Twins: 11 months old

Miles and Calvin are 11 months old!!!

I thought this picture of them was too sweet

Here is what we've been up to (December 20th-January 20th):

Calvin took his first real steps the weekend after Christmas. He is a very determined little stinker boy! He wasn't even crawling at Thanksgiving, but he was almost walking by Christmas....amazing! And just think....doctors and physical therapists were worried about his delayed development....but just look at him now!

The boys were baptized on December 23rd. They did surprisingly well :)  You never know how church will be with two 10 month olds!

We were honored to have Uncle Jason and Aunt Angie be our sponsors. 

We were glad that Aunt Jamie, Uncle Steve, cousins Carter, Austin and Addie could join us from Ohio to celebrate our special day. Calvin especially loved all the walking practice from cousin Carter. Carter gets all the credit because Calvin started walking a week later. 

We were very blessed that our family could help us celebrate our baptism, but our baptism day also marked 5 years since Grandma Cynthia (Andrew's mom) passed away. We wish we could have met her...she would've been a great grandma!!

Grandpa Lyle gave us these awesome new pedal tractors for Christmas! We can't quite reach the pedals, but we loved sitting on them. Miles especially loved when we dumped toys out of the front bucket. 

We headed up to Minnesota on Christmas Eve to spend time with the Van Horn side of the family. Miles loved opening presents with Grandpa Brad. 

Calvin was a little too squirmy to open presents so he hung out with his daddy most of the night.

Miles opening presents on Christmas morning

Calvin LOVED hanging out with cousin Carter! 

All the Van Horn grandkids on Christmas morning. Tough getting that many little ones to look at the camera! Carter (8), Austin (5), Lauren (3), Addie (2),
Calvin (10 months), Zachary (9 1/2 months), Miles (10 months)

Andrew, Calvin and Miles stayed at Grandma and Grandpa's while the rest of the family went skiing at Afton Alps. Can you tell Calvin is a little squirmy?  Good thing he thought it was funny when he tipped over in his high chair :) Wild boy!

Andrew and the boys spent the afternoon with Andrew's aunt, uncle, cousins and their kids. The boys had fun meeting their extended family for the first time. 

Our second morning in Minnesota was spent at the Mall of America watching all of our older cousins ride rides. Maybe next year we will get to go on some rides!

Can you tell our previous night in the hotel didn't go well? The boys have NEVER napped in the stroller. Apparently he was a little exhausted!

Let's just say it is a little difficult to get two babies to sleep in a hotel room when they know you are 5 feet away from them. And FORGET about letting them cry it out....we didn't want to be THOSE people! The boys were spoiled and got to sleep on mommy and daddy for the first time (Calvin needed to be held to get to sleep and Miles woke up early in the morning so he got to sleep on daddy for a few hours). Rough two nights! 

We stayed at the Waterpark of America Hotel so obviously it had an awesome pool. The boys LOVED the pool. They were in the water for three hours!!

Mommy and Calvin snuggling during one of the pool checks. 

Daddy and his boys! Can you tell they had fun? They slept a little better the second night in the hotel, but poor Miles had a stuffy nose so that made it difficult for him to breathe.

We had a great time in Minnesota even though the boys were a little bit of a handful this year. Next year will be easier.....right?  HA!

The boys' four favorite things to do right now:
1. Chasing after the vacuum whenever it is on. Most kids are scared of it....not ours! Maybe because I use it every day to clean up messes in the kitchen.

2.  Racing to the bathroom whenever they hear the door open. Why are they so obsessed with the bathroom? That's gross!

3. Dashing to the stairs whenever they notice that we left the baby gate open or hear the gate opening.

4. Bee lining to the dishwasher whenever it is opened so they can "help out". Remember this post about Calvin getting a knife out of the dishwasher when he was in his walker...well, this week he came walking into the playroom with a cutting board in his hands. Not as dangerous as the knife...but seriously....this kid gets into everything! Why was the dishwasher left open again you ask? The doorbell rang so I was answering the door. I didn't think he knew the dishwasher was open! My bad...that kid notices EVERYTHING!

