Seventeen months! Here we come!
Feeding:
The new thing this month about feeding is that the twins were refusing to sit on their highchairs to eat. They wanted to sit in the normal chairs like mum and dad. So for a couple of days I gave them breakfast and lunch sitting in the normal chairs and they loved it, but the mess was spectacular. So Jon ordered a couple of booster seats and mealtimes are much easier. They love being able to eat off the table and not off a tray.
They are both still eating very well and they eat everything that we give them. In the last couple of days, though, both have been teething so they have been playing a bit more with their food. We now have breakfast at 9, lunch at 12, snack at 3:30/4:00 and dinner at 6pm. We can be flexible with these timetables, but we normally follow it and everybody is happy.
Both Jon and I are wondering when they are going to drop the milk bottles. They still have a full bottle in the morning (Eric doesn’t finish it normally, but Elisa does) and a bit more than a full bottle at night (Elisa doesn’t finish the lot, but Eric does). We are hoping that they will naturally start to refuse the bottle, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen any time soon!
*Little edit since I wrote that. In the last few days they weren’t eating their breakfast because they were waking up slightly later than normal (around 8) then having the bottle of milk, so of course they weren’t as hungry by 9. So we now give them just half a bottle first thing in the morning, and I am bringing back breakfast to a bit earlier. They seem to be doing better.
Sleeping.
The are still sleeping beautifully at night, so no complaints there. Their morning wake up time seems to be shifting a bit towards the 8:00 rather than the 7:00 like it used to be (we found a happy medium at 7:30 for a while). The only problem is that Jon used to use the kids as a wake up alarm, but if they start waking up at 8:00 regularly, Jon is going to have to start setting his alarm clock again! It has been a while since the alarm clock was last used, I tell you! Who needs one when you’ve got kids?!
The naps are a tiny bit of an issue, though. Since we came back from Spain the twins have not wanted to sleep on their bouncy chairs any more. Probably because they are too big for them now, but I must say that those bouncy chairs have been life saviours for a long time. I just needed to strap them and bounce them and they would fall asleep in no time. Now they don’t want the bouncy chairs (plus they are were well used and they creak a lot) so on occasions they have fallen asleep with me on the sofa, or it just happens that we’re going back home from playgroup or wherever at naptime and they fall asleep in the car, and then I just have to move them back in the house. But some other times, when we were just at home and they were playing around, it had been very difficult to get them to nap. The problem is that if they don’t nap they fall asleep at the dinner table!
Development.
They are getting SO clever. They understand so much of what we say and they look at you and babble in their own language as in response of what you’re saying… It’s just so funny. But they are getting cheeky too! and they do lots of things knowing that they shouldn’t just to see your reaction. This, at times, can be very infuriating, though.
I think they do most things that other children their age do. I honestly think they are developing correctly, although sometimes I wonder. I saw recently at soft play a 16-month old girl who could identify all the animals. The parents were saying things like “where’s the lion”, “where’s the elephant”, and the girl went and brought back every single animal that they said, and it was lots! Since then, I have tried to get the twins to point and identify the animals in the books, but they never get it right. This one book in particular we look at almost every day for quite a while. In it there is an elephant, dogs, birds, an orange, a banana, a train and a tractor. They point at the pictures and I say the names (in Spanish) and after a bit of pointing and naming, I ask “where is the banana” and wait for them to point. So far the success rate is approximately 10%, which sounds more like pure chance than anything else. I will continue with this for a bit longer and if it’s still not working in a couple of weeks, I will have to find a different approach.
Going places is interesting now. They insist in walking. They don’t last long in the pushchair before they get fidgety and want to come out. When Jon is with me we do get them to walk alongside us. But if I am on my own it is a bit of a nightmare (although I am crazy enough to have done it a few times now). We bought these reins that attach to a belt around me, which is great because it gives me hands free (rather than having to hold the reins in my hands). The downside is that they can cross paths and get tangled on the rein, but they are easy to untangle. I don’t go out without the reins now. They are so useful, especially when I am going to a playgroup or a class, to get from the car park to the building without having to take the pushchair. I put the belts on them before we get in the car, so once we arrive at our destination I only have to take them off the car and clip them on. Heaven sent.
Socialising.
Lots of socialising lately. We have stopped going to Wellington Country Park for the season, as the last time was a nightmare since they wanted to run around in different directions rather than staying in the toddler area to play. So we will go back when they reopen next year for the season again. Hopefully by then they will have gone off a bit the whole running away thing and will want to play instead.
We still go to the Creation Station class on Mondays, although Eric hasn’t shown any interest whatsoever in playing with the paint. He tries for two minutes and then goes off running around the class. Elisa likes it a bit better although she is still very into eating the paint, rather than painting with the paint. On Tuesdays we go to Chineham library for the rhyme, sing and whatever is called. We do lots of nursery rhymes (which I am finally starting to learn myself!) and lots of signs. On Wednesdays we go to twins club, which is in a new location and it really suit us time-wise. We were never able to attend the Brighton Hill one because the twins were always having a nap at that time (or waking up from the nap and having a feed), but this one in Popley is just perfect as they get very tired from all the running around and they have a lovely nap when we finish. On Thursdays we’ve done the Discovery Centre rhyme, sing or whatever is called, but I’ve got a problem here and is that the space is much bigger and if they decide to run away to start pulling books off the shelves, then it is harder to keep them in check (the Chineham library is much smaller, and easier to control the kids). And Fridays are free so we go to the playground or soft play or into town or whatever tickles my fancy.
However, I am getting a new job very soon where I will work (from home) on Thursdays and Fridays, so the twins will be going to nursery… Eeek! When we went to the nursery to have a tour and all of that I was so emotional. The kids stayed in the room which would be their class whilst Jon and I saw the rest, and I was panicking… I heard Elisa crying when we left her there, and I didn’t know what to do with myself… Jon says that nursery is going to be harder for me than them, and I believe him!
Nursery is going to be great for them, as they really need to interact a bit more with children their age. Eric has always looked up to older children. Either at soft play or the playground, he always tries to mingle with the slightly older children. And Elisa has always been kind of a loner and happy to play on her own, with me within sight. Only just the other day she played with another child for the first time and both my mother in law and I were ever so surprised (and glad!)
So yeah, we just need to find out a start day for my job and when we have that we can fill in all the paperwork for the nursery. We reckon it will be at the beginning of next month. Eeek!!
Health.
Well, not so great. Elisa has had a cold for as long as I can remember. She had one in September which kind of went away but kept coming back. We have been doing the whole snuffle baby and olbas oil routine for the last week again 🙁 We have had a couple of sleepless nights because of it as well, which isn’t fantastic.
The rash that she had in her face just before we went to Spain is still here and getting worse at times. I took her to the doctor last week and it turns out is a mild eczema and the doctor said that she will grow out of it. He prescribed a couple of creams, which I have been using, but they don’t seem to be working at all! If anything, the rash looks more noticeable now. We have another photoshoot (a free one) on Wednesday and I have no idea if Elisa is going to look ok for it!
Eric has been more or less health wise. He has got a much milder version of Elisa’s cold, but it is not affecting him so much. He’s got a bit of snot and sometimes a bit of a temperature, but he seems ok.
Did I mention that both of them have now four molars each? So teething has not helped much with everything else…
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And this is it for now. If they go to nursery before they’re 18 months, I will write a blog post about it. If not, see you in a month!
