Our first Christmas as a family of four!!

We decided after all the traveling we did in November, that we would stay home this Christmas.  We didn't want to subject the kids to another long car ride and since both Ben and my parents will be here for the kids birthday in another week, we figured it made sense to just stay close to home!

Christmas was a low-key affair around our house.  Since it was just the four of us here, we slept late and ate breakfast as a family.  Then we Skyped with my parents and sisters in NC while the kids opened their gifts from everyone.  We exchanged gifts with each other afterwards and spent the afternoon/evening with our small group leaders at their house.  It was a fun day and we enjoyed spending our first Christmas as a family of four making new traditions!

Here are some pictures from the month of December:

During December we had the opportunity to go down to Nashville for a weekend and visit Gaylord Opryland.  We had a great weekend as a family and even threw in a visit to our favorite used bookstore :-)

Relaxing in the rockers daddy got them for Hanukkah!

We got new teething rails for our cribs...

Reading one of daddy's new popup books!

11 months old already?

Josh and Savannah are only a month from their first birthday and I can hardly believe how fast they have grown.  Has it really almost been a year since they arrived?  I can't imagine our lives without them, but at the same time it has flown by so quickly.

Joshua is starting to pull up and cruise along the furniture, and he is finally "walking" along with us when we hold his hands instead of immediately sitting down.  His separation anxiety is at it's peak right now (I hope) and he hates to see anyone leave the room (especially mommy!). He is starting to chatter more and more and Ben and I love hearing them talk to us.  He also loves to be chased... he will take off across the room and if you don't follow fast enough, he will turn around and come back to within a foot of you and then turn back in the other direction to crawl away while laughing!

Savannah is definitely little Miss Independent.  She will take a few steps (hands free) between Ben and I, but still doesn't have enough courage to walk on her own.  She loves being on her feet though, and it is very hard to keep her still!  She will push her toys around the living room, and gets frustrated when walls and furniture get in her way.

They both have enjoyed having a Christmas tree in the living room, but hate that mommy and daddy have it fenced off.  Savannah spends a little bit of time everyday with her hands through the fence trying to pull off ornaments and even unwrapping presents if she can get her hands on them.

We have had to invest in real baby gates to block off the staircases and the dining room to keep the twins in "safe" play areas.  Savannah has tried climbing over these fences already and Joshua sure does love to follow her around.  The other day I was distracted in the kitchen and heard them both laughing hysterically.  I found Joshua a few steps up the stairs to our room and Savannah was a few steps from the top!  Her laughter got louder as I got closer and she took off in a hurry!

Since Ben will be off a week at Christmas time, he is going to help me make the bottle/sippy cup transition and help me attempt to put the kids on a regular meal schedule (which means mommy has to come up with three baby friendly meals a day!).  It is bound to be an interesting month!

Here are a few pictures of the kids this month!

The rocking chairs were a Hanukkah gift from daddy and the teddy bears were a gift from a sweet friend... now if only Savannah could learn that they are made for sitting in and not standing on....

A good report!

Took Joshua to the doctor last week and found that his head has grown 1cm in the last six weeks.  The doctor was thrilled at this progress and said that she is much less concerned now about him continuing to grow!  Praise God for a good report!

A Busy November!

We started the month of November with a trip back to North Carolina to visit my family.  We spent two weeks with family and catching up with some of our friends back there.  I also got to spend a little bit of time helping my sister with her wedding planning for her wedding this coming spring!

With less than a week back home before heading to Ohio for the Thanksgiving holiday, Ben and I did some whirlwind catching up with laundry, doctors visits, and errands.  The day before we left, we had a pipe burst in our front yard, and enjoyed 24 hours without water before heading out to his family home.  We had a great few days with family and came home to get ready for the holidays!

While we in North Carolina the twins celebrated there ten month birthday!  It's hard to believe that they are already so old!  In addition to planning for our family Christmas, now we are planning for our babies first birthday party!

Never a dull moment... our daily walks!

J & S have really been great the last few months as I have tried to get into the habit of walking every day.  Since going to the gym during the day is next to impossible at this point, walking with the babies has been my number one method for getting back into shape post-twins.  We have been blessed to have a great neighborhood friend with a daughter a year older than them that can walk with us.  Having someone to walk with motivates me to walk longer and further... most days averaging between 4-5 miles :-). 

