needed something, like Whitney likes her monkey, and somehow we happened to stumble upon it. But rest assured parents that struggle with kids going to bed. It took us 8 months of trying to get him to go to sleep on his own without crying, unlike Whitney's 3 weeks. So the next mom that I hear say you just need to let them cry it out for a couple of weeks and they'll figure it out, is full of it. Not all kids do this. And I'm sure we'll have trouble over and over with Tucker, still, about going to bed on his own and staying asleep, that is. It reminds me that other mothers that struggle with things that have come easily, just mean that their kid doesn't do "the usual".

Anyway, this is another week of the post with the pictures and the videos are separate. This time it is purely because the computer wants to be annoying. We'll try again tomorrow.