13 months and walking!

Ben & Maddie hit the 13-month mark today and they are well on their way to walking! Tonight Jamey and I had Maddie walking back and forth between us (Ben wasn't terribly interested) and she was going a good 10 feet by herself without falling almost consistently. She kept wanting to go back and forth. I bet we did that for 20 minutes straight!

I had Ben going for a little bit today just holding onto one of the sleeves on my shirt (with one hand) and he was very steady and could go quite a ways. I think he's just going to start walking without needing much encouragement from us.

Maddie, on the other hand, was relishing the praise we were giving her and you could tell that made her more confident.

Today they did a bit better about letting me take pictures without coming for the camera, so I got a variety of "action" photos that I thought I'd share.

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And here are a couple from last week...

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IKEA

We took Ben & Maddie to IKEA and they had quite the adventure! We put them in carts and each pushed one around the store as we shopped (of course we bought way more than we intended to!).

Then we had lunch in the cafeteria, which was their first time eating in a restaurant. They were fascinated by the fact that people were walking by our table while they were eating! They usually don't have people watching them eat!

Needless to say it was sensory overload for them. In the car on the way home, they were both zombies. We kept them awake cause it was nearing naptime and we didn't want them to sleep in the car and then not take a nap. It worked, although I don't think the nap was as successful as it should have been.

Among the things we bought were some nice wooden toys, a couple fabric bins for holding toys and one of those collapsible tunnels that kids can crawl through. Also found some kitchen stuff for us and picture frames for all the photos we've been taking.

We took note for some future purchases, including the two-sided easel for $15 and this cool holder for rolls of drawing paper (which they also sell). It's kind of like those gift-wrapping paper things they have at stores that offer gift-wrapping services.

Curry Broccoli Slaw

Here's the salad that we had at Ben & Maddie's first birthday party, which was a big hit. Everyone commented on how this sure didn't taste like broccoli! A great way to sneak in the good stuff on someone who doesn't like broccoli.

Ingredients

* 1/2 pound bacon
* 6 cups fresh broccoli slaw
* 1/2 cup diced onion
* 1/2 cup dried cherries
* 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
* 3/4 cup mayonnaise
* 1 teaspoon curry powder
* 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
* 1/4 cup white sugar

Directions

1. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine the bacon, broccoli slaw, onion, dried fruit and sunflower seeds.
3. Whisk together the mayonnaise, curry powder, vinegar and sugar.
4. Pour dressing over salad; toss to coat, and marinate over night

Getting tough to get photos

Ben & Maddie come straight for the camera, hoping to snatch it out of our hands whenever we try to take pictures these days. My co-worker -- who has twins and is also a professional photographer -- told me they had the same problem at this age. But now his 3-yr-olds don't even notice the camera is there and he gets amazing pictures of their everyday life. So I can't wait til that day comes. In the meantime, here's a few pics from the last couple of weeks that I've been remiss about getting posted.

Here's Ben looking funny when the static from the new bean bag chair makes his hair stick up!

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No more bottles!

We ditched the baby bottles last night. Packed them up and stashed them in the basement. Ben & Maddie seem to be doing really well with sippy cups and they didn't seem to notice that they didn't have a bottle with dinner (which has been our routine for the last few weeks as we transitioned to sippy cups).

It was such a sweet milestone because I'm so sick of washing those dang things. We had the Dr. Brown's bottles -- which we loved! -- but they have lots of parts that require washing. And the drying rack took up a ton of counter space.

We've still got a couple cans of formula to use, so we'll keep giving them a cup of that a day until it's gone. Might as well since we spent so much money and they can use the extra nutrition.

I've got some pictures from this weekend to post but my computer is in transition from one operating system to another, so I'm not really set up for doing pictures on my computer yet. Hopefully in a day or two.

On a non-baby note: The class that I'm teaching at the U of M starts tomorrow morning. Bright and early at 8:15. It will be every Tues and Thurs until May 6 (except spring break in mid-March, of course). It's a total of 30 classes and I have 16 students. Hopefully it won't be too overwhelming.

One thing that might make it easier is that it's looking highly likely that my job (along with everybody else in the PiPress newsroom) will be going down to 37.5 hours a week in order to save the company money. They are also making other cuts, such as dropping our 401k match and killing the planned inflation raise we were supposed to get in July and requiring a one-week furlough during the second half of the year. All this means less money in my pocket, though, which is not good. UGH. All of these things need to be voted on by my union later this week. If they are not approved, the company says they will lay of 25 or 26 people. That's a lot of heads in our already very thin newsroom.

We like books!

Caught these cute pics of Ben & Maddie "reading" books this afternoon:

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Day after birthday

I'm a bit late in getting these pics posted from Jan. 2nd when we opened gifts Ben & Maddie got at their party. After the first couple gifts, Ben & Maddie wondered off to play with their toys.

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This gives you some idea of how tired everybody was from the big party!

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Jamey's grandparents stayed with us for the weekend:

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First Birthday Party!

We had a big party yesterday to celebrate Ben & Maddie's first birthday. My brother, David, made two massive, absolutely fabulous cakes! The birthday babies did great -- no crying, no stranger anxiety. But boy were they exhausted last night.

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They weren't so sure about the cake. Although it's also possible they were full from all the other great food.

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And here are a couple pics with the other 1 year olds at the party (on the left is Kai and standing is Caleb...both born just a few days before Ben & Maddie).

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Maddie's cake, yellow with pink frosting:

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Ben's cake, chocolate with blue frosting:

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Our friend Sheena and her daughter, Emma:

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Sara, Olympia & Ann with Maddie:

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Vicki with Ben:

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Happy Birthday!

Ben & Maddie's first birthday on Thursday was a quiet day, since Mom had to work and then Dad had to go the rental property when she got home (the good news is that he was signing a lease with our first tenants!!).

But we tried on the birthday crowns that our favorite babysitter bought for us. Then we laughed at each other....

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Presents!

On Christmas Day, Ben and Maddie opened their presents from Mom & Dad and Uncle David. They got lots of fun toys, but they had the most fun with the wrapping paper and the big box containing the Little People House. In fact, I haven't taken the House out of the box yet cause they're having so much fun just standing up against the box and banging on the top.

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