The Scheidt Twins: 1 Year

Cooper and Brinley are now very active, busy toddlers!

Brinley can walk 3-4 steps on her own before falling down. She started standing on her own a month or so ago, and at 11.5 months took her first steps without assistance. We practice her walking a lot, and she started out taking very slow steps and would do about 5 before sitting down, but then she started getting too excited about it and tries to take off running and falls after just a couple steps. She will also try to turn around in the midst of walking and falls down. She wants to be big soo bad!
Cooper finally started crawling at 11.5 months. He'd made zero progress towards this, no army crawling no scooting etc, and just one day he wanted his dog lovie across the room, so he slowly started crawling on all fours to it! He loves to walk with you holding his hands, and loves to cruise along the walls in the living room and play peek-a-boo with you around the corners. He's gotten so much braver and is more willing to "take risks".
They both love crawling all over the house to check things out. We just close all of the doors in the hall and let them at it. Brinley immediately heads for the kitchen to pull the kitchen towel off the oven handle. She loves that towel. She also went through a phase of heading straight for the dog bowl of water in the kitchen but we moved it a little and she seems to have forgotten about it. But we found her many times soaking wet before we got that straightened out! We've started baby proofing as things come up - stick finger in outlets, time to cover outlets; open tv cabinet, time for cabinet locks, etc. We mostly just try to redirect, and they really are never left alone so they don't cause too much havoc at this point at least. They follow each other everywhere - if Brinley goes into the kitchen, Cooper is not far behind and vice versa. It sort of seems that Brinley is the leader but definitely not always. They both just always want to be around each other all the time. They definitely do not do the parallel play that you hear about toddlers this age doing (playing by each other not with each other). They only want to play with what the other one has. Even if there's two toys the same, they only want to play with the same toy at the same time.
Brinley's become a really slow eater lately. She slowly picks up each individual bite and places it gently in her mouth. Cooper still shovels a lot of food in his mouth at one time, but has gotten better about that. They only eat finger foods now, with the exception of some yogurt for breakfast maybe, and we are slowly trying out new things and figuring out easy things they would like. They were not picky at all at first, and I'd cook a whole bunch of meat (chicken breast, tilapia, ground hamburger) on Sundays for the week, and they'd eat on it all week but they've lately been rejecting my cooking so we're trying to be more creative. It's hard when they eat at 5pm, and we don't want to eat so early so we've not been able to just share our meals with them. They both LOVE any type of fruit though unfortunately we discovered the hard way that they both have big problems with acidic acid in fruit, especially oranges, and they can't eat too much of that. Cooper love sweets; Brinley doesn't really get excited about any food we give her but eats it all.
We've finally started feeling comfortable taking them out to eat and have done that numerous times. They LOVE getting out of the house and going new places, and have never acted out/cried at a restaurant so far - as long as they always have something to eat! We use their travel clip-on highchairs and clip them straight to the table rather than using the restaurant high chairs. We discovered that two of those highchairs just won't pull up close enough side by side to the end of a booth. An added bonus to the clip on chairs is that we'll place them on the inside of the booth so then we don't get so many people stopping to chat about them (the "are they twins" question does get old after awhile :)
Brinley has her 2 bottom middle teeth and is currently getting a new top one. We don't even know when she's teething, she never complains at all. I just have to feel around every now and then and will feel one coming in.
Cooper has 4 teeth - the two middle bottom and two middle top. We've had a few rough nights with him when the teeth are coming in but nothing too bad.
They both still sleep great at night, other than teething issues, but the naps have gotten a little shorter and the afternoon nap is hard for Brinley sometimes to fall asleep.
They both clap and love to make funny sounds with their mouths and mimic what sounds we're making.
Brinley is very ticklish under her chin and loves to be played with and tickled. She does not love to be cuddled or held really at all, she just wants to play. Cooper is very ticklish on his lower sides. He is more of a cuddler and likes to lay on the couch and watch tv with us sometimes.
They both love to play with blankets and pillows. They really like to play on our bed with tons of blankets and pillows piled up and just dive around and laugh so loud. Any time there is a blanket (or a kitchen towel) around, they will fall on their bellies on it and cuddle it and love on the blanket so hard.
Brinley has a good fake laugh going. Any time someone is laughing, she will start laughing this loud weird fake laugh too and look at you to see if you're laughing with her still.
They both love the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cartoon on Disney. We've gotten a DVD and a movie as well of it. It's the only cartoon they will really watch, and when the song comes on at the end, they start bouncing around "dancing" and laughing. They love that stupid hog dog song!
They both will give kisses now occasionally and good hugs (laying their heads on your shoulder) every now and then too.
Neither of them have officially said their first words but both babble dada and mama and baba (bottle?) a lot but we're not for sure they've associating those words yet with us.
They both love to play on Brandon's new pool table. Brinley crawls around and puts each ball in a pocket, and Cooper likes to take one ball and hit it against another ball and make it go in the pocket that way.
They are definitely more equal now in terms of aggressiveness, and Cooper doesn't take any crap from Brin anymore. I think him becoming mobile has really helped that, and he gives her a good swat on the hand when she tries to take something from him. He has scratched her many times on the face as well trying to get her to back off him, and he will pull her hair which is one of the rare things that makes her cry. After he did something to her one time, several minutes later as he was sitting there playing, she crawled to him, sat behind him quietly, and then jerked the back of his collar and pulled him down. Then just crawled away. :)
They love to play basketball with their little hoop, and put the ball through the goal. Brinley has really figured out how to push the buttons on toys to make them light up/play music and loves to push the button on the hoop probably more than shooting baskets. Cooper likes to throw the ball back and forth with us as well.
It used to be just Brinley that was getting in trouble and told "no" all the time, but since Cooper became mobile, its more him getting in trouble now. He's become very ornery as well and will give you the slyest smile as he reaches for that thing you just told him not to touch.

It really has been the most fun couple of months lately with the babies, seeing the light bulb come on in their heads with so many things, and all of the new things they are learning to do. We're excited for warmer weather and enjoying our new screened in porch and all the outside toys the babies got for their birthday.

Their stats:

Brinley
Weight: 21 lbs (50th percentile)
Height: 29 in (50th percentile)
Head Circumference: 18 in (75th percentile)

Cooper
Weight: 21 lbs (30th percentile)
Height: 29.25 in (25th percentile)
Head Circumference: 18 in (30th percentile)

It's amazing how exactly the same size they are now, in everything but just a slight difference on the height (which has the most margin of error on measurement). (Note that the percentiles are different for boys and girls which is why they weigh the same, etc but have different percentiles). And they've really caught up to their birth age level, and aren't super small babies anymore! They are wearing 12 month clothing with Brinley having to wear some 18 month shirts.

Playing with the basketball goal.

She loves to put on Brandon's hats.

Playing peek-a-boo around the corner

They love playing in their baby swing. They don't swing in it anymore just play with it. Brinley will spend forever trying to get herself into the swing but of course it moves on her and she'll fall over, which doesn't phase her in the least. She just gets right back up and tries again. Now Cooper wants to try too but isn't as brave as her yet about it, so this day we just put them in there together to hang out (which lasted about as long as this picture!)

This is how she ends up in the swing most times, and then can't get herself flipped over without falling out. The nanny did get a great video the ONE time she was actually able to get in the swing and sit in it, sideways, and she was able to rock back and forth and get the swing going on her own!