Good Times

Pre-swim class cover-ups. Nice bruise Lily!!
Reese and her toother.
See, they aren't identical. Double diaper swing.
I am going to be so sad when they won't fit together.

Diaper to diaper.

9-month check-up was Friday, they are getting so big!
Lily:
16 pounds, 8.5 ounces ~ 28 3/4 inches long


Reese:
18 pounds, 1.5 ounces ~ 29 1/2 inches long



And the bigger news is that Lily has 4 teeth coming in. Its the one thing she is ahead of Reese at, growing teeth. Reese has one tooth on the bottom. She is such a nut, she sticks her tounge out all day so it lies over it. So all day, her tounge is out. The doctor was suprized how much they have grown and the nurse even had to re-measure Lily twice because she grew like 3 inches in 3 months which is crazy.

So as I mentioned, the girls pretty much want to eat everything with thier hands so baby food is almost out. This has forced me to cook, which is funny. Everyone thinks dietitians can cook. Nope. We know how to tell you what to cook, how to cook it, and when to eat it. Most can't cook to save thier lives, and beleive me, I had to take many many food science labs and food prep classes. It was a joke. Lots of burnt baked goods and overcooked pasta, which I still am guilty of today. Well, this week I felt like a real mom because I cooked a sweet potato and didn't mess it up. It was perfect and the babies loved it. Now it makes all those $1.25 Organic Baby sweet potato jarred baby food's even more annoying. This week we are going to try to make homemade veggie burgers, I just can't feed them processed veggie burgers, plus alot of them are so high in salt, which aren't good for little kidneys....who knows. Maybe egg yolks first.

In an effort to keep these little minds busy we found a free baby book class at the Milltown library. The first class is Monday and apparently there are a bunch of babies signed up. They do stories and parachutes (as Rich says, "whatever that is"), and have lots of fun. Mondays are going to be big days for them now, they will go from their library class to Kindercare which they totally love love love.

One note about how much they are loving and learning at Kindercare. Now they are into hand holding. Each other's hands (how super-cute, makes me want to cry everytime I see it), and other baby's hands, and our hands. Apparently the other kids at daycare are very hand-hold-y so now they are too. Like tonight, Lily was obsessed with getting Reese to pay attention to her and hold her hand. Reese was too into the alphabet pasta, but it was cute none-the-less.

Tub Time

New Tub. Thanks Baby Squared.
Bubble Beards.
Hot tubs rule.
Going to swim class - winter session.
Lovin' the swim class idea.

No warm fuzzie pics but we did take a bunch of them in thier new inflatable tub. They just love it. In the other tub, it was really single serve. This ment one was in the tub while the other stood up against the tub squeeling about how she wanted to be in the tub too. The inflatable tub (pool really) has added a whole new dimension to baby bath time as you can probably see.

The babies are sleeping BETTER through the night. Not completely through, but we will take what we can get. Now they go down 7-730 latest, and make it until about 4 (that would be Lily) where she gets another bottle, and sleeps for about another hour or so. Some of these sleeping suggestions actually work, and we have been working hard on regulating naps. Actually some days they don't take any afternoon nap, especially when they are at Kindercare, which they LOVE. It is seriously one of the best things we have done. They just seem so much more balanced. I hate to say it, but almost like Chava at the dog park. When I come to get them its like they are ready to go and off we go home. They play with the other babies, and a new set of twins started this week, so that is even more exciting for them.

In the eating department, they have tackeled lots of new goodies. Hummus, tofu, cottage cheese, and more teething cookies. The cutest thing is this week when they were eating thier little toasts, I was lying on the floor with them, watching them closely as any neurotic mother starting thier kids on solid foods, and wondered if they would share with me, so I opened my mouth. Well, Lily looked at me, looked at her toast, and put it in my mouth. Then Reese did it. It was honestly the cutest thing. How do they know how to do that? I mean they try to share thier cookies with puppers all the time, but me?? I almost cried it was so cute.

So we have our nine-month doctors appointment this week, let you know the stats. Actually its closer to 10 months at this point. YIKES. We are going to have to start party planning for the December Mermaid Party soon.