J & S seem to really enjoy getting out in the fresh air, and they definitely nap better on days that we get out and about.  The double jogger from the West Point Flea Market has definitely come in handy and I really feel like I have put that $60 to good use... (plus I know what I do and don't like about it for when we have to upgrade).

I love watching the two of them interact and play while we walk and really enjoy the way they cuddle up against each other while we are walking, often even holding hands (sweet, right?).

Here are a few of our entertaining stories from recent walks:
Last week we are walking along and I see that Savannah is holding a leaf.  It must have blown into her lap while we were walking and she was trying to figure out what to do with it.  She is just staring at it, but knowing that everything ends up in the mouth these days I check to make sure it is whole and take it away... immediately she starts coughing and I realize she has already eaten one... I got the whole thing out of her mouth since she didn't seem to be able to chew it and she recovered pretty quickly.

On Monday we were walking and I watch as Savannah reaches over and yanks on Josh's hair.  Now this should not surprise me since she pulls mine every chance she gets, but for the life of me I could not get her to stop.  So, in order to calm Josh I walked for a while carrying him and pushing Savannah... when that got to be too much, I reclined both of their seats so that Savannah couldn't reach across the divider to torment him anymore... and I added the backpack carrier to the basket underneath to combat future problems...

Today I was pleased to hear Josh laughing hysterically until I look down to find out that he is laughing cause Savannah has his fingers in her mouth...  The poor boy had bite marks all over his fingers from his sister's six teeth... and he found it incredibly amusing. 

This weekend I will be out searching for a new "chew toy" to keep Savannah entertained while walking!

Nine month pictures...

It has definitely become harder to get Josh and Savannah to sit still long enough for a picture these days.  So this month we took as many pictures as we could as quickly as we could in order to get some of them in their "chair."

I also threw in a few of them wearing hats that I had made earlier this year.  Now that we are walking in cooler weather in the  mornings, I am trying to get them to wear hats when we got out... but in true Savannah fashion, it only stays on her head for a few minutes!

Some of our nine month shots:

 

With their hats on:

Showing off her sharp new teeth:

Holding off the blue eyed monster!

I can't say enough how incredibly blessed that Ben and I are to have these two miracle babies.  God is so good!

9 Months Old Already???

Yesterday marked 9 months since the twins were born.  Today we had our nine month appointment at the Well Baby Clinic. 

It was an interesting visit since I made the trip by myself.  We got to the clinic and in the front waiting room they have you strip the babies down and they give you a clipboard with the Age screening paperwork to fill out (in NY we got this in the mail prior to the appt to bring with us).  And at this point, I had to park and leave the stroller... So, with two babies stripped down to their diapers, and diaper bag in tow, I took them to get their weight and height checked.  I got to hold one baby on the scale while holding the other one... then we were led to another waiting room.... where we got a twenty minute powerpoint lesson on what milestones they should have reached and what to expect before their next appointment (This was actually impressive... besides the fact that I had two squirming babies in my lap and was supposed to be filling out the whole clipboard of paperwork!).  About halfway through the exam, the wonderful saint of a Nurse practioner went and got my stroller for me... so that I would not have to hold both babies... I LOVE HER! 

Here are the stats from our visit (this is the first time that they have adjusted for their premature birth, so the numbers are a little higher than usual):

Joshua is 28 1/4 inches tall (80%ile)
His weight is 16lb14oz (12%ile)
His head circumference is 45cm (42%ile)

Savannah is 28 1/2 inches tall (96%ile)
She is 16lb14oz- the exact same weight as Josh again (48%ile)
And her head circumference is 45cm (49%ile)

After checking their soft spots, the doctor said that Josh's has completely gone away.  He seems to have made adequate growth since their last appointment, but she wants to see him back in 5 weeks to check it again and make sure his head is continuing to grow.  His soft spot should definitely still be there since it is not supposed to go away til 12 months and he was a preemie she said.

She also was a little concerned about Josh's weight.  He is 4%ile (red zone) for his weight based on birth and she made some recommendations for getting him to eat more food.  She recommended switching to a formula enriched with rice starch or mixing rice cereal into his pumped milk or bottles, but I don't think we are ready to go that route... so for now, I will just try to feed him more!!!!


