Life of Riley & Emerson: 18 Months Old!

We are 18 months old today!

Riley and Emerson, 18 months

Emerson, 18 months old, 19lbs 7oz

Riley, 18 months old, 20lbs 3oz

I have four teeth now and Emerson has six!

We have started to practice using a fork and spoon when we eat which we think is great fun (and very messy!).

We love to play pretend with our toys, feeding our baby dolls with sippy cups and spoons, rocking them to sleep, and setting up picnics with our picnic baskets. We love climbing through our tunnel, reading books, playing with shape sorters and blocks, coloring, and looking at pictures of our family hanging on the wall. Puzzles are a favorite, especially the fire engine piece (me) and the car piece(Emerson).

We love our stuffed animals and give lots of kisses to our bears, penguin, cats and dollies. We love to play peek a boo from under blankets and behind our hands. We love to eat grapes, strawberries, veggie lasagna, fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, yogurt and scrambled eggs.

We are very musical, we LOVE to sing and dance. We sing ourselves to sleep at night and all during the day. We like to do the hand motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider and I even try to sing the words to Bah Bah Black Sheep. Some of our favorite books are "Where is Baby's Belly Button?", "Dear Zoo", "Eyes, Nose, Fingers and Toes," and "Oops!"

Emerson is the queen of animal noises. She can make the sounds for snakes, lions, dogs, owls, cows and elephants. We can both wave and say bye bye. Emerson can say ear and nose. I say the words yuck (which I learned from Mommy and Daddy when I was eating bits off the floor), bath, bear, nose, night night, and baby. We can point to lots of body parts...ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, teeth, belly, hands and feet. This is often accompanied by trying to poke each other in the eye or stick our fingers in each others mouths. We both know right from wrong for lots of things, like taking Daddy's glasses, climbing on the puzzle box and reaching for the ipod on our nightstand. We shake our heads no, unfortunately its usually AFTER we've already tried to do the things we are not supposed to! Daddy says its ironically the most frustrating/cutest thing he's ever seen, we are already masters of manipulation!

Having a picnic in the family room

Me playing with puzzles

Emerson rocking her baby doll

Our first trip to Wegmans!

Emerson dressing up like a fireman at our friends Leila and Eli's house

Ladies lunch with Hannah and Lucy after a trip to the Botanical Gardens. Peter fell asleep so he missed all the girl talk.

Helping Mommy "fold" laundry. This is one of our favorite activities!

Celebrating New Years Eve with our friends Henry and Nora

We went to our cousin David's birthday party. Olivia read Emerson a book and we made lots of new friends. Can you spot the other set of identical twins?

Granddaddy made us our first blueberry pancakes. We spent the rest of the day with blue faces and hands.

We got our first measurable snow in January which also happened to be the first snow we actually remember. Daddy brought some inside for us to touch and feel (and eat!).

Mommy and Daddy got us some bikes that we can ride around the house. We like to climb on them but we haven't quite figured out how to scoot ourselves around.

Emerson climbing through the tunnel

My turn!

We love to practice our downward dog. Mommy calls this "upside down!" and we crack up every time.

Grandma and Pops came to visit. We went out to lunch and Pops was brave enough to sit next to me!

Grandma tried to help us with our walking but we weren't "quite" ready

Most exciting of all, we are walking! We both started about a week ago with a step here and there. Now we are teetering our way around our house although crawling is still a quicker mode of transit, or at least less bumpy! Emerson is still a bit more timid, taking one careful step at a time. I prefer to barrel from one end of the room to the other until I fall down.