Doubly Blessed: September 2012

Anna and John turned 10 months on July 17th. The big event this month was John pulling up to standing and starting to cruise around! He also sprouted his two top teeth, and one bottom tooth, much to my surprise. I looked in his month one day and there they were! John has a new affnity towards doors and cabinets. He loves opening and closing anything on a hinge, so we had to do some more baby proofing this month.

Cars were another discovery for John this month. We visited with the Faiz's in August and Saleh shared his cars with John. He had so much fun playing with the big boys, Saleh and Zakir. He now "drives" anything and everything across the floor, including toys, chairs, paper, you name it, he drives it! We need to get some cars for this boy for his birthday :) I realized after being at the Faiz house that we have no "girl" toys or "boy" toys. We are very gender neutral right now. Another first at the Faiz house was their first bath in a big tub. They loved having all the room to splash around and play with the boys' toys!

We may have a future basketball player on our hands, as well. John loves putting blocks and balls through any kind of opening and enjoys dumping toys out and putting them back in a container. I hope he's going to start cleaning up his toys soon:) These babies make a MESS!!! They take every toy out and scatter them all across the floor. It's a good thing our play room is on the top floor where we can hide the mess!

Anna continued to crawl and cruise around at warp speed this month. I would be surprised if she wasn't walking by her 1st birthday in September. She's a riot and loves playing games like peek-a-boo, "chase" and putting things on her head, watching them fall, then shrieking with laughter. She's also started stacking blocks and thinks it's hilarious to knock them down and not allow anyone to build any towers! Anna loves dropping anything and everything behind her back. I guess she discovered that's something else she can do all by herself:)

Together, the babies love dancing. By dancing I mean, waving their hands in the air and John likes to bend his knees and move up and down. John and Anna find pure enjoyment in shaking and banging things. Their father taught them to bang their hands on the table during meal time, while he chants, "More food, more food!" I'm not a huge fan of that one :) Whenever Anna finds a toy that's a "shaky, shaky toy" she gets so excited and immediately turns to look at me with a big O mouth :) Perhaps my favorite milestone this month is their self sufficiency when eating. The babies now hold their own bottles and this has changed our lives!!! They continue to love "real people" food and Anna will pretty much try anything. Her brother is not as brave an eater just yet, but he's getting better.

As a family, we ventured to our favorite city, Chicago!!! Stories and pictures to come in the next blog...