The Twins' 1st Birthday

Luke and Violet enjoyed their 1st birthday celebration yesterday.  We waited for this special day to introduce them to chocolate.  Jen made banana cake with dark chocolate buttercream frosting from scratch, and it was a big hit. Here's the before shot...

Violet got a little more excited about the chocolate.  The texture was just right to smear into the hair.  Perfect.  Bath time!  Despite the fact that they each had huge pieces, they felt compelled to steal cake from each other.  Ah, siblings.  Needless to say, the post-cake-sugar-high was something to behold.

There's a little more of this on YouTube.

 

We'll slowly start adding some more goodies to their diet over the next couple of weeks: whole milk, cheese, butter (technically, not new to them), eggs and berries.

Naturally, the wrapping paper was the favorite new toy.

The paper or the boxes...

 

Luke put on a show with their new walk-behind toy.  Thanks Grammy and Papster!

Kieran's Birthday

We celebrated Kieran's birthday with a costume party (Kieran's idea!). 

Livvie dressed up as a princess (yeah, shocking I'm sure).  It was an older princess outfit that still fits (2T/3T!).  She seems committed to wearing the Ariel costume for Halloween proper.  We had a BatGirl backup, but that one went back to Target because she appears to have Ariel locked-in.

Livvie held her own as the solo girl of the crowd.  There was a mad dash for the Batman action figures and Liv got there last.  It didn't matter too much, Livvie seemed to enjoy the Scooby Doo action figures better.

There was a pinata, of course.  I put a funny video on YouTube with a little of the fun.  In it, Kieran takes himself out with a over-committed swing and Livvie displays her swinging prowess by holding the "bat" with a right-handed grip and crossing her arms across her body to make the swing. I think we might have to switch the grip and try her swinging left-handed.  Work in progress.

We neglected to think about putting the neat sheet under the pinata until after watching them pick the candy out of the dirt.  Eh, it's good for their immune system.

The twins loved the whole party.  New toys, wrapping paper, big kids running everywhere, and Violet even got a turn on the swing after watching how Olivia did it.  You can see wee Violet right in the mix at the bottom of this photo probably eating wrapping paper.