Double Happiness

PJ's!

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #9 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a comment here before 12/15/06.

This week's photo challenge is "Pajamas

The girls love to run around the house in their cute and comfy sleep shirts.  They look so grown up when they wear them!  It seems like only  yesterday that I bought these shirts and imagined that they'd probably be in Kindergarten before they fit.  But (sigh), they've grown so fast. In the last 5 weeks, Gwen's grown 1/2 inch!  Maddy has grown 1/4 inch.  Their hair seems to be growing at an even faster rate!  When we met Gwen in September of last year, her hair was only about 1/2 inch long but now it's down to the bottom of her shoulder blades.  It's hard to see on this picture but those are pigtails on Maddy (her first photo with them!).  When we got her, not only was her hair too short for decent looking pigtails, it was also ridiculously thin.  It's still thin but we see lots of new growth and we're pretty sure it's because her diet is so much better since she's come home (thanks to Pediasure).  Gwen's growing much faster than Maddy and people rarely assume they're twins unless I dress them alike (but they still ask "They're not twins, are they?").  Most assume there's a year between them instead of just 36 days.

I think Gwen will probably be tall, like me.  Maddy will probably be petite.

Gwen Age: 30 months Height: 34.5 inches Weight: 28.5 pounds........ Clothes Size: 3T Shoe Size: 7.5

Maddy Age: 29 months Height: 33.25 inches Weight: 22.5 pounds Clothes Size: 18-24 month Shoe Size: 6

I've just added this picture of the girls new footsie pj's.  These are so fleecy and fluffy and warm and cute!  And, best yet, the feet untuck to reveal cute little baby toes underneath! 

This week's FFFF participants:

The Daily Grind Vivi Claire and Bella Jane Season Star Bicycle Built for Three Just Keep Swimming The Smith Family's Adventures Eliza's Story (D)RIVVEL SUPP Motherhood and Other Ramblingings Chloe Makes Six One Two Grow Mikala Yin Born in Our Hearts Mei Mei Journal Million Miles to Mia Cannon Fishbowl Sophie Makes Six For The Love Of Libby Loving Lydia Emma's World Lily's Pad Chou Chou Shu (Stinky Mouse) The Escobar Family From Here to There... Princess Isabella Sophie and Sage

Ornaments

	I got this idea from Lisa (who got it from Ninotchka) but I don't think I can post one ornament each day so I'm cheating a little bit and just posting one small group of some of my favorites. Many years ago, I went to a Christmas party at a friend's house and noticed that her tree was decorated totally in little teddy bears.  I thought it was a fun idea so I decided to decorate my entire Christmas tree with cat ornaments.
	There are other things besides cat ornaments on our tree but it's mostly cats.  My favorite is the one on the left.  I'm really not obsessed with cats but I came across this one when I was at Hallmark shopping for a topper for my wedding cake.  It seemed like a cute idea and it was much less expensive than a traditional bride and groom cake topper so we used it on our cake.  I made a tiny bow tie and veil and glued them on and here's the final result atop our wedding cake: <click here>.
Here are some of my other favorites. I make a point of buying a new kitty ornament each year and I also try to find one if we're traveling so I can have it as a memento of the trip.  I use a fine point permanent marker to note the date and place on the bottom of the ornament.    If it wasn't originally intended to hang on a Christmas tree, I can usually find a way to fashion it into an ornament it by drilling a small hole and attaching a gold thread or a tiny eye screw.   (Which reminds me that I still need to do that with the small cat figurine I bought on our first trip to China in 2005) This isn't a FFFF Challenge but if you're posting pictures of your ornaments on your blog, feel free to add your blog link in a comment.  :)

PS:  I'm extending last week's FFFF challenge for another week since lots of people haven't put up their Christmas tree yet.

Finally finished the kids' room

This was Gwen's room before her referral.  We had many months during our wait to make it "just perfect" and I fondly remember going in there every night before bed to look around the tidy quiet space and try to imagine what it would be like with a warm soft noisy little bundle of love in there.  I loved her room!  But only 8 months after coming home with Gwen, we closed escrow on our new house.  It was very sad to leave the mural I painted and all of the memories the room held and drive away forever.  So we decided to recreate the room at our new house.

Here's the new room.  The paint colors are identical (we switched cameras so the colors look different in the two pics)

We moved into our new house in mid July and thought we'd have plenty of time to work on the room but just 3 weeks later, we got our travel authorization to go back to China and bring Maddy home.  Before we left, we managed to get the room repainted and we hired someone to come in while we were in China to install the crown molding.   

As soon as we got back, I painted the mural of the two frog sisters very quickly (while Daddy was trying to keep the kids out).

The ceiling is 9 feet high in this house so we needed to purchase a new ladder before we could install the white trim and hang the wall paper border.  That finally happened last weekend but we were one roll short on the wall paper border so I went to www.kellyrightsell.com and tried to order one more roll but it was DISCONTINUED! 

After many hours of searching and fretting, we heard from their customer service rep that they'd found a roll for us.  Phew!   

The room isn't as cozy and pretty as the original nursery but it's a "working nursery" now and it'll be pretty again some day.

We had to screw the lamp to the nightstand to keep the girls from knocking it over and breaking it. All of the toys are relocated to the playroom. The beautiful "Isabella" cribs by Babi Italia have been covered with Crib Tents and the room has been arranged to accommodate two small children who need to equally share the attention of parent(s) who read stories from the twin bed in the middle.

The crib tents became necessary when Gwen decided to climb out of her crib.  Since we'd had such good success with the Ferber Method (You can read about it here:  cry it out), we weren't looking forward more sleep issues.   While she was contained in her crib, Gwen was sleeping through the night and wasn't crying at all anymore but we knew there was no way she'd stay in a toddler bed so the tent was a wonderful find.  Maddy probably doesn't need it but we use it on her crib because she insists on having everything that her sister has.  We even took the tents to China and, with some creativity, managed to make them fit on all of the weird shape/size cribs we encountered there.  An added bonus is that both girls have come to accept that anything with the tent on top of it is their bed so transitioning Maddy to her full size crib was easy and traveling with the kids is easier too.  Best of all, they LOVE their crib tent!