Little stinkers!

Remember when I told you they love climbing the stairs? Well, they even conspired one day to knock down the baby gate in the hallway and crawled under it. I came out of the bathroom and found them both climbing the stairs. (Let's just say it has happened a few more times since this picture so we now have a new, sturdier baby gate!)

Can you tell who the ring leader is?  Calvin is the trouble maker and Miles just reaps the benefits :) We are in so much trouble!

Here is how this conversation went:

Calvin: "Hey Brother....mom and dad left the pantry open! Hurry, quick....go steal the chocolate chips!

Mom: "Miles and Calvin.....no thank you! Get out of the pantry!"

Calvin: "OH NO we've been caught! "

Miles: "I will just charm her with my super cute smile. It works every time!"

Oh Calvin, you are such a stinker but you are SO funny! It makes it really difficult to discipline you. Every time I raise my voice at you you make a ridiculous face that makes me laugh. You know how to push my buttons (like walking by the curtains and just slightly reaching your hand out to brush them...you know you aren't supposed to touch them, but you are just waiting for me to react). You are still the clumsiest little kid I've ever met. People are nervous around you because you always hit your head...your dad and I don't even react anymore when you fall. Most of the time you bounce right back up without crying. You are one tough little boy!

Mr Miles, you are so sensitive and sweet!  You still really love to cuddle, but you are becoming more of a bruiser like your brother. You really hate getting hurt and you think it is the end of the world when you fall over. I don't think walking will be in your near future because you just don't like to fall down. You have been testing our limits lately too, but you really don't like making mommy and daddy mad and you don't have much of a poker face so you don't get into trouble too often. For example, a few weeks ago you had your plate lifted three inches off your high chair tray acting like you were going to flip your plate over. Instead of actually flipping it you just stared at me and smiled until I noticed what you were doing. Your feelings get VERY hurt whenever we do raise our voice at you. You stare at us for about a minute with your lip hanging out and then start crying uncontrollably. It is very sad and breaks my heart to witness that :(

This is a picture of Miles' new "cheese" face and Calvin was laughing at him. Their outfits were made by Andrew's aunt Carolyn. Super cute...house divided! Speaking of....Calvin had so much fun opening this gift from Aunt Carolyn because he LOVES clothes. Whenever he finds blankets/bibs/clothes on the ground he rolls around in them and rearranges them over and over again. He literally played with these new outfits for over 15 minutes! Weird....but funny! 

January 9th: Calvin says his first word "uhh oh" He has been saying it for a few weeks repeating us, but this was the first time he dropped a Cheerio on the ground and said "uhh oh" unprompted. "Uh oh" is his first word??? We are in so much trouble in the future :)

Apparently we were being too loud for Calvin! HA! Actually....he hasn't quite figured out how to cover his eyes when we play peek-a-boo....instead, he covers his ears!  Calvin also loves to clap his hands, climb the stairs, walk everywhere, get into trouble and say "uh oh".

Miles loves when we make funny noises. His favorite noise is when someone burps really loud (we'll have to stop doing that sometime soon, won't we?) How does an 11 month old know burps are funny?? He laughs so hard and then tries to do it himself. If we fake burp he laughs harder and harder. Such a boy :)

Miles also loves skyping with grandma and grandpa, dancing, walking around the furniture, snuggling and his paci (although we are going to take that away sometime soon. I'll save that for another blog post).

Calvin LOVES food! He cries and whines and begs for food whenever he sees us eating anything. He will literally cry for 20 minutes while dinner is being prepared....obviously he hasn't figured out that it takes time to cook. If we are eating something different than him he will whine until he gets to have what we are eating.  Here is a picture of him stealing my taco. I mean....seriously kid....you have 4 teeth! 

And when I've had enough of his whining at the table I make him get down.......but then he steals food off his brother's tray. Sneaky little booger!

You'd think Calvin would weigh WAY more than Miles with how much food he eats, but Miles is still the bigger twin and he eats 1/2 as much as Calvin at every meal. 

Thanks for checking in on us! Next time you hear from us we will be ONE!!!  

