When people ask me if the girls are alike, my response is usually, "NO WAY, they are absolute polar opposites!"  They are different in so many ways! 
 
Just a few ways they are different:

1.  Marisa is the cautious one, even at a young age!  She was always worried about getting hurt.  Sabrina could care less about getting hurt.  If you can do it, then she can, too!

2.  Marisa was a clean freak from the start.  By the time she was 18 months, she was using a spoon and made very little messes when eating.  Apparently, that is not the norm.  Sabrina is still trying to figure out how to eat with a spoon and she's now 20 months.  We think she has Alien Hand Syndrome...that somehow her left hand takes over on it's own and feeds herself without her knowing it.  A stretch, I know, but could quite possibly explain why her left hand takes over her feeding.

3.  Marisa was drawn to men from the very beginning.  She was always smiling at men across the room from her in restaurants and stores.  Sabrina is drawn to women.  She's always looking to smile at the grandmas and moms that she can find. 

4.  Marisa was always the cute pudgy, rolly baby.  Sabrina is the petite baby.  Although, they both had big squeezable cheeks.  Marisa was always in the 80th to 90th percentile in height and weight, but Sabrina sits in the 50th to 70th.  Which is amazing, since she eats like there is no tomorrow. 

The list of their differences could go on and on...but, this blog is about their similarities.

These pictures are of Marisa at 14 months:

  

These pictures were taken last week.  Unfortunately, Sabrina has figured out that there are buried treasures in her nose.

 

And, here is a picture of Sabrina standing proud with her kleenex.

It's my only excuse for not blogging.  After the elections...we started planning for Thanksgiving...and once Thanksgiving hit, we were looking forward to Josh's 34th birthday, then Christmas. After Christmas it was the New Year...and then Marisa's 5th birthday.  I know it's not fair to all of you who look forward to catching up with us...but I feel as though I've blinked twice, and January is almost over.  Where does the time go?  I'll tell you what I do with my time - I'm cleaning, cooking, shopping, commuting to pick Marisa up from school and chasing after a very active toddler.  Yes, I'm making up excuses, but I am going to make it up to everyone. 

What's been going on since the beginning of the year?  Marisa turned 5.  FIVE!?!?!  She's really a little kid, now.  She starts school in August or is it September??  I can't believe we have a 5 year old.  Sabrina is now 20 months and is "communicating", not always understandable, but trying.  Tonight she repeated "yes", but it sounded more like "says".  Close enough, when all we've ever gotten from her was "no" to every question even when she meant yes. 

As of last week, our home has been a constant infestation of germs.  Sabrina caught a stomach virus which hit her on Wednesday and is still having occasionally symptoms.  I caught it from her and started getting sick on Friday around dinner.  Marisa was staying over at Meme and Papa's in the hopes that we would shield her from the nasty stomach bug, only for her to return home on Saturday with fever and a stuffy nose.  I would take that over the stomach bug any day.  Poor Josh was tending to all of us all weekend.  Now, let's hope and pray that he doesn't catch both ailments.  YIKES!  The good news is that I think we're finally on the up and up.  I hate to say it too loud...though.

Just wanted to say we were still here...and that I do plan to update.  Postings about Thanksgiving,  Christmas, New Years, Marisa's 5th Birthday, and updates on the girls to come. 

Hope the New Year finds everyone well and that it brings much happiness and prosperity to all.

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I think that I can easily say that my latest project was my most ambitious, yet.   Looking back, all I can say is - what was I thinking?  Hmmm....it's my love for our children that causes me to make my craziest decisions. 

