Parenting Twins - The First Year (Month Ten)

I’m playing catch this week with monthly blog updates for my little guys.  I got month eleven posted last night, so now it is time to get month ten posted. 

Month ten would have been from late December to late January.  I pretty much lived at the doctor’s office that month.  I know I was at the doctor weekly, if not more than once a week, depending on which baby was sick.  We had our nine month well-check at almost ten months.  Both babies had sinus infections that month.  Ethan had an ear infection, and Aaron had what appeared to be a mild case of eczema.  And of course, no one had anything at the same time.  So yes, we saw our pediatrician a lot that month.

Sickness just comes with winter.  Snow and frigid-cold weather, combined with sickness, kept us cooped up for most of January.  YUCK!  We want spring!

During the tenth month, the babies really picked up the pace with eating solid foods.  Their favorite meal is breakfast.  They devour it every morning – strawberries, scrambled eggs and homemade pancakes made from applesauce, oatmeal and egg whites.  They also love to eat avocado spread on toast for lunch.  Bananas and yogurt are also a favorite of theirs.  And they of course love their puffs and other toddler snacks.

Daddy taught the boys how to give high fives this month.  They also pull themselves up on everything.  They crawl faster than we can catch them.  They love to stand and are slowly figuring out how to walk with their push toys.  We are constantly babyproofing new surroundings for them.  The “baby jail” (aka the eight sided play yard) has been extended and is used as blocking off half of the loft for them.

They have definitely regressed with sleep this month.  Both are night waking regularly.  My doctor said sleep regression is normal at this age.  They also no longer just go to sleep when we put them in their crib with a bottle.  Instead they want to stand in their cribs and play, even though they are exhausted.  We have resorted to rocking them at night, just to get them to go to sleep quickly. 

They are certainly growing!  Part of me is excited to watch them turn into little toddlers, and then part of me wants them to slow down and be babies forever.  I can’t keep them little forever though.  I just plan on loving on them for as long as they let me:)

Week Forty-one

Week Forty-two

Week Forty-three

Week Forty-four

Parenting Twins - The First Year (Month Eleven)

Ok…so I know it has been awhile since I posted a monthly update of my little guys.  My last twin post in the series “Our Twins First Year” was month eight.  My little men turn one is less than three weeks, so I think it is safe to say I have some catching up to do.

I’ll start the catch up game with month eleven.They pretty much turned into toddlers this month.  They don’t even look like babies anymore. They are not walking yet, but this month they started getting up off the floor on their own and are standing for great lengths of time without any assistance.  They also walk all over the place with the assistance of their push toys like it is no big deal.  We are still expecting them to walk before they turn one, but you never know. This month they’ve added clapping on command to their list of tricks, which only includes the high fives they learned last month.  

Each month it seems as if I give them more room to roam.  This month they've gotten to explore the entire loft area.  The "baby jail"  as we liked to call it (aka the eight sided play yard), was completely taken down, and is currently in gated pieces being used to block off things I don't want them to get to.  The reason why I took down the play yard, is because I spent the month bringing up toddler toys from our basement and making our loft more of a play area for them to grow into, which means Daddy spent the month, mounting furniture to walls and putting baby-proof pulls on all of the drawers.

As far as their diet goes...well, they eat everything!  They stopped baby purees altogether at nine months and went straight into solids, eating pretty much what we eat at dinner.  Although breakfast and lunch is always toddler friendly finger foods, since I’m not much of breakfast eater and I usually eat lunch when they are napping.

Since they are doing so well with solids, we went from four bottles a day, to three bottles a day.  They were not finishing their bottles, and dropping a bottle seemed to do the trick.  They are now only taking about twenty-one ounces of formula a day.  We also introduced whole milk at the end of the month, starting out with only four ounces with a meal.

With all the eating, comes all the growing.  They still wear a lot of 9mo clothes, because that is the majority of what I have, but they are getting snug.  They are ready to completely transition into 12mo clothes.  

We officially outgrew our infant travel system this month and moved into our toddler car seats and double stroller.  The snap and go stroller and infant carriers were the best travel system ever for this Mama!  I miss them like crazy.  Leaving the house on my own is not nearly as easy as it used to be, and with it still being winter, I no longer have the freedom to just load the boys up and go somewhere.  It is too hard to keep them warm in our new system, as it takes me a while to get them both loaded and unloaded to go anywhere.

