Happy Half Birthday!

These two had a half birthday (almost a month ago).  Dallin is becoming more and more active and playful every day, and Leah's not sure whether to love it or hate it.  When she wants to interact with him, she loves it, but she's not loving the fact that he's into all her toys.  A girl's gotta learn to share, though.  Tough lesson to learn for an 18 month old.  

Speaking of sharing, Leah is actually wearing PJ's we bought for Dallin in these photos.  They essentially wear the same size clothes (18 months), even though Dallin's quite a few inches shorter.  Dallin also wears a lot of 12 month clothes, but sometimes they're a little snug on him.  There is only a 2 pound difference between the two of them now, and I have a feeling Dallin will be catching up to Leah in weight very soon.

Leah is always trying to "help" Dallin by putting clothes on him, feeding him things (we have to watch that carefully, you never know what she'll try to pop in his mouth), share her sippy cup with him, and clean his spit up off the floor (this actually is a very helpful task she performs) as well as off of him (she grabs diaper wipes and rubs him down with them...he just looks at her like she's crazy, but doesn't complain about it).

Trying a hat on him.  Or smothering him.

Changing his diaper (she just wanted to pretend to do it...she didn't actually take it off him).  

Even if she's not always loving having Dallin into her things (she better look out when he's fully on the move!), Dallin sure loves Leah.  He watches her run circles around him, and anytime she looks at him or gives him attention, he grins or laughs.  He scoots himself backward and all around in circles, and he's super close to crawling. There have a been a few times we thought he'd do it, but he's just not quite there yet.

We love these two.  They keep us exhausted (emphasis on the exhausted) but happy.  There were actually a couple of days recently where I was thinking of writing a blog post about how it felt like we were finally exiting the "survival mode" phase that you pass through after bringing a new baby into the house.  The change mainly came about because Dallin started to take good solid naps during the day - something I had almost given up on being a possibility for us.  Of course just as I was starting to feel things easing up a little, Leah plunged into a somewhat puzzling and challenging phase...if I could only get them to cooperate at the same time for a bit!  I think I'll wait a few more days on that "leaving survival mode" blog post.  Here's to hoping I have reason to write it!

A little rambling about sleep patterns:
Before having them myself, I never realized how many phases kids go through as they grow up.  "It's just a phase" has taken on a whole new meaning to me.  When Leah was about 6 months I felt that we had fallen into a great functioning routine, like we'd worked out all the kinks, and Leah had figured out how to sleep well.  The work was over (at least where current routines were concerned).  I had no idea that with each phase of growth and learning, routines would be questioned and pushed and tested and would need to be learned again and again.  We have had to re-teach Leah how to follow the routine many times over.  It's a pattern of teaching for a couple weeks with a lot of protests from her, and then she settles into it for a couple months.  Then we have another learning period for a couple weeks, and then she settles back into it for awhile.  So even though Dallin is taking good naps, I don't take it for granted...I'm just grateful!