The latest milestones:

Joshua is pulling up to a standing position pretty regularly.  He loves climbing the stairs to the bonus room whenever he gets "set free."  And he crawls at top speed and loves being chased!  He is working on teeth 3 & 4 right now and really loves teething rings... he also loves to have his gums rubbed.  He has not started having stranger anxiety yet, and gives everyone he meets the biggest smiles!

Savannah is starting to pull herself up as well and is finally starting to crawl with her belly off the ground!  She cut her 3 & 4 teeth last week and OY! is getting 5 & 6 this week.  She loves chewing on teethers and biting ANYTHING she can get her hands on (to include me... my fingers, my ears, my cheek & my nose... just to name a few...).  She has started getting overwhelmed by strangers and a little clingy, but it probably hasn't helped that she started teething right after the ear infection passed.  She LOVES her daddy more than anything and cries whenever he leaves the room. She gets more excited then me when he comes home at the end of the day!




***And since our photographer is not around any more... and I am just not as good about taking pictures (and uploading them)... the nine month pictures will have to come on another day :-)!

First ear infections (seriously... does that have to be a milestone?)

So the twins just finished fighting their first ear infections.  Josh had been pulling on his ear for a few days so I made an appointment for him to get it checked out.  The doctor couldn't see Savannah the same day, but recommended having her looked at as well, so we made a trip to the emergency room after leaving Josh's appointment.  Josh had an ear infection in one ear, and Savannah had one in both... so they both enjoyed their first antibiotics... :-(  Luckily we are all happy and healthy once again!

8 Months Old

We welcomed in eight months without an appointment (wonder how much they weigh?... my guess on the home scale is 16lbs each)...

Here are a few of the pictures that we took...

And a few pictures of them before we lowered their cribs...

Fort Donelson National Battleground

Before the twins came along, Ben and I did a lot of sightseeing and traveling... sometimes to the point that we were so busy going places, that we wouldn't always take advantage of the places that were close enough to us to make little day trips to.  There were a lot of places in TN that we didn't take the chance to visit when we lived here the last time, and we decided that we wanted to take the opportunity to get out and do those things with the twins before we move again!

So yesterday Ben and I decided to take the kids to Fort Donelson National Battleground.  We headed out after lunch and surprisingly the twins stayed awake in their car seats for almost the entire hour drive. We got out and put them in the stroller to tour around.  We walked around the "museum" together and then we sat and watched the fifteen minute video about the fort.  Josh quietly watched the entire video while Savannah seemed to think it was like church with the lights low and music playing... she decided to dance and laugh until I had to take her outside.

We ran into another couple with a nice outdoorsy stroller who told us that walking around the trails with a stroller was next to impossible and they were going to drive it... so we traded out the stroller for our backpack carrier and Ben volunteered to carry a baby so that we could still do some walking! We did about an hour of walking before it was time to feed the twins so we headed back to the Escape.  We fed them and finished the tour while driving around.  They slept most of the way back and even played quietly for us to eat Mexican food on the way home :-)

All in all, it was a great day and Ben and I are working on a list of other places that we want to visit the next few weekends.  We also decided to invest in another backpack carrier... maybe an Ergo that will make hiking and getting around with both babies a little easier!

Here are a few pictures of us from our trip!

While it's a little warm for these now... I got a great deal on some homemade hats from another multiples mom online and they arrived this week so I had to check them out on the babies to see how they look!

 

The importance of a name... or two!

I thought that my sweet babies deserved a post about their names.  Ben and I spent a lot of time coming up with names that we liked before we found out what we were having... and tried to chose names that had some significance to us or that we really liked.  We had a pretty nice sized list of girls names and boys names, although many of our favorites had been taken by close family and friends before the twins were born (that's what happens when you take so long to get pregnant!). On the day we came home from finding out what we were having Ben looked at the list and chose both of their names.

Ben made the decision that we should keep these two names to ourselves so that the day our babies were born, we could share these special names (and so no one could tell us what they thought of them...).  However, because of the circumstances (craziness) surrounding their birth, we never really explained where their special names came from... so here you go:

Ben had a really good friend named Joshua that he thought was a great Christian example, and we loved the meaning of the name- Jehovah is salvation (Also, God rescues).  The David on our list came from an interesting realization: Ben's mom's name, Amy; my mom's name, Darlene; and the name, David, all mean "beloved".  Since these children were loved and prayed for before they were ever conceived, we thought it was fitting!

