Eighteen months. A year and a half! Blimey, those words sound scary! We are now closer to two years than to one year! (if that makes any sense… I don’t know if I am making much sense today… It’s been one of “those days”)
And here’s a summary of the last month:
Feeding.
They are both eating very well, especially Elisa (well, she’s always been a great eater) but Eric is catching up on the “eating properly” scale. Great news is that they both have four molars each, so chewing has become easy. They eat much more meat now, and sausages are their favourite. In fact, I need to look for a different brand of sausages in the shop, as the packs I buy at the moment only have six sausages and we normally split it like this: two and a half for me, two and a half for Jon and half for each of the twins. However, they eat their bits so quickly that both Jon and I feel kind of obliged to then give them some of ours… and just two sausages are not quite enough for us!
Breakfast is a tiny bit of an issue. Elisa is not a massive fan of cereals. She is kind of all right with rice krispies and curiously cinnamon but not crazy about them anyway. At the moment Eric is absolutely loving Cookie Crisp, he eats a full bowl and Elisa’s leftovers (which tend to be lots). They both turn their noses up to toast in normal sliced bread, but they like toast in baguette style bread. I make banana smoothies quite often now, as Elisa will devour them, although Eric is not such a fan. So as you can see, breakfast is a bit of an issue! I still need to find something that they both will love and eat.
(By the way, the banana smoothies are the easiest thing ever: two ripe bananas, one strawberry petit filous and milk – blitz and done! They love watching them being done too. We have made fancier versions of the smoothie in the past, with actual strawberries and cream, but this simple version is so much easier and tastes as good!)
Sleeping.
I want to say that they are still sleeping great, however in the last week or two we have had a bad spell, where either Eric or Elisa have ended up sleeping in our bed. At least they seem to take it in turns, which makes it easier. With Eric it’s not so bad, as he tends to settle back again straight away (I think he wakes because he wants mummy), but when Elisa wakes up and we bring her to our bed, she takes ages to settle back again and it’s a nightmare. She wriggles and moves around, and in more than one occasion we have woken up to find her at our feet about to fall off the bed! I am hoping that this is just a phase and they will go back to their usual sleeping through the night without even a sound!
Naps: no change since last month. Some days they are very tired and they fall asleep with me on the sofa without even trying to get the to sleep. Other times (like today) I didn’t manage to get them to sleep until twenty to four pm. They only had a short nap as a result and then they were grumpy until dinner time. But hey, I rather have them grumpy than sleeping at the table!
Development.
It is difficult to keep track of all the new things that they are doing lately, as they do so much! Jon and I are always amazed about all the new ways that they have to surprise us. They are not talking yet (they say maybe two or three words each, but you have to use your imagination to know which words they are), but they are responding very well to commands. The latest one is when I ask them to carry something to dad in the kitchen… too damn cute 🙂
As I said last month, I really believe that they are developing okay, and if they are lagging behind in any sense, I know for sure that the nursery will improve that! Yes, you heard right, they are going into nursery! Next week is their settling in week. They do one hour on Monday and they increase by an hour each day, so by Friday they do 5 hours. And then they start full time on December 4th. I am both dreading it and looking forward to it. I am sure that every other mum has been in the same situation, but that doesn’t give me any comfort!
Socialising.
Well, not so great these last few weeks. Still going to the twins club on Wednesdays as we all love it there. But I have dropped the Creation Station classes, as the twins weren’t that interested and I didn’t feel I was getting that much for my money (almost £10 every week as I was doing pay as you go. It would have been *slightly* cheaper if I had signed up for the whole term, but then I would have felt obliged to attend even when I know that the kids don’t enjoy it that much). I haven’t been to Chineham library for the last few weeks either, since the last time I went one of the ladies who works there was super rude to me and I haven’t felt like it to go. I have taken them to the playpark in the neighbourhood and walking around the bridle way very often though. In the park there are always other children and the twins interact with them (super international too, last time there were two Russian ladies, a Polish one, an Indian and me, Spanish!), and when we walk in the bridle way we always see people walking the dogs and very often we stop for a chat. Both of the kids, but especially Elisa, adore dogs. Elisa is obsessed. Every time she sees, or even hears, a dog she goes crazy with happiness. So, the big news here is that we have decided go to the Dogs Trust in the new year and see if we can re-home a suitable dog for a family with young children 🙂
Health.
A few snuffles and a bit of teething, but we haven’t had anything major lately.
Elisa’s eczema has good days and not so good days. The creams that the doctor prescribed really work well and when she has good days it is easy to forget to apply them, which is probably when she then gets not-so-good days afterwards. But still, it has never been really bad, and it is not itching her, which is the important bit, because she doesn’t scratch and doesn’t seem bothered by it at all!
I am aware that the first two or three weeks of them going into nursery are going to be bad, health wise. Everybody says this. Hopefully it won’t be that bad, though… I can handle a bit of nasty poo, but please don’t get a vomiting bug, pretty please xxx that is always nasty. The worst.
In other news, I mentioned on my last post about the *free* photoshoot that we were going to have. Well, it was a nightmare, a disaster, and such a rip off! (*the seating was free and we got a free print, but if you wanted to buy any of the images, they were crazy expensive!). Well, apart from the rip off issue, the kids weren’t in the mood after having had to wait around for almost 45 minutes. Then they didn’t want to sit there, look at the camera or even smile! Of all the photos that they had done, only two or three were any good. But then, Elisa was ill as well that day (eczema was bad and she had a bit of a temperature) so she doesn’t look good on any photos… Oh well. I ended up buying three anyway, silly me. I should have saved my money.
Here’s a “collage” of two of the three photos purchased. Eric looks great, but my poor girl looks so miserable!
