10 months!

Our little girls turned 10 months on Monday! We can hardly believe it! Life just keeps getting busier and busier. We would always say “this stage” is the hardest and the next one HAS to be easier. Not really… each stage has its own ups and down, good times and hard times. Although we both agree nothing has been as hard as the first three months were. Phew! Glad that’s over! These days are spent with very very mobile babies. They are both all over the place and although we have them confined to one room where their toys WAY outnumber our furniture, they always seem to want to break out and explore the rest of the house. We get it girls… we do but we need some kind of order to the crazy days we live through. They are both on the verge of walking. R stands without any support for 30 or so seconds until she gets bored and plops down and crawls to what has caught her eye. She can stand while drinking from her sippy cup, playing with a toy, watching Bar.ney. She’s awesome at it! A, who literally just started crawling a month ago, is all over the place pulling up, cruising, standing for shorter periods of time. She had the fastest transition from crawling to cruising that I’ve ever seen… it was DAYS not weeks like R. A has learned to clap in the past 2 weeks. Specifically whenever she hears the song “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” which it seems every one of our toys sings. She hears the first few beats and her eyes light up and she sits down and gets ready to clap. It’s adorable. R is not clapping yet but does say “Mom”… just not directed at either of us yet. We also think we hear A’s name which is so cute. Again, not directed at her sister. A says hi indiscriminately and that’s about it. They both talk up a storm and A “sings” to any song she hears.

One of the biggest changes has to be food. The girls no longer eat “baby cereal” or pureed foods. They want finger foods and they want them now! In the mornings we start with Cheer.ios while we make them either eggs (with or without Amer. cheese), or French toast along with grapes, bananas, or strawberries and if they are really hungry some toast on the side. They particularly like them in strips that they can hold and bite off of. A has 4 teeth (2 on top, 2 on the bottom) and B has only her 2 bottom teeth so far so most of their food is still gummed to death. Our dr said it looks like A’s got 2 teeth coming in on the bottom and 2 on the top as well! Per our pediatricians instructions we are only using the yolks of the eggs which means we need to use at least 2 every morning… we fly through eggs and bread these days. For lunch they love grilled cheese (just toasted bread with a slice of amer cheese, no butter, etc), any type of fruit cut up and yo.bab.y yogurt. Dinner comprises of pasta with sauce, chicken (boiled as of now) or hamburger. There is always a veggie with dinner – their current favorite is steamed fresh string beans but also enjoy bite sized sweet potato. We tend to end every dinner with blueberries but sometimes they have oranges. Their snacks throughout the day are mum.mu.ms, Cheer.ios, and yogu.rt melts. They still enjoy their bottle every three hours (approx 4-6 oz of watered down formula) and still get a nice big bottle before bed (10 oz, again watered down).

Sleeping has been an interesting feat. With multiples, the “cry it out” method gets a little tricky. A has been a great sleeper recently going down between 7 and 8 and waking up between 6 and 7. R has been the cause of the large bags under our eyes. They began sleeping through the night at 2.5 months and then stopped over Christmas time probably due to their teething and all of our traveling and/or guests. If there are guests in the house, they fight going to sleep. Lots of tears before they finally lay their heads down. For one reason or another (traveling, guests over, etc) we couldn’t diligently let R cry it out at nights lending to months of sleep interrupted nights. Not only does it effect R at night, it messes up her day as she is super tired and therefore crankier. A is pretty good at sleeping through R’s late night (3am) cries but if it lasts long enough, A joins in the fun and it is at least an hour or so until they both cry it out. We recently spoke to our pediatrician about this and if it is detrimental in anyway since we THINK R gets scared at night when she wakes up because when we go in to check on her and lay her back down/change her diaper, she CLINGS to us so hard you don’t even have to hold her on to her and she won’t fall. It is an amazing feeling but also sad. We feel bad but know she is ok and is better off sleeping. R has “stranger an.xiety” much worse than A does and our dr explained that this is why she is so clingy in the middle of the night. All she knows is that we aren’t there and she panics. It breaks our heart but we’ve been diligent the past 9 nights and FINALLY last night they both slept through the night. Not only did they go down without a hassle, but not a peep until 6am! We do get a full night here and there so we are not yet confident it has truly worked yet but we do know that since we are headed to Scran.ton this weekend, that our efforts will probably be for naught and we’ll have to try all over again when we get home. Fingers crossed the traveling doesn’t throw them too far out of wack.

J is still working from home and although we have a nanny that comes a few hours a day, J still finds it hard. We don’t love our nanny – she’s always late, we don’t see enough interaction with the girls in the areas they need now like talking ‘This is a ball” “Say hi to the bear” etc. We have also not been diligent in finding a replacement, as it is such a process. Last night we finally had time to make a few calls.

As for the girls working, A was in a Pol.o Ral.ph Laur.en photo shoot last week. She did GREAT! She is a pro at this. :) We believe the images will appear on their website at some point (it was a fall line the babies were showcasing).

Onto Project Baby C news: We were smart enough to fill our last prescription of R.epronex before J went on M’s insurance back in 12/08. We had always planned to start Project Baby C when the twins were around 3 months old. Yeah…. that didn’t happen. So we pulled out all the vials of Re.pronex that expired in 12/09 and brought them to our fertility dr. He said he would be able to tell by looking at the vials if they were still usable or if the hormones had started to deteriorate. ALL BUT ONE VIAL ARE USABLE!!!! That saves us $2000 in medicine that we would have had to fork over for this injectable cycle! Now it should only cost us $3000 (wau wau wau). We are just waiting for M to get her AF and then head in on day 3 for an ultrasound. We are soooo excited! Having twins already might make the process a little easier to bear but we must admit we are as excited as we were when we were trying to get pregnant with our first (errr and second) baby. In a week or so, we think that Project Baby C should finally commence!

Now for pictures of the ladies...


A with her first popsicle.


The girls first "swimming pool" experience


Happy R!


The girls playing in the grass
(R on left, A on right)