Almost Crawling

Emma and Julie are almost crawling these days. They both can push themselves in reverse; once they figure out forward, there's going to be no stopping them. Becca is pretty content to roll anywhere that she wants to go, and she's good at it.

Last weekend, I was in the kitchen and heard Becca scream, then stop. A few seconds later, she screamed again, so I went in and saw Julie with a handful of Becca's hair. Poor thing. So the hair pulling has begun. And Becca's at a disadvantage with all that hair. :)

The girls started therapy last week. The therapist goes right to daycare, so I haven't had a chance to be there yet while she's there. I'm hoping to make it a few times. But we get very detailed reports with some recommendations for things to do with each of them. On her first meeting with Becca, she said that Becca was very social and has strong legs - both true. :) Emma was inquisitive because she tried to steal the woman's pen. And Julie likes to look at herself in the mirror. All true. They each get about half an hour right now, and the day care workers says that she wears them out.

For some reason, Emma's new favorite toy is the bouncy seat: not sitting in it, just playing with it. She likes to sit on the floor in front of it and pull on the straps. She likes to be held up standing in front of it. She pulls it, tips it, and chews on it.





Emma also loves to bounce up and down in the exersaucers (2 of 3 are on springs). She goes crazy! When we put her in the one that doesn't bounce, she still tries to bounce and just kind of jumps up and down.

Emma has also jumped into a babbling phase. She talks non-stop on the way to daycare in the morning. It's so adorable, and makes me wish I had a voice recorder to remember it all. Of course, Emma also has mastered a whimpering noise that we call "emma-nating."

Greg and I each made it to the gym twice this week. I'm really proud of us for making time for this. It won't be a quick fix, but we really need to get back in shape. The girls deserve it. I really would need to be going 4+ times a week to lose weight, but I'll settle for 2-3 right now, and may start Weight Watchers again. (I worry about the time commitment of WW right now.)

In Sophie news, Sophie 3 joined the family this week. There were too many fights over Sophies. The girls' main toys right now are Sophie, teething rings, "keys," and the teething pacifiers.

Becca can get her feet in her mouth now, too, so toes are apparently good for teething. We've had a tooth explosion lately. Julie's top 3 are through now. Becca's top 2 are coming in, and Emma's got one of her top teeth coming in.

Aunt Jen and Uncle Elliot came to visit us this weekend. Greg and I got some adult conversation, plus lunch out. The girls got showered with attention. :)

Becca and Jen


Julie and Elliot


Emma and the bottle


The cats hanging out on the boxes and cooler by the front door. I keep promising them that soon enough it will be cool enough to leave the front door open during the day. I love those fall weekends where we can open the door and feel the breeze. And the cats LOVE to sit in front of the screen and stare outside all day.


Just some pictures of Becca and Julie from a few weeks ago that made me giggle. They both fell asleep in the bouncy seats in EXACTLY the same position, down to the teething rings in their hands. And then I came back later and they had both turned their heads.

Sleeping right...


and sleeping left...

8 months

Today, the girls are 8 months old. I must say it every month, but wow - I can't quite believe it.

Last weekend we took the girls apple picking. This time, we loaded the girls into the triple stroller, ate our picnic lunch, and then went out and actually picked apples. It shortly became clear that the best course of action was for one of us (Greg) to push the girls around up and down a gravel road, and the other (me) to actually go pick the apples. Some pictures:

The girls (J, E, R)


Me getting apples


The car ride home (R, J, E). Rebecca and Julie are awake, Emma is asleep.


Greg lowered the mattresses in the girls' cribs this weekend. Julie could about reach her mobile, and they will all be crawling and pulling up soon enough.

I went to the eye doctor this week. I hadn't been in about 8 years. I noticed my vision getting worse while I was pregnant, and it hadn't really gotten better. Turns out, I really just need to wear my (8-year-old) glasses. They gave me a slightly stronger prescription, but I may just try to wear my old glasses more regularly and see how that goes.

I went to another consignment sale this week. This one was much bigger, and was just crazy. There were so many people there, so much stuff. No luck with high chairs, but I did find some Halloween costumes for the girls, and some of the toys I was looking for. The girls got a pony! My $20 splurge was this gorgeous, wooden ride-on toy. Hoping to get all this stuff cleaned up for Christmas time.

The hard drive is dying on my work computer. It's been going on for over a week now - just shutting itself down without any warning, blue screens, black screens. I called to get it replaced, and --get this-- it's backordered. So in the mean time, I'm hobbling along, saving frequently, and hoping it doesn't go completely before the new one comes in.

I saw Julie's top two front teeth coming in today. You can definitely feel them. That will put her at 5 teeth! She hasn't been too much crankier than usual. Emma, though, is still super clingy. There are times where she just won't be put down. She gets mad if you walk away from her.

We started Stage 2 jarred baby food this week. I'm still making some of it, mostly the easy stuff. For some reason, the jarred Butternut Squash + Apples was really runny. We later thickened it up a bit, but on the first night we tried it, Julie wore it from head to toe.




Greg and I are really going to make an effort to get back to the gym. We're horribly out of shape. It will probably involve going once the girls go to bed at night - one of us goes to the gym, the other makes bottles. Maybe some weekend trips.