<3 Miles and Calvin

Twins: 10 months old

Miles and Calvin are 10 months old!!!

(Sorry....this post is over two weeks late! Was too busy with Christmas, baptism and New Years. This post covers November 20th-December 20th)

Calvin: 

-Wears size 3 diapers during the day, size 4 at night

-Some 9-12 month clothes, some 18 month

-Size 3 or size 4 shoes

-Started crawling November 25th...almost a week after Miles. He went from not even trying to crawl....to crawling! Quick learner! Apparently he was motivated after watching his brother. He quickly learned how to pull himself up and cruise along furniture.

-Super clumsy and always falls

-Mischievous little monkey!

Miles:

-Wears size 3 diapers during the day, size 4 at night

-Some 9-12 month clothes, some 18 month

-Size 3 or size 4 shoes, but has super chunky feet!

-Crawls pretty quickly, but is way more cautious than his brother when it comes to standing up and cruising around the furniture.

-Is our little cuddle bug!

Here is what we've been up to (November 20th-December 20th): 

We went on a few wagon rides because the weather was really nice. We didn't even need winter coats on November 21st!

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving by going to Daddy's Aunt and Uncle's house in Hampton, IA. We liked eating some Turkey....and of course had to take a little snooze on Grandpa and Daddy after lunch. 

We went shopping with mommy and daddy for a new refrigerator. It made us pretty tired! Everyone loved the sweet little bears.

We love making blanket forts with daddy! If we are in a bad mood, just put a blanket over our heads and we will laugh and laugh. 

We don't sit still for pictures too often anymore, but mommy still captures some good ones! She is pretty crazy and makes us laugh when she makes her monkey noises. 

We are eating lots of table food now! Calvin is a REALLY messy eater (he was blowing kisses while eating...crazy boy!)  Calvin still has four teeth and Miles on has two. 

We are starting to interact with each other more. We always want to play with the same toy and follow each other around everywhere. 

Calvin is quite the clown these days! He has been making all sorts of funny faces (is it ironic that his shirt says "Handsome Like Daddy"? HA)

Grandma and Grandpa Van Horn watched us and our cousin Lauren (3 years old) and Zachary (2 weeks younger than us) while our parents went to a wedding on Dec 8th. Luckily we were on our best behavior for them. Mom was a little worried about us because we've been a little clingy lately and have some stranger danger (not that Grandma and Grandpa are strangers....but they look a little different in person than they do when we Skype with them on the computer :) )

Brotherly love! We are quite the pair!

Calvin got his first band-aid (the first of many!!) He was standing up at the wicker basket in our living room and fell down and the wicker skinned up his forehead. Luckily he bounces back pretty quickly!

 We love watching our Christmas Praise Baby DVD. We sit and watch the full 30 minutes whenever it is on. This time daddy watched it with us!

Remember when mom wrote this (No Christmas for Calvin) blog post about Calvin not playing with toys. Well.....he started playing with toys. ALL the toys! He thinks it is REALLY funny to get every book and every toy off the shelves. Hmm...I don't really know if that qualifies as playing with toys Calvin!

But he had a chat with Santa so maybe he will get some toys afterall (actually...Calvin was NOT a fan of Santa! He tried wiggling right off his lap.)

But Miles LOVED Santa! He sat on his lap for about 5 minutes. Santa said he wanted to keep him and even told us to go pick out our pictures while he snuggled with Miles. Oh Miles...you sure are sweet! Look at that face....I think he buttering up Santa for more presents!

Look how big we are getting! We love to stand up in our cribs, but luckily we are still good sleepers. We go to bed around 7:45 and sleep until 7am (although sometimes Miles wakes up earlier, but mommy and daddy leave him in bed until 7am)

On December 20th (our 10 month bday) we experienced our first blizzard. We loved looking out the window at all the snow. 

Mom and Dad wouldn't let us go out to play. 

That's what we've been up to! Just wait until next month when you hear about our baptism, Christmas and our vacation! We'll tell mom to start working on the next blog post NOW! Thanks for checking in on us!

<3 Miles and Calvin