8 Months

If I've learned anything at all the past 8 months it's this: whenever you think you have a routine down it stops working and you need a new routine. That's how I feel about our nap routines and sleep routines. Haha. In the last month or so Eleanor and Amelia have mastered so many different things. Neither one is crawling just yet, but they are well on their way. Neither one of them have teeth yet either. I don't even think we have many signs that the teeth are anywhere near being ready to poke through. I'm ok with that though. Both girls are doing much better at solids. I'm giving them more and more finger foods. They really like toast sticks, sweet potato sticks, and Eleanor liked (steamed) carrot sticks. Amelia just shoved them in her mouth and choked on them so we had to take them away, haha. They also like puffs. Lots and lots of puffs. In the past couple of days they've basically doubled the amount of food they'll eat in one sitting. Usually I'd give them half of a container of three different types of food. Now they'll go through a whole container of all three between the two of them. As a note: baby food is expensive. ;)

Oh! They're also sitting unassisted! Well, I have to put them in the sitting position, but they will stay there by themselves for a long time.

Eleanor still isn't sleeping wonderfully, but she's getting better about giving us some good stretches. She still wakes up at around 2 and 5 am, sometimes midnight too. She may or may not go straight down too. Usually not. She still requires that we rock her to sleep and seems light years off from putting herself to sleep. I'm not really sure how to proceed with teaching her how to put herself to sleep. Hopefully she'll just do it someday, haha.

Eleanor is also doing a zombie/army crawl. She just started getting up on her knees and rocking, but doesn't seem like she'll start crawling just yet. She still rolls everywhere and is getting fast at getting into stuff. Definitely testing my baby proofing skills! :)

 Probably my favorite thing she has started doing is the baby babbling. She's been making all sorts of shrieks and sounds but recently started making defined "Ba ba ba ba ba"s. It's so cute! She also vies for my attention now and notices if I leave the room. She will make a noise to get my attention and then smile at me. If I leave the room she starts whining until I return. It's also kind of cute.

I apologize for Amelia's pictures. I wasn't happy with how these turned out because she was tired and just wanted to go for a nap. So I tried to take another batch the next day. All seemed well, they were super cute, I was looking at them as I took them. When I put the memory card in my computer they weren't there! I was so sad. :( But I haven't had time to re-do them a third time, so I'm just putting these up. Sorry about that.

 Amelia hasn't crawled yet, but is still getting up on her hands and knees to rock. She also legit army crawls now and is getting very fast at it! She'll be cruising before too long! She's gotten MUCH better with solids and is eating MUCH better. As a result, in one week she gained 12ozs. She's all but caught up to Eleanor-- there is only about four ounces difference between them. How crazy is that?!

 Amelia is also putting herself to sleep about 90% of the time and usually only gets up at night once. There was one week she slept through the night three times in a row! Her naps are usually around two hours long!  I wish I could enjoy that time, but usually I'm dealing with Eleanor. haha.

We are borrowing a jumperoo from some good friends of ours and Amelia LOVES it. She goes crazy in it! Eleanor likes it ok, but Amelia just loves to jump jump jump. She gets that thing going like crazy.

I just liked this picture. They kept trying to take each other's hair bow and eat it. I'm really enjoying this stage they're at. They play with toys, they entertain themselves, but they're also very interactive. They're becoming quite sweet with each other and beginning to interact with each other. Usually Eleanor makes a sound and then Amelia laughs at her. It makes me giggle so much. See this video.


As for me, I was able to go out for a girls night and left the Brad with the babies. It was awesome getting out by myself for a bit. Very refreshing. The hardest part about staying home for me is the lack of social interaction. I'm a social person by nature, so it's hard not having anyone to talk to all day long. It's also hard because i'm kind of tied to the house while they're still napping twice a day. I've also lost 6 lbs since I cut junk food and started being more careful with my calories. I'm happy about that development. :)

Bonus Entry

So these pics are unrelated to the content of the post. I just couldn't resist some of these pictures from our first beach adventure. Babies on the beach are just stinking adorable. I thought I would infuse this post with some cute.


I want to kick people in the teeth who say "Breastfeeding caused me to lose more weight than I gained my whole pregnancy!" That statement and situation makes me want to spit out obscenities and throw an "it's not fair!" Fit. That was not my reality. At all. Time to be real: I gained 80+ lbs during my pregnancy. I stopped keeping track there toward the end.  I lost 30 of that coming home from the hospital. But then gained back 15. So I'm sitting at roughly 60lbs heavier than I was pre pregnancy and it's not budging. This is why you don't see style files of me any more.

I am gravely embarrassed by my weight. I was lithe, fit, and active pre pregnancy. Now i'm not. Truthfully, I've avoided a lot of social situations because of it. It's a combination of factors but let me assure you the solution isn't simply get active. I started cutting calories and my milk supply dropped. Plus I don't have time to workout. That's not me making up an excuse. I don't have time because two babies requires almost all of my me time. Oh wait, what's me time?

That's my dirty secret right now: I am embarrassed of the way I look. But you know what? I did something amazing. I gained all that weight to keep my babies inside as long as possible. It worked because they were born at reasonable weights and stayed in a lot longer than some twins do. My body did something amazing and is continuing to do something amazing by nourishing those babies. I need to embrace it and learn to love myself again.

I can obviously take care of myself by eating healthy foods, but for right now I'm trying to just be ok with where I'm at. Time for me to start believing what I tell a lot of other women: I am beautiful, strong, and intelligent. And that's independent of the number on the scale.