The girls were baptized on May 25, 2008 at Due West UMC, where we both pledged to raise the girls in the church and to do all we can to show them the way of Christ. They are now officially members of the church! (Next step: confirmation, in a few years.)
Pastor Ken and one of the girls (I think it’s Gracie):
The Holland Fam:
Theme issues fixed! How do y’all like the new one? It’s kind of reminiscent of the first one we had, but I like it better.
In other news, we’ve got two girls who are THIS CLOSE to pulling up on furniture. Oh dear.
So, it appears our new theme for the blog is a bit buggy - we apologize for the viewing issues. It’s cute, but I think we’re going to have to find something else to use, since this one doesn’t want to display things like it should. Bear with us!
One of the best things about being the mother of two little girls is getting to dress them up. I think the girls already own more outfits than I do, and are well on their way to rivaling my shoe collection.
Granny and Papa aren’t doing much to help this situation - they like to buy the girls clothes (I think it’s Granny more than Papa, actually), and always have something new and cute for the girls when they visit. These dresses were a present brought when Granny and Papa visited at Easter, and we haven’t had much of a chance to put the girls in them until now, so we dressed them up prettily for Mother’s Day when we were on our way to visit Poppy at her retirement home.
Gracie:
Erin:
Gracie and Poppy:
Erin and Aunt Mandy:
The girls are now in the phase where they LOVE to play, especially with mommy, daddy, or each other. Which also means they are now in the phase where they crack us up on a daily basis.
In this picture, it may seem like Erin is simply showing Gracie how the pacifier clip works. In reality, she’s actually swinging said pacifier clip at Gracie’s head (ignore mommy in the background).
Gracie LOVES to play with mommy. As you can see below.
Erin mostly likes to go places she’s not supposed to.
It’s starting to hit us that our little babies are going to be a year old in three and a half months. I find myself looking at pictures of them right after they were born and just being astounded at how small they were, and how helpless they were. Now they’re laughing, crawling, sitting up, playing, and darn near pulling up on furniture these days… time flies!
Well, after several months of “false alarms,” it seems we have our first set of teeth coming in! This morning while I (Adriene) was feeding Erin her first bottle, Gracie crawled up to my feet and started gnawing on my foot. I started to move her away (because, ew, who wants their kid gnawing on feet that have been on the floor?), but then she bit down HARD and there was definitely something there more than gums.
Sure enough, I ran my finger along her lower gums, Gracie’s two bottom middle teeth are coming in! Erin’s still a toothless wonder, but I’m willing to bet they’ll start coming in soon, too - both Jeff and I cut our teeth around seven or eight months as well.
(We’ll post a pic of them once there’s something to see. Right now, her gums just look bumpy!)
The changes are subtle, but the girls are slowly growing up and doing things on their own.
Gracie is able to sit up on her own now. She scoots across the floor and crawling is not far away.
Erin has started to hold the bottle on her own when we feed her. She amuses us by grabbing the bottle out of our hands and pulling it into her mouth when we hold it near her.
We’ve started a new set on the Flickr account for them for the six months before their first birthday. Check out the pictures here!
The girls have gotten to where they respond rather quickly when they see Daddy with his camera! They’ve both become hams for the camera, as you can see below:
And sometimes, Erin even butts in on her sister’s photo shoots:
The new wide-angle lens is a whole lot of fun, but sometimes you have to be careful about getting too close to the baby when you take the picture.
