From the phone

I figured it was about time to make sure all the pictures from the phone and ipad got a bit of a more permanent home...

Nora's little cat bum from Halloween

Marc and his birthday sushi.

Gigi sent Nora some new shoes. She put them on and said "take my picture".

I think this game was T's idea. They kept the blankets on their heads pretty much all afternoon.

Walking to the park with their little friend.

Nora's self portrait.

Teresa did NOT want to have her picture taken.

Nora tried making her feel better "you cying Teres?".

I'm pretty sure I bribed her with something.

They think they are super adventurous to climb to the top of the slide.

We finally went to Chick and Ruth's Delly in Annapolis - they have been featured on Man V. Food several times...they have a six pound milkshake you can attempt to eat, if you have seventeen dollars to waste. Nora was thrilled when the first thing they did after we sat down was put a giant bowl of pickle slices on the table right in front of her.  She definitely ate most of them. 

  

Marc and I were doing dishes one day when T came clomping in wearing Marc's boots. She thought it was the funniest thing ever.

The girls were having a little too much fun eating bagels. They really wanted Daddy to see them being silly so I had to take pictures of them to show him since he couldn't turn around and look while he was driving.

She'll hate me for this one when she's a bit older...

The Christmas Post

We got our first snow on Christmas Eve this year. The girls were really excited, even though it was kind of lame snow and didn't really stick at all. 

                                              

                              

                                           

Christmas morning was much anticipated, of course. Teresa totally got it this year. On Christmas Eve she said to me "Mom! We don't have a fireplace or a fire yet! We need to hurry and get a fireplace so Santa can come tonight". I told her that we wouldn't be able to get a fireplace in time, but we could leave a key out for Santa so he could get in. She responded "But Mom, we only have one key for our house, what if he loses it?!?".

She very patiently waited until Nora woke up around seven before going down to see if Santa had been able to get in our house. 

So excited that Santa ate her cookies!

Santa accidentally swapped the girls tooth brush holders, but luckily Nora pointed it out and I was able to rectify it before T noticed. 

I love Nora's face in this one. 

Our girls were super spoiled by their grandparents and aunts/uncles. And Santa, too, of course. 

Teresa was pretty darn excited about FINALLY getting a bow and arrow set. 

Santa was really great for us this past year. In January, T found a toy guitar at Target that she just fell in love with, so we told her that she needed to tell Santa about it and maybe he would bring it for Christmas. Every time we went to Target we would go visit the guitars and she would longingly say something about Santa bringing it. Then in March or April she saw her first bow and arrow set, and the only way we were able to get her out of the store without a major breakdown was to tell her that she needed to ask Santa for it. Poor thing, she was very patient all year (consistent, too) and luckily Santa came through on both counts!

  

She got my shoes out and instructed me to come take some more pictures of her. 

And then the next day we got our first real snow of the winter! The girls were so, so excited. Nora only lasted about as long as it took for her hands to get wet playing in it, but Teresa stayed out for a while playing with her little neighbor friends. 

And then of course they had to go back out before bed to eat some more snow. Teresa said it tasted like cherries, and Nora just thought it was yummy. 

Some More Things They Say

I probably do this too often, but I just don't want to forget all these cute/silly/funny things these girls say.

Teresa:

A few weeks ago Marc's pants were a little too low...and T said "Dad! You forgot to put your bum away!"

Singing a little tune "la la la la la la la la", etc. After a bit I asked her to please stop and she said "Mom. Sometimes girls just need to say 'la la la'. You can't tell a girl not to say 'la la la'".

"That's fine Dad, if you don't like pb&j you can just go hang out in the potty. Don't forget to tell me if you have an accident."

Listening to the radio in the car she told Marc "I like it when they say 'Jack FM. Playing what we want'". Then later when she was playing with her princesses I heard her have Rapunzel keep saying that to everyone else. 

The girls were playing with some nerf-type guns T got for her birthday. Teresa was very upset that Nora would not trade with her, and when I investigated further she said "Mom! I really need that green gun because it matches my pajamas! This yellow gun does NOT match what I am wearing." 

This one might be indecent, but one night when we were going to bed we realized that T had used the bathroom and not had any one help her with wiping. I didn't want her to get any sort of rash or something, so we got her out of bed to clean her up. She was, of course, all sleepy and disoriented, and we were kind of giggling at her situation, and she glared at us and said "Guys. This is not alarious (hilarious)". Which just made us laugh all the harder. 

