So many new things over the past couple of months. It blows my mind that we are so much closer to 1 than we are to 0. I feel like I need to start planning their birthday festivities already!
The girls started daycare last week at Primrose. It was a rough start and they are still getting the hang of it. It was much like the beginning of anything and there were some things that needed to be sorted out the first few days. I'm still learning how to juggle their bottle bags, my purse and Allie's backpack while carrying them both in their carseats. Neither has taken longer than a 30 minute nap at school since they started. They still sleep great at home but they have been a disturbance to the other kids in their class. Since they started at 8 months old, they're a little behind on learning nursery etiquette. It probably doesn't help that at home, they almost always sleep with a noise machine, a blanket and a lovie at this point. Unlike Allie, who was attached to nothing as a baby, Abby and Amelia's quality of sleep seems highly correlated with what is in their crib with them.
I started back at GE at the very end of December. It is so bittersweet for me and I think the tugging on my heart will always be there. I want to be home with them, but at the same time I think that this is what is right for me and our family right now. The 8 months that I got to spend at home with them was absolutely blissful. I don't feel like I was ever content during my maternity leave with Allie. I really don't know why...maybe just being a first time mom. But this time, I was so comfortable. I didn't care if we barely left the house and they didn't care if my hair was clean or if I had makeup on. I feel like the time away from work was really good for me and I'm really happy that I was able to have such an easy transition with returning to a place where I can just jump back into the swing of things.
Abby and Amelia both got their bottom teeth right around 7 months old. Amelia right away got her 2 top teeth so she has a total of 4. Abby's top teeth don't even look swollen so I don't think she's going to get them any time soon.
Amelia barrel rolls around to get where ever she wants to go. A couple of weeks ago she started sleeping on her stomach at night and I think it's so cute in the mornings when I go wake her up and she POPS her head up and smiles.
Abby is obsessed (OBSESSED) with tags and silky things. My mom gave the girls a ball covered in tags for Christmas and Abby will find the actual tag (like with the cleaning instructions) and will suck on that. If I put a blanket in her crib, I know that the tag will be soaked when I get her in the morning. And her lovey has to be washed fairly regularly because it is not spared from her tag sucking obsession.
They are both sitting up splendidly! Abby got the hang of it a few days before Christmas and Amelia was about a week behind her. Now that they are sitting up through a good portion of their days, they have started having constant blow outs in their size 2 diapers. I'm trying to blow (ha) through the rest of our giant, value-sized package of 2s (aka sending them all to daycare where they change them 7 (!!) times a day) so I can move them up to 3s full time. They've been in 3s at night since Christmas.
Amelia can still fit in size 3 months clothes pretty well but it's getting a little tight on Abby. Most of our 6 month clothes fit Abby pretty well. They both still seem to have the shortest legs and the smallest feet. They both actually still fit in some newborn sized pants that we have.
I stopped pumping the week before Christmas. Once the girls started getting 6 oz bottles, I was only ever able to get about half of what they needed at each session. Once I knew I would be returning to work, I decided to finally retire the ol' flanges and tubes. It was NOT easy this time around like it was with Allie. After two painful weeks, 5 minutes of draining, a whole cabbage and lots of chest compressions, I finally felt back to normal. My hair isn't falling out anymore and I don't feel the urge to dip 4 flour torillas into a jar of cookie butter each day to eat as a mid-day snack. I felt a lot of guilt about it initially (just like I did with Allie), but I'm really proud of myself for making it nearly 7 months. My goal was to get them to 6 months and I achieved that. I'm so very sad that it didn't work out that I could nurse the twins like I did with Allie but I'm thankful that I was able to pump for as long as I did. Now I'm thankful that I can buy formula in bulk from Costco.
Anyway, the girls get five 6 oz bottles each day starting at 7 am. We're trying to figure out how to handle the evening feed right now. We typically get home between 5:30-6 and we've been feeding them solids. But then there hasn't really been enough time to put them down for another nap (even though they're exhausted from not sleeping all day) before their evening feed. We fed them their last bottle at 6:30 tonight and Amelia fell asleep with her bottle in her mouth. I'm sure it will get easier...or we will figure something else out. But for right now, it has been just trial and error to figure out what will work best for them and us.
We haven't been super adventurous with solid foods. I made two trays of sweet potatoes, which they really seemed to like. Then we've done carrots and broccoli. They've had a decent amount of store bought food also. We typically will split one of the 4 oz packages between the two of them. They both have gotten a lot better with puffs over the last couple of weeks but there is no doubt that the majority still end up on the floor. (The dogs LOVE the twins.) There's a good chance that we are not feeding them enough solid foods and I definitely miss the guidance that we had from Cristina when Allie was an infant.
I'm really hoping that they start crawling soon but I should probably be careful what I wish for! Right now, it sure is nice that they stay where I put them when I am trying to get all 4 of us ready in the mornings. We might have to start actually baby proofing once Amelia turns her rolls into forward motion!
So much to look forward to! So much to be thankful for!
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