10 months

My growing girls

It's hard to believe that these sweet girls have been in our lives for 10 months! That means 2 more months to plan and figure out where to celebrate their 1st birthday. Which of course I'm totally clueless about doing. I have no idea where to have it either. Time to start thinking about it I guess.

Tayla crawls everywhere now and she also like to climb as well. She knows how to get on her knees but still figuring out how to get on her feet. If you hold her hands she will stand on feet with her legs straight. She screeches like a baby pterodactyl, loves to talk to make noises just for the sake the hearing yourself. She LOVES food. So much that she enjoys shoving as much food into her mouth as possible, while giving mom a heart attack every time but she's able to figure it out. She pretty much eats everything I put in front of her. Foods she likes the most are broccoli, cheese, and meatballs. She's got the fake crying down and definitely likes to let me know when her sister takes a toy for her or if she touches her the wrong way. She can be quite the drama queen sometimes. She is a big mama's girl and will fuss and follow me around the house until I pick her up and give some snuggles before she goes about her day. She also thinks her dad is hilarious! Ty is always able to calm her down by doing something or making some sort of noise and she will just bust up laughing. She never stays in one place for long and she enjoys picking one particular toy and crawls around with it. She hates stuff on her head, including hats and hoods, so sometimes when we go on walks she will throw a little tantrum when I first put it on but once we start going she calms down. Of course as soon as we walk through the door, the hat comes right off!

She likes taking her pants off

Ivy's main form of transportation is rolling. She is getting very fast at it. But on Friday she started putting more effort into crawling! But for the most part she is pretty happy just laying on the floor playing with a variety of toys, including the toys her sister is playing with. About a month or so ago she became more interested in food. She use to just sit there and mush it around and would put food in her mouth but wouldn't really swallow it. But now she enjoys eating food like her sister. Her current favorite foods are banana's, cheese and any type of bread. She is more careful about eating and will take smaller bites, chew and swallow before taking another bite. She enjoys making noises to let herself be heard but her favorite noise involves rolling her tongue. She enjoys stealing all the toys and rolling around in them and will find anything that is not a toy, like a blanket or towel, and just lay there playing and talking to it. She is the girl with cold feet and hands but refuses to keep socks on her feet. As soon as I put socks on her she will rip them right off so I have to put shoes on her in order to keep them on her feet. She hates them so much she enjoys taking her sisters' socks off too! She kicks her feet happily whenever me or her dad walk into the room. (although ty claims she only gets excited when she sees him.) She loves pulling on hair, sweatshirt strings, glasses, pretty much anything she can get her hands on.

The flash was too bright!

Both of these girls have slowed down on their eating because all they want to do is play. Some days it's a struggle to get them to sit down and finish their bottle, other days they have no problems and ask for more. Sometime if they don't finish I just offer formula (since they can't drink regular milk yet) in a sippy cup for them to drink and they seem to enjoy that. For the most part sleeping is going good. There are days when naps are shorter and after an hour of fighting it I just pick them up and snuggle on the couch because it's just not worth the fight. Crappy naps days always leads to early bedtime though. At night they go down between 7 and 7:30 and wake up at 6:30. Lately Ivy has been wanting to wake up between 4 and 5 in the morning. Just clapping and talking away which then of course wakes up her sister. 99% of the time I can ignore them and they go back to sleep, if not then I don't go get them out of bed until 6:30. For the part these girls are just the happiest little babies. If they cry it generally means something is wrong.

In others news I wanted to share that I'm officially done with my pumping journey. I was just 2 months short of my goal but I'm still proud of long I went considering I wanted to quit at month 2. It sort of happened by accident actually. I just slowing started dropping pumps. Either I got busy and was stressing about finding the time to sit and pump or the fact that I started to hate pumping because it confined to one spot. My hands free pumping bra helped but if I wanted to walk around the house I would have to carry the thing with me with one hand and that sort of defeated the purpose of being hands free.  Looking back there were hard days when I mourned the loss of my nursing relationship with my girls. Tayla was definitely interested in nursing but because of her severe tongue tie she would get extremely frustrated at the breast where she would just scream sometimes. She hated nipple shields but they didn't fit me right and never stayed on. And the pain was just unbearable. I tried to work through it but it was too much feeling like razor blades and made my nipples crack and bleed. She was fine drinking from a bottle but it was me feeling like a failure that made me feel awful. Even after getting her tongue tie fixed, it still took her months to re-learn how to use to her tongue and didn't have a good suck until a good 4 months after her revision. Ivy was a lazy eater. She would only latch with a nipple shield and she fell asleep at the breast a lot. I'm sure if I stayed with it I probably could have made it work but with there being two of them, and the stress of them being premie's and making sure they were getting enough calorie intake, on top of lack of sleep it was just much easier to pump. But now I'm done and they do fine with formula. They are fed and happy and that's all that matter

Happy 10 months sweet girls

 

(late) 9 month update

I'm WAY late posting this but the holidays had me busy and then we left for vacation right after. I haven't really had the time to sit down much because Tayla now (army) crawls all over the house! Her favorite place is the kitchen. I'm pretty sure she likes the smooth surface. She will litterally do laps in the kitchen all day if I let her. She loved being at Boxy and Papa Wayne's house because they have hard wood floors and a bigger kitchen. She also likes to follow me around the house saying "mama."

