Words

So I'm so afraid I will forget this, so I writing this down in my blog so that later I can go back and write it down for real and put this in Emily and Savannah's baby book. At 14 1/2 months old the girls are saying quite a few words.

Emily: hi, cup, snack, nap, nigh-nigh(night-night), up, meat, uh-oh, mama, dada, bump, bus, app(apple), breakfast, socks

Savannah: mama, dada, hi, cup, uh-oh, nap, meat, nigh-nigh, app (apple)

Now Savannah uses the baby signs in conjunction with noises more than Emily, so that may be why she has a few less words. She will sign and make the sounds for: elephant, violin, xylophone, dog, cat, truck, lion, silly, mad, head. They both can identify and point to their head, nose, mouth, eyes, ears, hands, fingers, feet, toes, belly, legs, hair--they can identify it in books as well as on other people. Pretty good I think.

The Whole Family Is Sick!

Just like the title says...our whole family is sick! For those of you with kids, no matter what their ages, it's really hard to be a mom to them when you are sick yourself. Luckily, so far, I am not feeling too horrible, just tired, sneezy, and a cold--my husband on the otherhand is just miserable and so is Emily. She has a fever of 102.4 tonight and you can just tell she's feeling awful. On top of that she's sneezing a lot and has a faucet for a nose. Savannah has started sneezing as well...so we'll see what her fate is. She just got over what I think Emily has now, so hopefully Savannah will just have a few sneezes. I hope we all get well in time for Thanksgiving. We have travel plans, but I don't want to try to travel with two sick 14 month olds...not fun!

On the more positive side of things, Emily is getting better and better at walking now. She's also saying a few new words, like "bus", "breakfast", "bump". Savannah seems to keep adding new signs--she waves her arm near her face for "elephant" and also makes the elephant noise. Her favorite animal noise right now is for a pig--she snorts. Anytime she sees a pig toy, stuffed animal, picture, or hears the word pig, Savannah starts snorting. It is so cute! Tonight I took her to Babies R Us with me and she saw some toys with a pig and started snorting in the store. So cute. Anyway, we were there to buy baby gates...we have one at the top of our stairs, but I've decided we need another for the bathroom doorway so I can be putting on makeup and fixing my hair while the girls are awake--it's so hard if I let them into the bathroom because they start trying to play with the toilet paper, take everything out of the drawers, climbing into the bathtub, shut each other fingers in the drawers or bathroom door...so needless to say I can't really get myself ready to go somewhere unless I do it while they are sleeping or EXTREMELY early in the morning--which right now I still need my sleep, so I refuse to get up earlier than 6:30 a.m.. Anyway, back to the gates--I also bought a SuperYard gate to protect our dog, Billy, and "his area". For the past few months I've been using a laundry basket filled with phonebooks to block the girls from getting onto his blanket in his little corner of the living room. This week Savannah discovered she could move the basket and now repeatedly tries to get Billy's toys, or Billy himself. He's usually pretty good around the girls and sometimes will bring them an old sock to play with, but a few days ago Savannah was walking near him and she lost her balance and fell on him. He was startled awake and growled and nipped at her. He's NEVER done that before, so I'm hoping it was a one time incident. Just to be safe, though I'm trying out this new gate in hopes of preventing another incident.

Okay, that's all for today. Until next time...Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Girls Night Out

Finally, I was able to connect with an old friend from college tonight. We live in the same town but hardly ever see each other and only talk on the phone a few times a year now. The last time I saw her was earlier this Spring--the babies weren't even crawling then. She's pregnant now and is due the beginning of May. I am so excited for her and her husband. It's also nice because we have something in common again that has reconnected us. She has lots of pregnancy questions and nursing questions, and I am happy to share my experience with her. This will be her first child, so she's a little scared. Hopefully all my twin pregnancy stories won't scare her too much more!! It is a bit different than being pregnant with just one baby...I'm almost positive of that.

Emily is now a great walker--it didn't seem to take her as long to get the hang of it as is did Savannah, but I guess that's because Emily waited about a month later to start walking. The girls are still into everything and are still increasingly wanting to sit in my lap 20 times a day and read many, many books. It's a good thing, although it can get very tiring after the 12th time of reading the same book in a day. I hope I don't sound too negative about raising twins. It's challenging as raising any child probably is, but it's just a little much to handle day in and day out sometimes. I love weekends!! The babies love having Seth home to play with them, and I love having the extra help and give me small breaks. Sometimes I think I'll go crazy if the weekend doesn't come soon enough...and then one of my girls will do something so silly or so sweet and then I'm glad to be right were I am in life. I really do love these girls so much. I hope one day they will know how much.

Sweet Girls

Well we had to get flu shots this week...and Emily and Savannah both did very well, just cried a little bit. They've been a little cranky these past two days, but nothing too bad. Emily started walking on her own...she practices all the time now--she gets about 5-8 steps before falling down and then she gets back up again...and if she almost falls but catches herself, she stands back up and claps her hands. It's so cute. Aside from that the girls have been wanting to sit in my lap a lot and look at books. I think I read them about 4-5 books about 7 times yesterday. I think we need to add a few new ones to our collection just to give me variety. Maybe we'll get some new ones for Christmas.

On The Mend

Savannah is finally starting to feel a bit better. She had fever for about 3 days and a runny nose and cough--she was just miserable. All she wanted to do for several days was sit in my lap. That was fine with me, but Emily didn't seem to like that..she got a little jealous and wanted to sit in my lap too, just not while Savannah was sitting with me. That's a difficult situation right now, I don't know how to explain the concept of "sharing" mommy or taking turns. I don't think they are old enough to understand that. So, we go through several bouts of crying and desperate attempts to get each other out of my lap...