It all began about a month ago, when we were asking Marisa what she wanted to be for Halloween.  She didn't really have her mind set on any particular character at the time and she told us that she had to think about it and would get back to us.  In the end, she decided that she wanted to be Mulan, but not Mulan the beautiful Chinese  girl.  No, she wanted to be Mulan the soldier who destroyed the evil Huns.  So, I started looking online for costumes.  But, while, searching online one night, I mentioned to Josh that I thought Marisa would be better suited as someone else.  She needed to be a superhero with a fancy cape!  She needed to be WORD GIRL!  For those who don't know, Word Girl is a superhero on PBS who fights off evil villains while teaching kids vocabulary words and she's her favorite superhero.  Josh agreed that it was the perfect costume for her and that she would LOVE being Word Girl.  He was so excited about the idea of her as Word Girl, I felt like I would let him down if I didn't do it.  And, lucky for Sabrina, Word Girl has a sidekick.  A monkey sidekick, that is, named Captain Huggie Face.  Sabrina would make a perfect monkey sidekick.  The more we talked about it, the more excited Josh seemed to get. 

Unfortunately, Word Girl is so new that there are no commercially made costumes for the two characters.  I was going to have to make these costumes myself.  I have a sewing machine, but I have trouble sewing straight lines.  However, I wasn't going to let that stop me.  My degree was in Electrical Engineering, surely I could follow a pattern.  After all, it is basically an engineering drawing of sorts and I was working with much more complicated drawings while working at Boeing.  So, afraid that I would let Marisa down, I decided we would surprise her with the costume and not tell her who she would be.  That flew out the window because 2 weeks before Halloween, she figured out I was making her a Word Girl costume and was ready to be Word Girl.

Looking back, I realized that I should have started the costume at least one week before I actually started it.  I started working on the costume on Friday, October 24th and for an entire week, I worked on it whenever possible.  I worked on it in the mornings before the kids woke up, during Sabrina's afternoon nap while Marisa was watching her movie, after the kids went to bed.  All I did was think about those darn costumes.  Amazingly, I did finish them...30 minutes before they went trick or treating on Halloween, that is.  Poor Marisa, her costume was so big and I had so much trouble sewing the darn sleeves on.  But, it didn't matter - she was proud to be Word Girl.  The excitement and smile on her face was all I needed to know that I made the right choice in making her costume.  Sabrina, on the other hand, didn't know what she was getting into and hated the face hugging "helmet" that she had to wear.

Let's look at the side by side comparison:

 
What do you think??  Thank goodness it was only a costume and it didn't have to be perfect.  They looked absolutely great to us!  And, Marisa was so proud!

And so begins Marisa's potential lifelong journey as an athlete.  Saturday was opening day for Marisa's soccer league.  There was a possibility that Marisa would miss her first soccer game, since she was running 102+ fever late Thursday night, but after a full day of rest on Friday, she was ready to play.  There are 6 cute little 4 year olds on Marisa's team and they play 3 on 3 soccer with no goalie.  They play 4 - 10 minute quarters with about a 5 minute half-time and each set of 3 plays alternating quarters.  Of course, the girls had no idea what the score was, but all of the parents were quite aware of which team was winning. 

Watching the girls play was a true highlight to our weekend, and I can see how easily parents can become obsessed with their kids' activities.  I remember how much I enjoyed watching Ben, Josh's youngest cousin, who is now 16 playing his first soccer games when he was 4.  12 years later, here we are watching our own child start this new phase in her life.  Here are some fun pictures from the game.



And here is the winner of the cutest spectator award...



She was completely engrossed by the game during the 1st quarter. Ok, maybe she was more confused by the whole idea of sitting on the bleachers.  And, then after that she'd had enough.  Good thing my parents came along to occupy her.

And, what's a blog without some video of her first game.  Just in case you lose her when her back is turned, she is number 7.




Did you see her check out the crowd to make sure we noticed her speedy sprint down the field?? 

Now this next one, you have to watch closely to see what she has to do to get the ball out of this really tight spot because someone on the opposing team fell down right next to it.





SO FUNNY! I guess she forgot she wasn't allowed to use her hands.  In all fairness, she was worried that she might kick the girl, so she did the next best thing by moving the ball out with her hand.  CRACKED ME UP!!  Marisa did score one goal, which I'm not even sure she even remembers.  When asked what she liked most about the game, she said - she liked running the parent tunnel/arch at the end.  Who doesn't love that?