Yet another time of illness...

It seems as though every other post our family has been ill. This time I was the sickest --with a stomach virus. Basically I hid in my bedroom for two days while Seth stayed home from work to take care of Emily and Savannah. The girls have colds, but thankfully no stomach virus. Seth seems to have dodged the illnesses altogether. Five days later and 6lbs lighter I am almost back to feeling normal and can finally eat without feeling sick.

As for the girls, they still have their colds which has made them cranky and sometimes difficult to be around. Plus, it seems like they are acting up a bit more since I was "gone" for a couple of days. The first day Seth was back at work, Emily was so happy to see me she kept coming up to me and saying "Mom-my" and would hug my leg. I think she did that about 6 times in a row, which is unusual for her. Now, she's back to being quite demanding and Savannah seems to have learned the behavior too. The girls are not getting along very well again. I think in the last month or so we've had one really good week were they were constantly fighting and getting mad if I paid attention to the other. I have discovered I have a low tolerance for the fighting and even less patience when they are resisting me. I know part of it is because I'm still tired after being so sick, but I look forward to the day when the girls don't feel the need to hit each other or me whenever I'm trying to eat or hold one of them individually. Anyway, thank goodness it's Friday. I'm also glad that it's nap time for the girls. It's a much needed break for me.

More Snow!

The girls have been totally fascinated by snow this year, and we've had a lot of it--it seems like every week it snows, not tons, but enough to cover the ground. Earlier this year, the girls were scared by the snow. Now, they get excited and say over and over "SNNNNOW!"(Savannah). Emily has recently been telling us "Snow, outside". And one day when we let our dog Billy out in the yard, the girls were watching him from the window and Emily said "Be--ee eat snow, outside". That was when she was 16 months old--pretty good I think. Now the girls are 17 months old, as of February 4th and are saying new words everyday. Emily is a talker. She seems to focus much of her energy on talking these days. Savannah is not too far behind in the number of words she says. They have their own jibberish language--not necessarily with each other, but just in general. It's funny sometimes because you know they are really trying to tell you something by their facial expressions and gestures...but sometimes we just have no idea what in the world they are talking about. A few of the funnier things they've said in the past couple weeks are "More Bach-bach" when they want more chicken to eat, "More gobl-gobu" when they want more turkey. And of course, their favorite "More Hom" when they want more ham.

This week Savannah created her own dance move--it starts at her shoulder and she raises up her shoulder first then her arm follows and she dips down near the ground, leading with the shoulder and comes back up, followed by spinning or bouncing. Two days ago she did this and was saying "dance, dance" while she did it. Then Emily decided she needed some music, so she went over to the activity table and pressed one of the piano keys and it played a short song. It was cute! Emily will dance too--usually she twists and moves her arms up and down. That also reminds me--Savannah developed her own little baby "sign" for lotion. She raises one hand and arm and then the other--almost looks like she's doing "The Monkey" and she sings a little song with the sign "ur-ur-ur-ur". She does this everytime you ask her if she wants lotion on her hands. It is hilarious.

I need to post some recent pictures. Our digital SLR camera is out of order right now...our flimsy tripod broke and so the camera came crashing to the floor, damaging the lens. We sent the lends to be repaired but do not have it back yet. Seth is going crazy. He's really been getting into the whole photography hobby, so he was really disappointed to be without the camera. I'll have to go through our 1,000's of pictures to find a few good ones to post next time.