Warm Fuzzies

Ok so we are onto a new approach to getting these kiddos to sleep better. They were going down around 10pm (yup, 10) and getting up at 2ish, then wide awake at 6ish. That was a good night. I read all of these blogs and books now that say that most kids should be in bed between 6-9, sleep for 12 hours-ish, and not wake up most of the time. So of course I bought a book on this whole sleep thing because we are just loosing it. Come to find out, much like dog training, we are to blame for thier bad sleeping habits. Things like not putting them to bed exhausted is important because it is harder for them to go to sleep and stay asleep. Working on naps, and making it more scheduled is important. Not letting them take thier dreamy 530pm nap at all (no naps 3 hours within bedtime) ~ this was happening since their nap schedule was all screwed up and kicked back. So now we are on night two of bed by 7-730. No crying. I also got them so super cute warm fuzzy fleecy pjs. Footed so thier little feets won't get cold. That would wake me up in the middle of the night. Since we live in our big old old old drafty house, warm fuzzies are essential. I am hoping it is the magic trick. I will include some photos asap. They just look so cute in thier new winter pj's.

So this also marks week 2 of daycare, which of course they are LOVING. Today when I got there I waited outside their room for a minute (it has those one way mirrors, so you can see in but they can't see out) and watched them sitting in a circle during story time. It was so cute. Reese was just sitting there glued to Miss Jen (I still don't have thier names down...) sitting next to her two new friends Jared and Chloe. Lily was sitting on Miss Jen's lap listening and laughing. They are little people and not just little babies, which is hard to swallow, but also unbelieveably fun and cute.

Happy 9 Months!

(I think this was around 4 months-ish)

Today:
Ate Cheerios for breakfast and snacks
Drank out of sippy cups
Tried to eat mom&dads tacos and drink beer
Reese stood up using the radiator (bad), let go, propped herself against the wall, and stood up for about 15 seconds, then started crying when we tried to get her to take a step
Played with Puppers
Fell on the radiator
Watched "Underwater Adventures" for 10 minutes
Took only two-twenty minute naps
Went to bed around 8pm (Lily) and 830pm (Reese but not without a fight).
We love you so much Reese & Lily.

KinderCare Day 1

Sorry for no pics in advance but I will get some for next time. So the girls started thier day care gig today and absolutely loved it. Rich dropped them off at 11 and I picked them up at 4 only to find Reese playing with her new friend Jared and Lily in the buggy that they roll around the school to visit all of the kids. When I got to the door Reese saw me right away and smiled and started crawling to the door to meet me, It was so cute. Lily then of course saw me and started climbing on me so I had two babies crawling on me like a tree. I called at about 1 to check on them to find out that Lily was eating Cheerios (uh...we never gave her Cheerios before) and Reese was playing with Jared. It was funny, I just had this vision of one of the other kids eating Cheerios and Lily just going at them with her hand out acting like she had eaten them for years. Ha. Little sneak. Oh the other funny thing is that they only took one twenty minute nap each. Too much action apparently. They sent me off with a report card for the day which informed me that they had sang songs, taken buggy rides, and played with the other kids with no problem. The teacher even said she was suprized they had no separation anxiety. I think they were just happy to get out and hang out with new boys and eat Cheerios. Oh well. Tomorrow is Day #2.

Promises, Promises

Lily fell asleep as soon as we got to the rides. Lucky Reese! Reese on some sort of space ship thingy with dad.
Lily at Pop's in Ella's chair. And yes those are skulls on her shoes, she is a hip baby.
The best picture we could get of us on the beach. Chaos as usual, one out of four looking at the camera.
Lily on the beach.
Oh, then Reese fell asleep after the rides, and Lily woke up. This is how it goes.

Summertime Rolls...

Lily BBQ'in'.
Reese can be drooley.
Lily.

I know I know. Its all about the pictures, so here they are. They are up to no good as usual. They have discovered stairs this weekend. Up to the third stair to be exact. And Reese now will say "ba ba ba ba" which I am hoping will transform to ma ma ma ma soon. We had a full weekend, which started off with Reese going to Hoboken to visit her friend Deville. She had so much fun. Its so funny to watch them chase each other around ~ crawling that is. Then we went to the baby playground which is all foamy so the little ones can crawl around and not scrape their knees. Why doesn't Milltown have one of these? She had so much fun watching the other babies, and almost broke my back because she wanted me to walk her all over the place. Rich had Lily for the day, so she got to go to Lowes to order some doors, and also to New Labor. Rich keeps telling them that that will be thier summer job one day, working at New Labor. Doing what I am not sure. We like to split them up once in awhile so that they get some 1:1 time with each of us and get to be the only baby in the world for a couple hours. They really like it. We do rotate who gets who, so this way whoever gets dad isn't always at Lowes.

Today we are off to the boardwalk for some post-Labor day fun. And the beach will be free so I will post some shots of the ladies vs. the sea soon.