The twins at 9 months

The twins turned 9 months on Sunday, but I wanted to wait until today to post this entry as we had a small hospital visit booked for today (more details below). So here we go!

Feeding.

Weaning is well under way and going fantastically. We are still doing pretty much the same as in my last post, but the only difference is that at the 4:00pm feed we give them a proper meal (meat+veggies, +fruit, +milk) rather than just fruit as we were doing. We thought that maybe the kids were waking up in the middle of the night because they were hungry… We’ve been doing this for about ten days and I haven’t noticed much difference, to be honest… But they do eat all the food, so it must be good for them so we’re going to keep doing it like this.

They still have pureés, but they are much lumpier now and they seem happy with this. They also eat lots of “real” food (aka, whatever I am eating) and they love it too, however, the mess that they create is unbelievable! And I’ve been warned that it will only get worse. Oh dear, I need to learn to live with messy children 🙂 And buy a hand held hoover too.

Sleeping.

Unfortunately, we’re still getting up almost every night to cuddle one or the other (Eric is the naughty one, the one that won’t settle… although I had to bring Elisa down to the living room just the other night and get the sofa-bed out to sleep here… *sigh*). I honestly don’t know what it is. It’s not teething, as they haven’t shown any other symptoms during the day. I could be hunger, but we’re feeding them lots during the day and giving them approximately 350ml just before bedtime.. so I’m not sure it’s hunger. It could be nightmares, as we have noticed that sometimes they wake up suddenly screaming. Or it could be separation anxiety, as most times I just need to lay Eric in bed with us and he settles straight away. I am hoping that it gets better, because in the last few weeks I’ve suddenly become a “not-a-morning-person” and I really struggle to get out of bed.

Their naps, finally, have become regular, and now I know what to expect from them on this respect. They are up normally at 7am for a bottle. Elisa then will have another nap after that until about 9am. Eric very rarely sleeps at this time. So Jon takes Eric to the living room to play whilst I stay in bed with Elisa 😀 (although this doesn’t happen everyday, sadly). Their next nap is approximately at 12 and it’s a short one, only half an hour or so. And their last nap of the day is around 3-3:30. This one can be a bit longer, probably 45 minutes.. although a couple of times they’ve slept for a whole hour! Yuhuuu!

Development.

Oh my god. They are both on a crazy development spree! If last month I said that they were on turbo boost, this month they are on top of a rocket! Elisa’s progress on crawling and trying to stand up has reached its peak. She will BE standing next. You heard it here first! She can move around the room quite easily although you couldn’t say that she is crawling. You see her sitting by the sofa, then you look somewhere else for a few seconds, and next thing you see is that she’s by the television! I am also pleased to announce that Eric is not so lazy anymore and he’s starting to move around a bit too. He’s not as prolific as Elisa, but he is getting there.

They are also getting on much better now too. You can sit them opposite each other and they won’t fight all the time. Sometimes they really amuse each other.. just the other morning, Eric was kind of leaning towards Elisa, like trying to reach her but without actually touching her, and she found this hilarious. She was chuckling away with her not so pretty laughter.. I wish I had had my video camera to hand 🙂

They also talk a lot now. Well, by “talk” I mean babble… Their word repertoire consists of “dada”, “nana”, “baba” and that’s it. Eric also says stuff that sounds like “hello” and “hola”. Jon and I are still fighting for the much desired “mama” but it is not coming! I suppose once they actually say, that will be it. They won’t say anything else! And they are also waving! It’s so sweet, although they hardly do it on demand.. only mainly when they are looking at themselves in the mirror..

Socialising.

Well, I must admit that my new year resolution is not going very well. I blame it on the weather, which has been appalling (wettest January since records began, or something like that, and February is not looking much better), but my intention is to still take them to places. I just need to make everything work out at the same time. Like finding a class or event that doesn’t clash with their feeding or naps. I’m asking for a lot, I know, but at the moment it looks like destiny wants me to stay at home! (the winter Olympics on TV not helping either!)

I actually passed on going to a friend’s house for lunch the other day because I was stressing so much on how I would feed the twins in somebody else’s house. We have fed the kids out and about since we started weaning, but it was in restaurants or pubs, with highchairs and without the worry of staining someone’s floor or carpet. I have now bought two “Koo-di” fabric harnesses, which are adaptors that you put on a normal dining chair and they fold quite small so you can carry them everywhere with you. Hopefully the next time I am invited somewhere for lunch I won’t chicken out!

Health.

Their weights from the last time I took them to the clinic were: Eric – 8,635kg / 19lb 0oz and Elisa – 8,370kg / 18lb 7oz. But I am pretty sure that they have both put on weight since then! Elisa’s percentile is now over 50% which is amazing if you take into account that she was on the 0.4% when she was born!

Their big health issue this month has been that they both got “Roseola”. It’s a virus and apparently very common in small children. They had had fever and were very cranky for a couple of days, but I put it down to teething. However, when one day Eric woke up with a rash all over his chest, I got a bit worried. Funnily enough, Jon was in London that day, so I had to make the decision to take them to the GP straight away. I thought it was chicken pox or something like that. To be honest, I still don’t know what chicken pox looks like. So I got to the doctors and said “I think my son has got chicken pox”, and you should have seen all the receptionist panic! They said that the midwife couldn’t see me because I couldn’t go in her room with an infected child, so they sent me to another room to wait there until a doctor became available to see me. I waited approximately 20 minutes, but then the lady doctor that saw us was ever so lovely and she did a proper full inspection of both Eric and Elisa.

The rash got worse in the next day or two and lasted for about 4 days. The information that I was given by the doctor said that roseola only lasts 24/48 hours, however we found that not all the information was 100% correct. Either that, or the kids had something other than roseola. Anyway, they are both fine now, and hopefully they shouldn’t get it again!

We had an appointment for Eric in hospital this morning, and Eric and I attended, whilst Jon and Elisa stayed at home (by the way, we both found it so easy to do our bits whilst just looking after one baby!). The appointment was a follow up from the hearing issues that he seemed to have when he was little (if you remember, he failed the hearing test by the health visitor, and then we went to the hospital for another test, which he did pass). For this test, Eric was sitting on my lap and there were speakers and screens to either side of us. A low sound would play and Eric had to look left or right, and if he looked to the correct side, and image appeared on the TV to show that he had done it right. And he got 100%. He was ever so good and behaved so well! The doctor then inspected his ears and said that there seems to be a little bit of glue ear on his left ear, but very minor and it doesn’t affect his hearing. The next appointment will be in two and a bit YEARS’ time, when he is three, but we’re sure that it will be fine.

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