As for Savannah's name, we really liked it.  Ben took me to Savannah for my 26th birthday and we had a wonderful weekend trip before I started teaching for the first time and before he started graduate school.  There were a lot of memories made that weekend and we both really loved the name.  I also was a nanny for a little girl named Savannah during college who went by her full name, Savannah Jane... so I knew I wanted a  middle name that I could use with her name as one.  That is where the easy part came in, even before Ben and I first started trying to have children, I knew I wanted a daughter with Grace in her name.  And after all we had been through, God's grace was obvious to us and we knew that it was God's amazing grace that gave us this double blessing.  No other name would have been so perfect for our little girl!

Our little Savannah Grace and Joshua David:

And just like that we have a schedule!!

I am afraid to even say that we have a schedule for fear that it will change... but the kiddos have stuck to the same routine the last few days and I think it might actually stick for a week or so!  It helps me to have a "schedule" to keep to and I am hoping that putting some fun things in there for us to do will actually help me to get them done (ahem, ahem... my own healthy routine)!   Also, Savannah is FINALLY eating food!  Hooray.  After those two teeth popped through she will finally eat, so we are slowly introducing her to all the foods on Josh's "approved list."

Ben leaves for work at 6 and I attempt to get a little more sleep (most days unsuccessfully).  I get up at 7:30 and pump before the babies are ready to get out of bed at 8.  I fix their bottles, and get their breakfast ready so that I don't have to do it after they come downstairs.

8:00- first 6oz bottle of the day
Then we go for a walk around the neighborhood and play on the playmat together. Our walks have been 30-40 minutes, but we are working up to being out for longer, and mommy is working up to using the jogging stroller for what it was created for!

9:30- Breakfast of 2-3 oz of fruit mixed with 1-2 Tbsp of Oatmeal (lately I have been whipping up fresh fruit to mix in using the baby bullet, but am hoping to attempt making it in advance soon).
After that they are ready to go down for a nap (1-2 hours).  While they are napping, I do laundry and clean up the house. 

Between 11-12- They wake up and are ready for another 6oz bottle.
Then we play some more on the playmat. Lately Josh has been trying very hard to crawl, he works at it so hard, I am sure it won't be long.  Savannah uses her upper body strength to pull herself around just as quickly, but refuses to lift her belly up off the floor.

Around 12:30-1:00 I lay them down for another short nap.  I have been kind of flexible with this nap and sometimes keep up the baby that is least fussy to play one on one with for a little bit before laying them down.

2:00- They wake up and are ready for another 5-6 oz bottle. After that we play in the bouncers/jumpers and occasionally run errands that need to be done.

Around 3:30-4 they are ready for a 3rd nap.  I lay them down and prep Ben and my dinner and decide what they are going to eat for their dinner.

5:00- Another 6oz bottle and then daddy comes home!

6:30- Dinner- Usually one and a half baby bullet servings (vegetables)

7:30- Bedtime routine starts. We do baths, and then put on Snuzas and SleepSacks, then daddy reads them a story.

8:00- Last 5-6 oz bottle of the day and then we lay them down.

I have had several people ask me about nap times.  Since we moved to TN, the twins always nap in their cribs.  After Beka left, I thought they might expect to be rocked some (which I wouldn't mind in the least) in order to go to sleep, but within 2-3 minutes of me laying them down (for naps or bed), they go straight to sleep.  I  keep waiting for them to stop being so easy to manage, but so far, they are angels... I think they have definitely spoiled us (we aren't going to know what to do if we have a high maintenance child next!).



Here is a video of Josh a few days ago trying to crawl. It was right before nap time so Savannah is a little fussy, and Josh is a little tired, but he continues to be persistent!

Savannah figured out how to turn the pages in her Bible.

I love the look that Josh is giving daddy here.

7 Months Old and another Milestone!!!!

The twins turned seven months old yesterday (which also happened to be my birthday :-)!!! Hooray for sharing a special day!

As a celebration of being 7 months old, Josh cut his first tooth... we are interested to see whether tooth number two quickly follows as it did with Savannah.  It seems to be bothering him a little more than it did her, so we will see how he handles the whole process.

This is the first month we have not had an appointment for growth check, but we did take some special pictures with Aunt Beka before she left to go back to Ohio!