The end of October!

To help out Julie I am doing the blog entry, so for the time's sake I am combining everything into one entry.  October was great, we had a lot of fun, Happy Halloween! The End!

THE CRYSTAL MTN SCENE!

 First chairlift ride!

Left to right: Jen, Margo, Pat, Tommy, Julie, Will, Erin, Me!

So cute!

Monkey lost the sitting contest!

Will was leaning in for his first kiss!

PUMPKIN CARVING!

 Orange Slime!

Something went wrong...

Something is still wrong...

Wait where did he go?

I got this under control!

Our cute kids up close!



 Will hanging with the boys!

We were supposed to be asleep, but hey it's Halloween!

The Great Pumpkin

We were having a lazy Saturday. I left the house to go and run an errand and realized that it was a BEAUTIFUL fall day outside!  When I got home, we packed up the kids and headed to the pumpkin patch.  We went to a patch near our house that I've driven by for the past 8 years. I have always wanted to stop and pick pumpkins, but it just wouldn't be as much fun by myself (or with just Mark and me).  But now that we have kids, I couldn't wait to go and hunt for the perfect pumpkins!  The pumpkins were reasonably priced because there wasn't anything else for sale. Just a field of pumpkins waiting to be picked!  Will and Erin had fun helping us find the perfect pumpkins to put them in. I am so glad that we turned our lazy Saturday into a fun day full of memories.  

We found a pumpkin for Will!

Our attempt at a family picture.

Look! The pumpkin is the same size at Will and Erin's heads!

Erin won't fit in this pumpkin. We'll have to keep looking. (Don't worry, Will didn't fall out of the backpack, even though it looks like he was going to.)

Daddy and his babies

We found a nice family who took a few pictures of us.  It was so sunny out there (hence the squinting eyes).

The finished products! Daddy did a good job of carving the pumpkins for us. There's a daddy, mommy and two baby pumpkins. One baby pumpkin even has a bow on her stem (that was Mark's idea!).
Thanks to our favorite neighbor, Gloria, for climbing our driveway to take our picture.

Some of My Favorites

A good night snuggle before it's time for bed.

Go State! Erin has become very vocal and I caught her in talking in this picture.

We went in to check on Erin and this is how we found her! She started off covered under her blanket. She is always on the move!

We need to work on keeping the cereal in our mouths!

9 Months Old

 We've been having so much fun lately! Will and Erin make us smile and laugh all of the time. I've been making mental notes for my monthly update of each baby. 

Erin is VERY active! Her legs/feet are always moving.  It's like she is running in place.  Just tonight she was running so much that  could hear her little feet hitting the floor when I was downstairs doing laundry.  She flips from her front to back and back to front in no time.  She is moving all over the floor.  She will use her legs to push herself forward. She isn't crawling yet, but it is only a matter of time.  We are working on sitting up.  Erin likes to push herself backwards instead of sitting up. She arches her back and throws her weight around.  We have specific exercises to practice to help her build up her strength and coordination. 

This morning I had Erin leaning against my legs.  She was all smiles and we were having fun playing together. I looked into her mouth and noticed something was different. I put my finger in there and felt two little pricks poking though the bottom gum! That's right folks, she is sprouting two teeth! She has been fussy every night this week for an hour before she falls asleep. I don't know if the teeth had anything to do with the fussing. It could just be her 'witching hour' as I affectionately call it. 

Will and Erin are sleeping for 10-12 hours straight. They go to bed around 7:00-7:30. The hardest thing about being back to work full time is that I want to rush home from work (by 4:00) so that I can spend a few hours with them before they are asleep for the night.  Just last week we stopped feeding them around 11:00 pm, before we went to bed.  They weren't waking up, but we would feed them anyways.  Both babies are getting 170-175 ml of breast milk/formula.

Erin has started at Mary Free Bed Intensive Feeding Clinic two days a week for an hour each session.  Mark is taking her to most of the appointments because his work schedule is more flexible than mine.  On the first appointment, her OT, Linda, had set goals for Erin and Erin had already accomplished all of them! (ex. putting cereal in her mouth).  So Linda had to write some new goals for Erin.  She is working on learning the motor skill of swallowing.  We have specific exercises to do with her 3-5 times per day.  We have to rub and move her upper and bottom lip.  She doesn't mind it at all.

We started back on Previcad two weeks ago because she was refluxing pretty bad with the Zantac.  She immediately became very vocal (in a good way).  She 'talks' to us all of the time. Sometimes it sounds more like she is yelling, but there is nothing wrong with her.

