Getting so big!

The girls are getting so big! Yesterday they sat in the Bumbo seats for the first time.

Your mind will trick you!

Steve and I were watching videos today that we took around the time of the girls birth. And can I just say Holy Cow! I had already forgotten how huge I was. This picture was taken 2 weeks before the girls were born-

It is completely irrational for anyone to go around looking like that! Plus two more weeks of growth. There's a reason I stopped leaving the house. I also thought that my stomach shrank a lot faster than it apparently did. Those videos were amazing though. Its incredible how much our two little girls have grown in (almost) 11 weeks. Here they are looking so sweet in their Christmas pajamas-

Claire always wants to check out what Amelia is doing. Our last Show and Tell photo for today has all of the girls in our family in the bed together. Often by morning we have at least one baby in the bed with us but 3 was a little much!

Sometimes you just have to laugh to yourself. Steve is playing Xbox online and every time I upload a picture I hear "I don't know what's wrong. All of a sudden my internet is lagging. I don't know why it won't work. No! I died!" Hahahahahaha Yes, our internet sucks but that is funny. I'll never tell. Um... I don't think he reads my blog.

Holiday Cards from Shutterfly

This year, Shutterfly is running a promotion that I'm very excited about. Basically, if you write about Shutterfly on your blog, they will give you 50 free holiday cards. This came at a perfect time as I was just starting to wonder what we were going to do about Christmas cards this year. Obviously, I want everyone to see my little sweeties but I also needed to save money because of the aforementioned sweeties. In the past I have ordered our cards from the drugstore and they didn't have a big selection but Holy Moly! Shutterfly has pages and pages to choose from! I don't know which one we will end up going with but this one is certainly a favorite. I am so excited to take advantage of this offer and I hope maybe someone else can take advantage too. All you have to have is a blog. Now I'm going to go check out their birth announcements...

Premature

November is Prematurity Awareness Month.

We were really lucky. Our girls were born at 34 weeks and 1 day. That's about 6 weeks early but for twins 34 weeks is pretty good. All the nurses in the Special Care Nursery kept telling us how good it was to make it 34 weeks. The girls lungs were mature when they were born. They were in the SCN for 8 days as Feeders and Growers. The doctors just wanted to make sure they were growing well and they had not one setback. We were really lucky.

When our girls were in the NICU/SCN we received a LOT of gifts from volunteers. These ladies make hats and blankets and clothes and things for the tiny babies. We must have gotten 10 or 12 things for our girls. As special as those things were to us, I can only imagine how much they would mean to someone whose babies didn't have such a good outcome.

If you are thinking about doing something charitable for Thanksgiving or Christmas, please think about the families that are spending the holidays at the hospital wondering if or when their babies can come home. If you can't do something for them, maybe you could make a small donation to the March of Dimes. Now I'm going to go kiss my two growing preemies!

Aaahhhhh!

When one girl stops screaming, the other one starts. And round and round and round we go...

Little Nek-Neks!

 

My two little nekkid girls! They love to be naked! You can really tell how much bigger Amelia is than Claire. Last week at the doctor, Amelia weighed 10 pounds 7 ounces and Claire weighed 8 pounds 11 ounces. So Amelia has already more than doubled her birth weight and Claire is almost there. They also had to get 2 month shots at the doctor- 3 shots and one oral vaccine. So you can imagine my poor girls were not happy. I wasn't really very happy either because I had to take them by myself! Daddy was out of town looking for a house for us. The good news is that he found one-

We are closing on December 8th! This is very exciting to me because this house comes with....

 

I haven't actually seen the house yet but the home inspection is on Monday so I'll see it then. I'm so excited about our new house! There are going to be a few things we have to do- we'll have to have the pool fenced in before the girls start crawling and walking. There is a really big yard on the other side of the pool and I want them to be able to play outside without worrying about them falling in. Obviously I will be outside with them when they're playing but still. When there's one mama and two little girls, a fence seems safer! We're also going to look into one of those pool alarms.

The house is absolutely gorgeous. There are new floors throughout the whole house and they are beautiful. There are also some lovely built-in bookcases and a nice fireplace. The only thing I don't like is the counter-tops. The ones in the bathrooms and the kitchen are pretty ugly but we are looking at our options for what we can do with them. I don't really see us spending a whole ton of money on it but hopefully we can improve the ugly brown laminate.

Anyway, the girls are getting big and finally figuring out their days and nights and we are working on a bedtime. Eventually I'd like to have everyone in bed by 7:00 but its a work in progress. I have a friend in the neighborhood who has a little boy that is 3 weeks older than the girls. She says he just started sleeping through the night. I hope that is in our future soon! I really have to count little Clay as 7 weeks older than the girls because he was born at 38 weeks instead of 34 but still! Its out there... somewhere in the future. Mommy and Daddy are very excited!

I don't know what else to say really. I feel like we are finally starting to emerge from survival mode a little bit. There's a website I look at (called How Do You Do It) that is written by several moms of twins and one thing I read there has really stuck with me. One frustrated mom wrote "I feel like I'm so busy managing my twins that I can't enjoy them." So I'm trying to focus less on the managing and more on the enjoying. Because while its important to me that the girls learn to sleep etc., its more important to me that I can enjoy them while they are so small. I really love kissing Amelia's big cheeks while she just gazes at me. And I love to watch Claire's funny faces. Mostly, I love being a Mommy to my sweet little girls and I think I'm pretty good at it. At least, most of the time.

Firsts

The last few weeks we have had several "firsts." Claire had her first mohawk-

 

Ok, so she doesn't really like it very much. The girls also got to meet their Uncle Jeremy (and his girlfriend Jessica) for the first time.

Claire didn't like that either. That girl... Amelia and Claire had their first shots last week. They get a shot to help prevent RSV which is a very dangerous respiratory infection that preemies are especially susceptible to. Claire took her shot pretty well. She wasn't a big fan but Daddy comforted her and she got over it pretty fast. Amelia, on the other hand, acted like we were killing her.

See her sad little boo-boo? We are going to be traveling this weekend. The girls only have one cousin and its his first birthday. Happy Birthday Leighton!!!

Sleep Deprivation

 

 Things are getting serious around here. A few nights ago, Steve ordered something online in the middle of the night. After that,  he totally forgot about it and bought another one at the store. Yesterday, the one he bought online showed up and he was completely surprised. I'm just glad it wasn't something expensive. 

Last night I thought the girls were really good. I thought they slept from 1:10 when I put them down until 5:40. Nope, it seems that they woke up in the night, Steve got up and tended them, and I never knew a thing about it.