Allie in the South of Spain

Taaaaa daaaaaa! We made it through our first year and everyone survived! It has been rough at times (I have spent more time with doctors and in the hospital with the girls in this past 12 months than I had in my entire 30 years). But here we are with two beautiful, happy little chunks who just celebrated their birthdays on March 1st. February was a low key month for us. The weather hasn't been that great (although it is feeling more like spring with every passing day) so we have mostly stayed in. We did spend the last weekend of the month in Portugal for a change of scenery and because it was a long, holiday weekend but other than that we have been here. The girls started a music class and they love it. It is once a week for 45 minutes and they are generally the youngest and yet most enthusiastic kids in the class. They get to use all kinds of handheld musical instruments like bells and maracas. The most fun they have are with the drumsticks which become deadly weapons...

I know I have just recently posted two blog entries that pretty much sum up our last month but for posterity I am going to include this one as well for the girls' 11 month update. As always, you can check out past monthly updates either in the blog archive or by clicking on the monthly update label found on the left side of the page. This month started out great! We celebrated the Vera and Laura's first Christmas and were off work until the 9th which was nice. My mom was here to visit for a week and Jose's sister and our niece were also in town from France. I would never have guessed how tough things would get, especially considering that the month of December had been relatively easy in terms of the girls' health.  I won't go into all the details of Laura's hospital stay since I wrote an entire blog post about it which you can check out but basically we spent two weeks of the month being sick and away from home. Vera spent that time with my in-laws wher...

Christmas Eve I just re-read my monthly update for November and I am happy to say that December was much easier on all of us. Laura had a lot of congestion and both babies got new teeth but we all got a lot more rest. So yay! Plus this last month was a lot of fun with the girls´first Christmas (which I will write another blog post about soon). Jose and I were off work for the last week of December for the holidays and we did all kinds of fun activities to celebrate the season. Plus Jose´s sister came with our niece and my mom arrived right at the end of the month so things have been busy, thus the late monthly update. Ready for a visit to Jose´s village We had a few days off at the beginning of December and we spent them trying a new restaurant close to our apartment and meeting up with friends. We also went to see Jose´s family in their village before the madness of Christmas began. The month went by very quickly and most of it was spent getting ready for the holidays, de...

I am not going to lie. We have had a tough month. Daycare is a cesspool of germs and both Vera and Laura have been sick since they started. These past few weeks as the temperature has cooled have been especially bad. Besides feeling awful myself that they aren't feeling well, any of us getting enough sleep has been difficult, especially for Laura. We have been in and out of the doctor's office for bronchitis and chest colds for the past month. And I don't want to jinx it but during the last few days it seems like things might finally be improving and we might just have babies with congestion. Although now as I write this it looks like more teeth are coming in so I guess I should just accept that I will be sleep deprived for the rest of my life. I am so thankful for my in-laws who have taken the girls overnight a few times so that Jose and I can catch up on some rest.  Jose's birthday was at the beginning of the month and we had a lot of grand plans to celebrat...

The month of October has just ended and with it we mark the girls' eight month birthday. To be honest, we didn't really do much that was exciting over the past few weeks because of work and the babies being sick. It was a tough month in a lot of ways. The girls have been going to daycare for a few hours each day as I go to school and teach class. Things have been going fairly well so far except for the fact that they have been sick with colds basically since they started. Recently things took a turn for the worst with Laura and she ended up with bronchitis and an ear infection. We took them both several times to the doctor and with medication, patience and a lack of sleep for us parents, things appear to be looking better. Vera finally got her first two teeth this month but she doesn't ever want to show them, little stinker. She will smile with her mouth closed as if she knows you want to see them but won't let you. She is moving around very well on the flo...

This past month has been a month of a lot of changes. We have been busy with lots of stuff going on so there is quite a bit to update. First we had the girls' baptism at the beginning of the month. I wrote an entire blog post about it which I will link here if you want to check it out. All in all it was a wonderful day that we spent with Jose's family and our good friends.  The following weekend we took Vera and Laura to their first wedding which didn't last very long since we ditched them after the ceremony. Mom and Dad needed some alone adult time and Jose's parents were more than happy to take care of them for a while. I wrote about the wedding here .  We have made some changes to our living space to make it more baby friendly. We had to move our furniture around in our living room as well as start to baby proof every thing. Our next step is going to be installing some baby fences or gates to keep these almost mobile babies contained. Vera is almost cr...

August has been a crazy busy month for us! We spent the majority of it back in Michigan with my family and then flew back to Spain on the 25th. As always, we get to the first of a new month and I can't believe my girls are already a month older, so much bigger, doing different things and at this point are becoming less infant-tiny baby like and are now biggie babies.  The very beginning of the month of August found us still in Grand Rapids after our GAGME family reunion weekend ended. We stayed a few more days at my sister Katie's house to be able to hit up a few more breweries and to be able to hang out with my niece Daphne. I am not sure how much she enjoyed having her cousins stay longer at her house though. It is tough for her since she was the only grandchild for a while and then all of a sudden a bunch more came along. Jose and I love Grand Rapids, in fact we went back at the end of our trip again to complete the brewery passport that you can get and accumulate sta...