Life with three year olds... a G. and L. update

Remember those days where every day you would be treated to new pictures of the little girls? Yeah, me too. Once babies reach the little girl stage, they don't seem to change so much and the daily pictures don't seem as vital. I can go an entire week or two without touching the camera. But even if I did take pictures daily, they would very likely look very similar to these. The costumes may change, but the essence is the same. 

These are from yesterday afternoon. This is G. in her giraffe costume. But it's a double costume because that is a Superman costume underneath. It's good to be prepared, you know. I think there was even a cape underneath there.

She was not the only one playing with trains, her two partners in crime were with her. Dressed appropriately, of course. Now I need to go piece by piece in describing L.'s outfit. You see, every night, I lay out clothes for both girls. While they are not matching outfits (I'm pretty low on twinny-stuff currently), they are at least coordinated for each individual outfit. And every morning the girls put on the clothes laid out and come down and eat breakfast. Then, every morning one, if not two, girls go back upstairs and change into other clothes. Sometimes it is into a costume, sometimes it is into seasonally inappropriate clothes, and something it is into a combination of the two. Every day. Some days I lay out the same outfit each night for days at a time. (I would have never let the oldest three get away with this. But I had more energy and less distractions and could focus on less important things.)

So, L.'s outfit in this picture includes: 1 superman costume (the blue underneath), 1 blue cape with gold lining (her Christmas present that I made her... you can see it peeking out below the shorts),1 yellow tank top from the seasonally inappropriate collection, 1 pair of pink socks, 1 pair of red cowboy boots, and 1 Captain Jack Sparrow pirate headband. It's a look. K. completes the trio with his version of a pirate costume, complete with underwear elastic showing. That's probably more a commentary on my inability to find pants that are long enough but also narrow enough than it is on his sartorial sensibilities, though.

They're goofy, these three. And loud and busy and active and fun and cute and crazy-making all at the same time. 

And they crack us up with what they say. Both are very verbal. L.'s language is really taking off and the clarity is improving so that other people even have a chance to understand her these days. L. continues to be all about superheroes and Mickey Mouse. We're also pretty sure that she lives in a completely different reality than the rest of us because of her very strong imagination. An example. K. was wearing a Superman shirt one evening when I asked him to take something to the third floor to be put away. He is not crazy about doing this when the lights are off and told me it was too scary. L. looks at him, looks at what he is wearing, and informs him, "But you have your super hero shirt on so nothing can hurt you." L., who was also wearing some sort of super hero costume takes the item and takes it upstairs for me. Because she was a super hero at that point. 

G. continues to be extremely verbal, and everyone can understand everything she says. Sometimes G. will interpret for L. if we are particularly baffled by what L. has said. G. also has some little verbal catch phrases that she will employ. 'Awesome' is currently G.'s favorite word. Many, many things are awesome, except when they're sad. Many movies, according to G. are sad. I will ask her how she liked something and she will reply, "It was so, so sad." Often I have to ask why because when I think of the movie there didn't seem to be all that sad. She tends to hone in on any little thing and announce it sad. I'll call it empathy for right now.

They are also well aware that they are twins; that there are two of them and that is different from many other people. And they are fascinated with twin-ness in others. Twins in books are particularly popular and the will both announce at the same time, "That's just like us! Like me and G. (if it is L.) and L. (if it is G.)" It doesn't matter how many times they have heard a story, if the story has twins, we must stop and exclaim over the twin-ness every time. I find this particularly interesting since we have never referred to them as 'the twins'. We call them collectively 'the little girls', but this is more along the same lines as other collective phrases we use, "the big kids", "the middles", "the boys", and so on.

They continually amuse me and run me ragged all at the same time. And I continue to be so thankful that they even exist. They are blessings plain and simple.