Personalities

Emma is definitely becoming more mobile. She's good at getting on her belly and using her arms to push herself backwards to shimmy around. Every now and then when she does that, she actually pushes herself up onto her knees, so it won't be long until she figures it out. She's also close to sitting on her own, as long as she's not distracted, or going for a toy. A couple of times this week we've found her in her crib on her belly with her head up against the top of the bed, so she has found out some way to push herself forward. Over the weekend, she started getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth. At daycare this morning, they said that she backs herself around the room until she gets into the corner where the cabinets are, and then gets her legs going and starts swinging cabinet doors open. Emma has decided that she does in fact like solid foods, even peas. She loves just about anything these days! She is our neatest eater.

Emma and Julie getting into mischief, both trying to wedge themselves under the entertainment center. We've also had to perform extractions from underneath the coffee table.



Rebecca is still a happy, go-lucky little girl with tons of smiles. Right now, she giggles at her teddy bear, and loves to watch and giggle at the cats. She doesn't have a lot of interest in sitting up, and usually would rather stand than sit. But she's a pro a rolling, and will wander all over the living room just by rolling and pushing herself. Last weekend, she kept going underneath the swing to play with the tag hanging from the seat. (They all love to suck on the tags on everything - playmats, toys, and their Taggies.) Rebecca loves to grab at the spoon when we're feeding her, and help guide it to her mouth. This usually digresses into her sweeping food off the spoon into her mouth, but at least she's showing interest in the spoon. She also dives for her bottle when we're in the process of getting it out of the bottle warmer and getting back to the couch/chair to sit down. As soon as she sees it, she starts leaning and trying to get it in her mouth. The only time she isn't our happy, go-lucky girl is when she knows her bottle is coming and it isn't in her mouth.

Becca asleep in her carseat, yet still holding on for dear life. She doesn't trust Greg's driving. :) She has been falling asleep lately on the way home from daycare and napping for quite a while. Look at all that pretty hair!


Julie is our wild woman, with seemingly endless energy most days. Even on days where they say she doesn't nap at daycare, she's still full of energy. She likes to yell, and there was one day this week where I was picking her up at daycare and could hear her screaming from halfway down the hall. She was in an exersaucer, just yelling at the toys. Not crying, just yelling. She also makes these funny "growling" noises all the time - she sounds like a tiny Julie monster. It's so cute. She has just about figured out the toy on the exersaucer that plays music, and she LOVES the music. You have to hit the animal 4 times to get it to play music, and she gets in there and just pounds and pounds and pounds. She loves to explore on the floor, too, and when she gets on her belly, she'll get up on her toes, almost in a push-up position, to try to move herself around. Julie still loves solid food, and you almost can't feed her fast enough. She tends to make a huge mess, because she wants to hold the spoon. She doesn't quite understand that I have to put more food on the spoon for her, so I usually have to wrestle it away from her, leading to mess. Plus, the all love how food makes the Bumbos slippery, so once it's on their hands, they rub their hands all over the Bumbo.

The cats have been really good with the babies. They are much better around visitors, and don't run and hide for days on end anymore. Lefty is essentially disinterested, although the influx of cardboard boxes (diapers, exersaucers, gates, etc) has certainly made her happy.

Dusty has become extremely skittish since the babies came home. She's very jumpy and afraid of everything. She not interested in the babies in particular, but is kind of a "mother cat." She would come sit on the floor in the nursery during feedings, even in the middle of the night. She still makes her rounds when we're in there feeding them. And she follows us upstairs every single night when we take the last girl to bed. She follows us around the nursery every night, meowing loudly. I feel like she's watching out for the babies, but at a distance.

Happy Birthday, Dusty & Lefty!

Today is Dusty and Lefty's third birthday. We were going to celebrate by showering them with treats, but then they wouldn't know it was anything other than an ordinary day. Such spoiled kitties.

The last week has been l-o-n-g. Julie's teething symptoms last weekend turned out to be a stomach virus. She got sent home from daycare on Tuesday and I took her to the doctor. By the time we got back to pick up Rebecca and Emma on Tuesday afternoon, they were saying that Rebecca was showing symptoms. Greg stayed home with Rebecca and Julie on Wednesday. By Thursday morning, Emma was sick, too. So I stayed home with all 3 of the girls on Thursday, and Greg and I each did a half day on Friday. By Saturday or Sunday, they were pretty much back to normal.

The sickness, though, forced both Greg and I to finally be comfortable with all three girls on our own. Last Thursday was the longest I've been alone with the three of them since they were born. (It was also the longest I've been away from another adult.) We've each had them for short stretches, but normally 2 is about all we could handle. The girls have gotten to where they can play for longer, with fewer meltdowns. Well, up until 4:00 or so. After that, all bets are off. Even where there are two of us, someone is usually unhappy.

For all of their sickness, the girls were in relatively good spirits. We had some gorgeous, totally un-August like weather last week - 80 degrees and no humidity. After work one day, we took the girls for a walk.


You can see Emma's 2 teeth.


Julie


Rebecca


And one more pictures of the ladies (E, J, R) from the weekend.


We had been planning on replacing the dishwasher for a while now - it's got a small leak (nothing a plastic plate can't fix), it's loud, and we have to pretty much wash the dishes before we put them in the dishwasher. Greg went out on Saturday and found one, and it's going to be delivered next weekend. So, of course, what happened last night? Yup, that's right. It broke. We are living off of paper and plastic for the rest of the week, as it is taking about an hour to wash all of the girls' bottles and food containers every night. Sigh. It's all in the timing.

Tonight I caught Greg sucking a cup of pudding through a straw to avoid dirtying a spoon. It's also helped me jump start a diet, as I'm too lazy to do dishes.