One morning she came in and climbed in bed with me and said "I was just waiting and waiting to come in here and snuggle you and say funny things to you!"

Little burrito girls -they were cold one day and wanted to be wrapped up to watch a movie:

Nora:

Nora is a chatterbox. She amazes us every day with the things that come out of her mouth. Today she brought me a Cinderella dress and said "Mom, I nee ta wear dis costume". 

She's decided to go by Tinkerbell now. Originally she had told me that her name is Nora Tinkerbell Milligan, but then she dropped the Nora. "I called Tink-o-bell Mi-yi-gan". Our real dilemma here, is that T was about this age when she insisted we call her Teresa instead of Tressa, which we went with, and now we call her Teresa (although she's been talking about switching back, thanks to a certain aunt and cousin...you know who you are.) I mean, it's only fair if we let Nora do the same thing, am I right?

                                                    

She loves everything. I was in the kitchen one day and she came in and asked what I was doing. I said "I'm making dinner" and she said "Dinner? I love dinner". Or I told them Daddy was on his way home so she said "Daddy? I love Daddy!", etc.

She had been a little too quiet for a little too long in the kitchen one day, so I went in to find her standing in front of the open fridge door. When she saw me coming she frantically said "Is okay Mama, I'm just looking!" Now she says that anytime I catch her doing something questionable (like digging through my bag) "I'm just looking, I'm just looking!". Like that will keep me from stopping her from being rascally.

She calls Teresa "Teresa Bizzle". It's pretty awesome. T was having a grumpy day and had asked me to hold her. Nora came over with her little arms out saying "Is okay Teresa Bizzle, I hold you".

Nora does impressions! Marc was changing her diaper a few days ago and she crossed her arms and said "Humph!", sounding exactly like the T does when she's irritated. Then she said "Das Teresa". Then she stuck her finger out at him and said "No!" Then grinned and said "Das Mama".

If Marc is home at bedtime he always kisses T goodnight first and then Nora (So I do Nora first, then Teresa). One night it got reversed and I guess Nora felt gypped out of a kiss because after we left we could hear her yelling "I need a kiss! I need a kiss!" over and over. Finally I went in and she said "No. I need a kiss from Daddy". Marc went in and kissed, then she stuck her little hand up at him and said "Now go and have fun".

Shoot, I have so many Nora ones. Okay, this is the last one. I was fussing at her to hurry up one day (seriously, toddlers can move as slow as molasses sometimes!) and she stuck her hand up again and said "Hang tight, Mom, hang tight."

She's lucky she's cute.

Kiss-mas

We have two little girls around here that are getting pretty excited about Christmas (or 'Kiss-mas' as Nora says it). Teresa was pretty set on putting candy canes on our tree. Shockingly, they didn't get to stay up there long.

Do I need to actually say this? Nora dressed herself.

Sooooo hard to get a good picture of them together, but I just loved Nora's face in this one!

We decided to try making some ornaments for our tree. We followed this recipe, and it was pretty awful. Seriously, it was a huge mess and super stressful, but we were eventually able to eke out a few respectable looking ornaments. I'm pretty sure it was user error, not the recipe itself that was bad, though.

In case you didn't click the link above, the recipe is basically a cup of applesauce to a cup of cinnamon. T found out pretty fast that it does not make for a very yummy dough, poor thing. 

This was the face Nora kept giving me when I asked for a smile, silly girl.

After we hung our ornaments these two started being silly. Every time they fell down Nora would cry "Let's do it again!".

We went to the little Christmas celebration here on base the other weekend. They had a bunch of farm animals for petting, Nora was super excited about the 'unicorns' (ponies), but was able to pull herself away to enjoy the train ride.

Despite what it looks like, T was super excited about Rudolph. 

The girls helped me make fudge on Sunday before church, and Nora filled the ever important job of spatula licker. 

Of course they both love all the Christmas preparations, but Teresa has been especially sweet and in awe of all the Christmas magic this year. She will pick an ornament off the tree and just carry it around with her for awhile, then go trade it for another one. I made a felt nativity set for them to play with and she likes to neatly pack all the characters into her purse and carry them with her. Although she is a bit confused about the role of Joseph in the whole scenario...

We've been trying to focus a lot on the true meaning of Christmas, (those things just don't photograph as well as the above activities ;), and they both just love, loved this video.



They were actually squabbling on the floor the first time I started playing it, but the moment the music started they were both by my side in a flash to watch the video and have requested it every day since.