The girls have completed their first orbit of the yellow dwarf star we like to call the Sun! They went all the way around, didn’t cut a single corner, and covered the 940,000,000km at an average speed of 108,000 km/hr, without getting a single ticket! We’re so proud of them.

Joking aside, this is a powerful day. We have been reading back over some old blog posts and looking at unpublished photos/videos (many we don’t feel comfortable publishing on this blog), so….there have been many emotions bubbling up today. For us it’s mostly relief and thankfulness – the girls are doing as well as our most hope-y dreams hoped they would.  When we look at the old photos it startles us to see what they looked like, makes us quietly pause breathing for a second, but now:  http://youtu.be/726s2rSpy_s

…wow….so, so, so happy.

To celebrate they each got a carrot-banana cupcake – we haven’t introduced them to chocolate yet – and the very long (10min) video is, of course, worth watching 🙂 http://youtu.be/wtvVvMHIn0M. As an aside, one question we get asked a lot is whether we can tell them apart or how similar they are, which is an understandable question with twins. We always laugh and if you watch that video you will get a good sense of why.

We also took them back to the NICU to see some old friends (Kat and one of her primary nurses below…they were tight after 100+ days!), drop off some donuts and visit the Family Tree (http://www.swedishfoundation.org/swedish-family-tree) where their names are inscribed on plaques, thanks to the Diener grandparents. The NICU staff couldn’t believe how good they looked (see ” hope-y dreams” comment above).

They are starting to interact with each other more and more. Mostly this is Katarina stealing whatever toy Natasha is playing with, which results in Natasha frowning, looking sad and then…..picking up a different toy and continuing to play. Recently, however, Natasha has started fighting back, and startled Katarina the other day when, instead of letting go of the bright yellow block Katarina was coveting, Natasha whacked her with it. Katarina looked around with a very confused expression on her face. The girls tend to get reserved whenever we bring out the video camera (Natasha more than Katarina) but here are a few other videos worth watching. First Katarina v a beach ball http://youtu.be/l0jLoZnjzyM and one of our personal faves: the girls playing piano http://youtu.be/WbYDHwOfLqw  Their album will be out soon.

Their first birthday is absolutely momentous to us…but we also managed to celebrate Mother’s Day in style. Mom’s dream to get back out hiking came true…we did our first family hike. Of course Twin Falls had to be our choice 🙂

A belated Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!