She continues to be a happy baby. Erin smiles all of the time! There have been a few times over the past few days that she has let me rock her to sleep.  This has NEVER happened before. I tried sitting her on my lap instead of cuddling her on my shoulder (which she doesn't like to do).  She settled right in, sucked her pinkie finger and fell asleep. I treasure these moments because I know that they won't last forever.

Will is getting to be such a big boy! He weighs 16 lbs. 3 oz and Erin is 15 lbs. 9 oz. Will is becoming much more active. He is close to rolling over.  There were a few times this weekend that I thought he was going over, but he didn't.  He rolls onto his sides when he is playing and sleeping.  He has found his thumb and will take breaks while he is playing on the floor to suck his thumb.  Sometimes we catch him watching TV too.

He is still the boy of many faces.  I wonder if he will make some many different faces when he is older.  He has a serious face, a HUGE, toothless, gummy smile, concern face, a 'leave me a lone' face... you get the idea. Lately, we have seen a lot of the HUGE, toothless, gummy smile faces.  He is so happy and smiles all of the time (except when I am taking his monthly picture).

Will is getting very good at sitting up by himself.  He is up to almost a minute now.  Sometimes we put the Boppy around him which definitely helps.  Will loves to play with all of the toys and the all end up in his mouth.

Will.i.am is still a good bottle drinker.  He does not like breast milk that has been frozen and then thawed. I know because I accidentally mixed up his days bottles with frozen milk and he would spit, sputter and eventually refuse to drink the bottle. I made it with formula and fresh milk and he drank it without trouble.  I am still pumping 5-6 times per day.  I do miss eating lunch with my friends at work, but know that I won't be pumping forever (even though I am scared to stop and gain a ton of weight!).  There is plenty of extra milk (even though I am noticing that my supply is starting to dwindle) that I scald and then freeze. Will will drink this frozen milk.

He has discovered his sister.  We have caught them kicking each other in the head, chewing on each others toes and fingers and they stare at the other one a lot.  It is VERY cute to watch. 

In this picture, Will was so sick.  He has his ostomy bag (which was a pain to keep on) on from his bowel surgery. They had routed his intestines outside of his belly so that his body could heal and repair itself. The yellow stuff in the bag was poop.  It was still six weeks before Will would be extibated for the last time.  This was one of those times that I had a difficult time imagining him home with us for Halloween or at all.

What a difference a year makes!  Little did I know that when this picture was taken, I was half way through my pregnancy.  I remember being so sick all of the time. I couldn't eat breakfast, meat, or brush my teeth without throwing up. I was on powerful anti-nausa medicine that really helped! I was miserable and didn't start to feel better until 18 weeks along. I only had a few weeks that I felt good being pregnant.

Odds and Ends

I took Friday off of work to take the babies to two check up appointments. They are both doing great! I enjoyed my day as a stay-at-home mom. It was so relaxing and nice to have my babies all to myself. Our weekend continued to be fun and relaxing. We got together with some friends on Saturday. On Sunday, we hung out and then took Will and Erin for a Run/Ride (Mark runs and I ride my bike). It was a beautiful evening and they loved riding in their Doodlebug jogging stroller. I didn't get a picture of them in the stroller because I simply forgot. I do have a few pictures from the past week.

I took this picture last Sunday. It was one of the last nice days of fall.  I love Will and Erin's coordinating elephant outfits. Thanks Anita!

We went in to check on Will and this is how we found him.  Mark and I both started laughing.  Will doesn't move this much during the day, but he sure does move a lot when he is sleeping! He started off under his blanket.  Will now uses sleep sacks.

I got a little bored while folding the laundry.  Will doesn't look to happy about having Clark in the basket with them.

We are working on sitting up. Erin can sit, but as soon as I took the picture she pushed herself back.

mmmmm...mmmm...Good!

Today was a big day in our house.  It was a day that I have been waiting for.  A rite of passage for every baby.  Will and Erin ate rice cereal!! I was so excited to finally have the opportunity to feed them some 'real' food.  I wasn't sure what they would do with the cereal. I made it very runny, like the box suggested.  It was so runny that most of it started running down their faces and getting all over their bibs. Then I decided to thicken the cereal. This worked better, but we still had two happy, messy babies.  I ended up using three spoons for each baby. One for them to hold, one for me and the other to have on their tray so they could grab on to. I wasn't sure if I should give Erin cereal.  But, I am so glad that I decided to try because she LOVED it.  My heart soared with joy, as she kept letting me put spoonful after spoonful of cereal into her mouth. It was a fun time and we will try it again tomorrow!

What is this stuff in my mouth?



I think I will try it myself.





I'm not so sure about this whole idea!

Are we done already?