Hello! We are getting very near the TWO YEAR mark! I can’t believe it! But before we reach that milestone, I leave you with a summary of the last month:
What a great month. It’s like we pressed a RESET button on the kids whilst on holiday, as since we came back they’ve been behaving super well. They are eating well, sleeping great and being “generally” quite well behaved. I am honestly very pleased with this sudden change, since it had been such a horrible winter. I know most of these new changes are triggered by the better weather and the lighter evenings. We go out more during the day, so we burn more calories: hence being hungrier and sleeping better.
Here I come:
Feeding.
We are getting very near of dropping the morning bottle of milk. We give them only a bit anyway, but more often than not (and especially Elisa) will not drink much at all. I am sure in the next weeks or so we can just get them ready for breakfast straight away. Breakfast is normally cereal and toast, although we vary the type of toast quite often. Sometimes it’s just butter, others butter and jam, other times it’s crumpets or fruity loaf. The crumpets I have found to be quite hit and miss. Some days they will devour them and other days they’ll just lick the butter and leave the crumpet.
They have started eating sandwiches too. They have never been great with sandwiches in the past, but in the last few weeks they are eating them quite well. I think this is a direct consequence of nursery and I am very glad that it is happening. Especially because in the last few weekends we have gone to Wellington Country Park or Manydown and taken a packed lunch with us, and sandwiches are always a staple of our packed lunches.
Dinners are also a bit better lately too. Eric has been consistently eating more meat and veg, although he still has days when he won’t eat much at all. They always eat dessert though, and I suppose that helps him getting a bit fuller before bed. Dessert is more often than not just fruit, any variety of melon being the great favourite, and petit filous. We sometimes have chocolate mousse or similar, but not too often at all.
The bottle at night for Eric is still essential. He normally finishes the whole thing, and them he will take Elisa’s leftovers. Elisa is drinking less and less each day. Just this week she’s left the bottle almost untouched every night. She is ready to be put in her cot by 7:45 every night. Eric takes longer and goes to bed at around 8:30.
Sleeping.
Oh my gosh. You’re not going to believe this, but Eric has not waken up and come to our bed at all since we came back from holiday. And Elisa was feeling poorly one night and slept with us. But that is it. I still can’t believe it. I’ll keep my fingers crossed because I love having my evenings back!
As I was saying before I think it’s all due to the fact that with the better weather we are going out more. I mean, we go to the park at least once a day, sometimes twice. And we now have all kinds of garden toys as well, so if for whatever reason I don’t fancy going out, we can always burn some energy in our own back garden.
The naps are more or less the same. The only difference is that they seem to be sleeping later. They can easily go until 1:30 or 2 before they will nap. And the other day (when I locked my house keys in the car and couldn’t leave the house) they didn’t have a nap at all (although I must say that then both fell asleep at the table during dinner – bless them). I still have to take them in the car and then transfer them back into the house, and they do sleep for a good hour and a half, and some days even two hours. What annoys me a bit is that when they go to nursery they seem to be asleep by 12:30! *ok, maybe not Eric, he is asleep more like at 1:00.
My concern is that if they don’t nap until 2pm and then sleep for two hours, they won’t wake up until 4, which is only 3 and a half hours before we start the bedtime routine. I like them being awake for longer than that before bed, so they are really tired by the time bedtime arrives.
Development.
Well, Eric is almost properly talking now. Well, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but he’s getting there. His favourite sentence is “what’s that”? He asks that ALL. THE. TIME. ABOUT. EVERYTHING. And if you don’t answer straight away, he gets so annoyed! It’s actually so sweet… He is really into colours and he can identify and say white, black and purple. He can also say blue, yellow, pink, grey and brown, but he doesn’t identify them 100% of the time. He struggles to say green, red and orange, but he’s getting almost there with green.
Elisa has JUST now started repeating more words and if you listen carefully you can almost make out what she’s saying, but she’s more behind than Eric. She’s probably where Eric was three months ago. We are actually going to attend a free NHS consultation on speech next week, as I would like to know what more I can do to help her. We are weaning her off her dummy (or bee-bee, like she calls it) and she is doing quite well. She has had a couple of “regression” days, when she’s asked for it a bit more, but generally she’s doing quite well without it.
Another big development is climbing. They can now climb any playground “frame” without any assistance. They have been doing this for a few weeks and I didn’t think much of it, until I met at the park with a mum whose son is a month older than the twins and he wouldn’t even approach the ladder to the frame without the help of mum AND dad. When this lady saw Elisa climbing unassisted she was half terrified – half impressed.
Going up and down the stairs at home is also being mastered at the moment. Going up is quite good and coming down is getting much better. They still need a hand for a bit of support but other than that they can pretty much do it on their own. If only the banister was a bit lower…
But their favourite thing at the moment is singing songs. Oh my goodness, they are always singing! Most of the songs they sing I have no idea what they are, and Elisa has got a favourite one that she always sings that I need to ask the nursery about, because she has definitely not learnt it from us. But apart from the mysterious ones, their favourite one varies between Baa Baa Black Sheep and Old McDonald had a farm. Old McDonald is actually great fun to sing, because we also practice the animals’ names at the same time. We play this game in which I pause and point at one of them at a time to tell me the name of the animal, and they love it. Elisa tends to say dog and cat only. Eric, however, ventures more into the cow and horse 🙂
Socialising.
We’ve been to twins club just once in the last month (because of Easter holidays and also because of the change of time of the club) and as usual they’ve been great with other kids around. What I have noticed, though, is that if they go somewhere where there are lots of other kids, they are not bothered and will play nicely with each other and with other kids if they have to. However, if I take them to someone’s house and there’s a kid there already, they will freeze and not do anything. That has happened twice in the last couple of weeks. They just stand there. Not doing anything. Totally weird.
They are getting on very well at nursery. We haven’t had any calls to pick them up because of ill health in the last month / month and a half, and every time I go to pick them up the carers say that they have had a great day and played very nicely.
Health.
The health front has been almost perfect in the last month. The only bad thing is that Elisa has been teething quite badly in the last week or so, which made her very uncomfortable one night (and had to sleep with us – although she took hours to settle again) and has been a bit grumpy during the day on a few occasions. You can see her chewing on anything and touching her mouth all the time. I just wished those teeth came out already! They seem to be taking a long time…
Other than that we have only had a bit of a runny nose, but I think that is just normal at this time of the year.
We have been seriously struggling to get Eric to brush his teeth. The only trick that we have found which *almost* works is giving him an adult toothbrush. And even then, he’ll only suck on the toothpaste and not brush his teeth. This will have to be brought up with the health visitor at their 2 year old check up.
In other news.
Our family has got a new member again!! On Wednesday this week we adopted little Pepper, a gorgeous tabby and white female cat. I say “little” because compared to our TomCat she is tiny. But she is ever so friendly, and by the end of the first day, she had completely settled in the house. She is cautious around the twins, although we are teaching them to be very gentle with her and they are listening. They are still getting used to the idea of having a cat in the house (unfortunately they were too young when Tommy passed away to remember him) and they get super excited every time she enters the room. She is definitely used to having kids around as she doesn’t bat an eyelid when they are running around her. We are so happy that she’s with us! and I am super excited that the kids have a pet again.
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And this is it for now. Next month we will be celebrating their birthday! My mum and niece will be coming over, like last year, but we are also throwing a party with friends as it’s so difficult getting to see them often these days!
I leave you with a photo of the other day, when we went out with the skateboards. The twins absolutely loved them, and Elisa got the hang of kneeling on her board pretty straight away. Daddy was very proud.