Today, I feel like all I do is distract, remove, and chase babies. They are getting into everything and trying to climb on things they shouldn't. It's tiring after awhile. It makes me nervous too because I'm afraid they are going to get hurt when I can't get to one or the other twin when she's doing something dangerous. The couch is the main area that they are wanting to climb on now--they try to get over to the end tables and grab everything. One major goal of mine today is to take out the free standing bookshelf from their room. I just got an email from our mothers of multiples group about a family in the area who's 2 year old son (1 of triplets) died because he pulled a dresser down on top of him. I don't want anything like that to happen in our house, so out the bookshelf must go.

A Reason For Everything

So, there was a reason for the girls' undesirable behavior yesterday...well at least Savannah's. Poor girl came down with a cold or some virus. Last night she was coughing a lot and ran a 100.4 fever. She didn't nap well, so she was so overtired by the end of yesterday. I had to get up with her around 11:30pm because she kept coughing so much it woke her up and she was crying pretty hard. I didn't want her to wake up Emily (they share a room), so I got her out of bed and cuddled her in the rocking chair for about 30 minutes. It seemed to help her a little because she went right back to sleep shortly after I put her back in bed. Today isn't looking good, though--you can just tell she feels awful. Another rough day ahead I fear. I just hope she gets to feeling a little better by tomorrow--we have plans to go shopping for their very first pair of sneakers. My brother gets a discount at the Stride Rite store, so he and his wife are coming over for lunch and then we're going shopping together. It's a family event!!

With Every Good Day, A Bad Day Must Follow

That's how I feel right now. I almost knew today might be rough since yesterday was so great. Sometimes I wonder if the babies know how much it frustrates me for them to be so great one day and then difficult the next. What really makes me almost mad is that they think it's funny. Today, every diaper change has come with a wrestling match, or Emily's game is try to kick mommy as hard as she can, as many times as she can during the diaper change. If they aren't squirming and kicking then they are putting their hands in their dirty diaper, touching their private areas, and then putting their fingers in their mouths before I can clean them off. Yuck!! And the more I try to prevent them from doing that, the more they try to do it. Clothing changes today have gone the same way--the girls would rather be naked, and diaperless. Each time I try to put pants on Savannah she pulls one leg out and as I put that leg back in her pants, she pulls the other one out...and so on and so on.

Meals today have been a struggle as well. Lots of throwing of food on the floor, dropping their cups, trying to trade each other's cup, pulling off their bibs, rubbing food in their hair, etc., etc. Play times have been frustrating as well. Today I think the girls want their own space, and their own mommy. If one is in my lap, it makes the other one mad and she'll come up and start hitting the the one in my lap and pulling on her legs in an attempt to get her out of the way. When I try to hold both of them in my lap, they both get mad and the struggle and wrestling and hitting begins. Same thing when they are on the floor--no matter who had what toy first, the other one seems to feel the need to take it away. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! The hard part of having 14 month old twins is that they don't always understand hurting and dangerous and so I often feel all of my best efforts to get that point across are all for not.

It's days like this that make me crazy. The only thing that slightly keeps me sane is that I know this phase will eventually pass. My only question is when? Really, today I feel like in order for my house to be safe for the twins we would have to get rid of anything electric and plug up all of the existing outlets--which means living in the dark. We would not have a trash can inside, a dog dish, a diaper pail (which is now on top of their dresser), no bathroom, no cabinets, no dressers with drawers as the girls continue to get smashed fingers or bang the drawers into mommy's shins while she changes her sister's diaper, no toys to throw, no paper to eat, basically we need a padded room and life would be fine. And get this--my girls have not yet learned the art of climbing...and I hope they don't anytime soon. Just keeping things out of reach on the tables and countertops is hard enough.

I think I need to get out of the house today, maybe we can go for a drive--or to Wal-Mart (yikes!! that's hard with twins). Wal-Mart--yeah, I tried going there once with the twins by myself and that was a total disaster. Wal-Mart does not have twin friendly carts...you have your single seat normal cart, and then you have your double 2-6 year old seat type cart...which doesn't work for my 14 month old twins because harnesses won't fit correctly to keep them from falling out of the seats. So that means I get to take the double stroller and try to push a cart as well, or wait until Seth gets home and I'll go by myself or send him to get the things we need. So frustrating, I would just like to go when I want without all the extra work. Someday that will happen...again the question is when?

Good Day

Yesterday was such a good day with Emily and Savannah. They were both in really good moods most of the time and were as sweet as can be. They kept giving me lots of hugs and giving each other hugs, dancing, clapping their hands to "If You're Happy and You Know It". We tried a new vegetable side dish today. It was a butternut squash and apple casserole. I can't say that it was very good...okay, but I probably won't make it again. Emily, our little vegetable eater, loved it! She kept signing for more. I think she really like the apples, but she ate a lot of the squash as well. Savannah didn't seem to care for it much, eating only a few bites. She is a meat eater--loves all kinds of meat and lots of it.

Well yesterday evening was interesting. At first we didn't think we'd have any trick or treaters, but by 7:00pm we had about 7-8 small groups come by. The kids were so cute. I even got to talk to our neighbor, Corrine and meet her new (well she's 3 months old now) baby. We have been meaning to get together for several months, but as I said before, trying to coordinate that with two 14 month olds and their schedule is hard. Maybe as they get a little older it will be easier. Plus, I'm sure Corrine has been busy with the new baby and her other two children. Okay, that's all for now.