It seems like we’ve had a break from teething this month.  Ethan still has eight teeth and Aaron has six.  Instead of teething they just battled winter sickness instead.  It's been a cold month, and I don't think I'll ever get rid of these runny noses.  I can't wait for spring!  Not sure if I can survive winters as a SAHM.  Not being able to get out of the house on a regular basis is not fun!

We are still recovering from our sleep regression lapse from last month. I think Ethan is completely recovered and is back to only night waking on rare occasions.  Aaron can still be expected to wake every night sometime between 3 and 5.  Some nights he makes it 8-10 hours sleeping straight through, but it is rare.

I don't think I have any other updates for this month.  It’s hard to believe that we’ve had these little guys almost a year.  I plan on treasuring these last few weeks with my eleven month old babies, before I officially have to say I have one year old twin toddlers.

Week Forty-five

 Week Forty-six

Week Forty-seven

Week Forty-eight

Mama Turns 31.....

I went into Blogger today to put up an eleven month post about the babies, and I realized that I started this post the night of my birthday and never finished it….actually I forgot all about it.

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago.  Does that tell you how hard it has been for me to keep up with this blog lately?

The struggle is real folks…the struggle is real.

I’m not sure if my lack of blogging….or doing much of anything other than being cooped up in this house…. is because it is winter.  I lack motivation in the winter.  Always have. 

Or maybe it is because the babies take up a lot of my time and energy?  It is true that they suck the life out of me each and every day, but  I don’t know if that is a valid excuse or not.  If I really wanted to sit down and write, I could make time for it.  After all, on a good day they nap at the same time, giving me some time to myself;)  And they go to bed a couple of hours before I do, so the babies can not be to blame for this one.

I write this to say, that I really do want to get back into the swing of things.  I really do want to take the time for myself to sit and write, and share my life through words and pictures.  Here’s to hoping the arrival of spring brings a new motivation in me and this blog! 

Actually, here’s to hoping the arrival of spring brings me motivation, in general…not just the blog!  I’m craving warmer weather, sunshine, windows open, birds chirping, green grass, flowers blooming, leaves budding, and walks outside!  Come quickly spring!  I need you!

Anyway, back to the actual title of this post….Mama’s turning 31….

Yes, I did indeed celebrate my thirty-first birthday with my three favorite fellas this past month.  There was nothing super-fancy planned.  I just wanted be with my husband and kids and spend the day enjoying some of my favorite things. 

Originally, Matt was going to take a half day off of work and meet me and the boys for lunch.  Then we were going to go shopping and just spend the day out and about as a family.

Plans soon changed when our week got interrupted with some sort of stomach bug.  Aaron started the week with it and kindly shared it with his brother, who finally started feeling better by the weekend.  Plus, it was downright cold on my birthday this year.  I’m talking ridiculously cold….like sub zero temps and -25 degrees with windchills.  It was just too cold to drag my babies out, even if they weren’t sick.

So we stayed in this year.  Daddy brought us home some lunch.  Then when the boys went down for a nap, he sent me out to pick me up a few of my favorite things….a cup of Starbucks coffee, Gigi’s cupcakes, and a Papa Murphey’s Mediterranean lite pizza for dinner.

It was a really simple birthday this year, but I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.  As I put the boys down to bed on the night of my birthday, I was reminded how I was so miserably pregnant on my thirtieth birthday and still had a month to go before delivery.  I measured eight weeks ahead my entire pregnancy, so I celebrated my thirtieth birthday looking and feeling forty-one weeks pregnant. 

And then of course, I was also reminded how I spent my twenty-ninth birthday recovering from an IUI.  An IUI that we would soon learn would not bring a pregnancy for us.  There would be much heartache in those upcoming days.  My oh my, how I wish I could have told my twenty-nine year old self that in just two short years, I would be planning a birthday party for my one year old sons!   

As each year comes and goes, my birthday celebrations change with the changes of my life.  This year, turning thirty-one was simple, but beautiful:)

Thank you God for another year to live life!  May I spend this next year enjoying this phase of life you have placed me....a mother to two young little boys.