A Liar with Cold Feet and Warm Ears: Andi at 21 Months

It started by accident -- these monthly updates I do of the girls as infants and toddlers.  Shortly before the twins were a year old, I sat down and typed out an email to my gramma and sent pictures and she appreciated it so much -- and I had fun writing it -- and I realized it was a good way to hoard memories that would otherwise be lost to the craziness that comes with twin babies, that I just kept doing it.

This past month, we traveled home to Iowa to celebrate my gramma's 80th birthday.  Nearly the whole family made it and it was a fantastic reunion -- seeing a cousin I hadn't seen in 4 years -- and I love that the girls get to absorb moments of connecting with relatives.  Gramma was touched by our presence, but, of course, we couldn't have missed her party. 

Andi continues to shock me with her verbalizations.  She is so much farther ahead than the twins were -- they were slow to talk -- which is normal for twins.  It also doesn't hurt Andi's acquisition of verbal skills when she is surrounded by hyper-verbal twins.

• Ella and Andi got into it and Dave and I heard Andi shout, "You're making me mad!"

• Eavesdropping on Andi's conversation she was having on her phone -- which is my calculator -- I heard her say, "Mommy's got bossy pants on."

• Andi pushes the chair to the counter to get the phone "Grampa, grampa," she requests a call to grampa.  In a call she made to him after mom left she told him, "Gramma here, gramma went, gramma go bye bye."

And she still blames Ella for everything from tooting to the time I found Andi emptying my purse and indulging in the gum and suckers that were inside the purse.  When I busted her and asked what happened Andi said, "Ella did it."  I confronted Andi with the fact that not only was Ella at school at the moment, but also pointed out that Andi had a gum wrapper hanging off her pants.  She stuck with her story, "Ella did it." 

I proceeded to ask Andi where the sucker stick was and Andi answered "Over there," pointing to my purse.  Together we bent over my purse and found a half-eaten sucker and numerous pieced of chewed up and spit out gum in my NEW PURPLE purse.

If you look closely, you can see the gum wrapper hanging off her knee.

Not only did the little psychopathic liar eat all my gum, she has also taken to leaving the house due to a faulty front door.  Cooking dinner last week, I realized it was really quiet.  Ella was watching TV and I asked where Andi was.  "I don't know," Ella told me, not even looking away from the TV.  After hunting for Andi, I asked Ella, "Could Andi be outside?" 

Without any panic about her 1 year old sister being outside alone, and without looking away from the TV, Ella answered, "Maybe."

At that moment, I looked through the front window and saw Andi wandering through the front yard with no shoes on IN THE SNOW.  Andi was, however, wearing Sophia's pink bunny hat. Since that day, Andi has had one more escape, and while she didn't wear a hat or coat, she did put on Sophia's pink-glitter princess shoes.