We celebrate the girls first Christmas at my parents. I didn't go all out because I knew they weren't going to remember it and they already have a bunch of toys already. I did take them to see to Santa, which they were unamused by haha

The next day we left for my grandparents house who live in La Grande, OR. A 5 hour drive turned into 8 because we have to stop and feed them and let them out of thier seats. Tayla did not do well towards the end of the car ride, going both direction and lets not forget about Tyrel coming down with a horrible stomach virus while on vacation as well. That was loads of fun which meant he passed it onto the girls. Luckly not as bad so there was no vomiting.

My little explorer

So much snow at my grandparents

Ivy's form of movement is still rolling, although we discovered recently that she does know how to crawl, she just need a good motivator. Ex: remote, a phone, a game controller, food... Both girls are very vocal and know how to say mama, dada, baba and all other babbling sounds. Tayla likes to wave, still working on it with Ivy. Both love copying you rather it be movements, sounds or facial expressions. There is definitely never a dull moment in this house.

I'm very grateful with how happy they are all the time. I know that when they do cry it's because something is wrong. Both are still great nappers and sleepers as well

Anyway sorry for the short post, just wanted to give a quick update

8 months and Thanksgiving

I know I'm super late posting this but I really haven't had the time to sit and do this. There was a nice 3 week period of sleep regression that came with sicknesses, ear infections, daylight savings time, and teething. Tayla has learned to scootch so she would rather do that then sleep. Short naps and early wakings have left me an exhausted mama. They have developed object permanence which means screaming when mommy leaves the room. Oh lets not forget the growth spurt too which means more eating. It's been a busy month.

Things are finally started to get better. The girls are sleeping better, and we have developed a good nap and bed time schedule. They are showing more interested in food lately, which has been a lot of fun giving them different foods to explore and try. They sat with us for Thanksgiving and they tried every food we gave them. It was adorable.

I posted a video early of Tayla army crawling. She is perfecting that skill everyday and we really need to invest in some baby gates. We were gifted some but it's not wide enough for the the doorway we want to put it in. We want some sort of gate to cage off the tv area as well. She's already getting into all sorts of trouble and I think Ivy will soon follow. Ivy mostly rolls, but when she is on her tummy she makes some sort of attempt to reach and grab things in front of her so I think it's only a matter of time

Love my cute little trouble makers!

I'm still pumping away to try and provide breast milk for them, but I recently dropped a pump for peach of mind. This of course caused my supply to drop even more, so they get mostly formula. I mean my original goal was one year but I think I'm going to be done sooner for sanity reasons. They don't seem to have any problems with formula either so that's nice. Either way I'm still proud of myself for making this far of exclusively pumping!

Some of the pictures we took at Opa's house are a preview of our Christmas cards :)

Ivy and Opa

7 months of mommyhood!

Oh man this months photo was a little difficult. Tayla seriously wont lay still these days. She is constantly kicking her feet, moving her arms and her new thing now, shaking her head. And she loves being on her tummy. That definitely made the picture a little more difficult. Looks like she is taking tips from daddy when it comes to taking pictures...

At least I was able to get one good one!
I feel like so much has happened since the last time I wrote a blog. Both the girls roll all over the place, they have started noticing and playing with each other. The interacting really doesn't last long but when it does it is the cutest thing ever! Tayla has started to scoot herself backwards! Rather it be on purpose or not, I've seen her stick her butt up in the air while on her elbows and then lay back down. Sleeping was going great and had sleep training down but then this started happening so I'm wondering if this is causing her not to sleep. I've come into their room a couple of times and see her feet sticking out. Ivy scoots in her sleep, while on her back or stomach and gets herself stuck in the corner. I also think these girls are going through a small separation anxiety phase so naps have been hard. Really hoping this is just a phase and that it passes soon

I've noticed they love watching Tyrel and I eat. Now if I hold them they try to grab what we are eating. I don't know if this is sign they are interested in food or if they just like to grab things. They can't quite sit up on their own yet but I've been sitting them in their high chairs as practice with some toys. For the fun of it I gave them each a cracker to see how they would do. They weren't sure at first and kind of just sucked on it. I'm more interested in baby led weaning, so I can skip baby food all together. They are good about picking up the cracker and putting them in their mouth but once a piece breaks off they don't know what do and they spit it out. We still have a long ways to go. For the fun of it, I've been giving them baby food so we can practice swallowing instead of just sticking their tongues out. Not really in any hurry to push baby food, its all really for fun and just trying to change things up a bit

Tyrel and I are in the process of rearranging our living room and start thinking about baby proofing because I have a feeling with the progress Tayla is doing, she is just going to take off! Happy 7 months girls