What the girls are doing ...

By MAGGIE WANG

SEDONA

• She is a chatterbox. We drive to Orange County a lot these days to pick up Boiling Crab for crawfish and during the entire drive (about 30 minutes each way), Sedona can keep talking.
• She loves to sing and make up songs -- as displayed in recent video post. That song is from the book, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" But in other cases, she literally makes up tunes and words and sings (and will ask Kevin or me to make up a song based on a few words she gives us right before she goes to sleep at night).
• She loves to dance around -- sometimes we blare the music in her bedroom and just dance till we are tired and laughing silly.
• She still loves to eat. Her favorite -- Maven's too -- is frozen Trader Joe's sweet corn. We buy most of our groceries at Trader Joe's.
• When she gets something new, she asks, "Who got this?" or "Who bought this?"
• She loves parks and playing outside, which her homebody daddy doesn't do with her often, but Linda and I try to bring the girls out. Kevin has committed to going out with us as a family more this upcoming summer.
• Sedona loves to hold Maven but gets disappointed when Maven doesn't enjoy it as much.

MAVEN

• She is a skilled walker now. She walks everywhere and is going pretty fast without many falls.
• She loves to get into things. We catch her in the our bathroom medicine cabinet or trying to get her hands in the toilet. Yes, dangerous, I know!
• She loves to eat. She says "Ugh-Ugh-Ugh" when she wants something. The other day we were at the park with Sarah Tully-Lev and Austin, and Sarah had some food for Austin. Maven was making noises like crazy for it while Sedona politely stared. Sedona wanted it, too, but knew better than to ask openly ... whereas Maven just "ugh"-ed her way into getting some.
• She is opinionated. If she doesn't want to eat something, she wil make it know with a clear turn of her head and shaking of no-no. (Sedona thinks this progress in Maven's level of  communication is really funny.)
• She enjoys being in Sedona's space and area, which gets Sedona a little annoyed. But overall, they get along really, really well. Sedona will ask where Maven is when they are separated and enjoys the fact that Maven likes to copy her.
• Maven will get into Sedona's bed and just laugh and giggle with her.
• She can understand more and more. The other day I told her to go to Daddy and she knew what I was saying.
• When she drops something, she says, "Uh-oh." It's so cute. Sedona loves hearing it.
• She loves the swings at the park and trying to walk up the slides.

The girls each have matching baby dolls. Sedona recieved hers on her 1st birthday from Riley. It's a Mommy & Me blonde newborn baby that was supposed to help Sedona prepare for Maven's arrival, but Sedona didn't take to it until recently. And of course, since Sedona loves her baby doll, which we have named Kelsey (one of the names we considered for Sedona), Maven wants one, too. I searched all over and finally found an almost duplicate doll (no tuft of hair and green eyes instead of blue) that is Maven's doll -- and it is named, Bellisa (a name we were considering for Maven). The girls love going everywhere with them and clutch them tightly in the car, especially. It's adorable.

I'm super happy that our girls are close in age. I have a feeling there will be a continued struggle to share with each other, but ultimately they are very close and love to be with each other.

Today, they were doing "Ring Around the Rosey" together. It was really cute and a sign that they'll soon be entertaining each other without us.