The First Tooth

For a long time now we've been expecting Alex's two bottom teeth to appear. You can see the bumps in his gums and can even see the teeth just under the surface. He's been munching on his fingers like crazy and really enjoys gnawing at a Gerber Wagon Wheel or a Gerber Biter Biscuit. However, babies definitely aren't predictable and on the morning of December 1st while Emily was biting my nose I discovered that she had cut a tooth! I guess I won't let her bite my nose (her way of kissing) for much longer!

Seven Months

The twins turned seven months old on November 18th. I meant to do a six month post for them but alas that month seems to have disappeared in to the ether. So here is where we stand at 7 months...

Eating
Both babies are now eating three meals a day and drinking about 5 to 6 bottles (5 - 6 oz) a day. Alex is the big eater. He wolfs down his food and will probably eat about 3/4 of the food. Emily has taken longer on this front and wasn't really interested in the food until recently. She is finally opening her mouth for the food but still pushes it out a bit with her tongue. I try to feed them a fruit/cereal combination in the morning and have also introduced yogurt recently. For lunch they get a cereal/vegetable combination and the same for dinner. Alex loves to munch on Gerber Wagon Wheels as well. He will grab them and put them to his mouth. He makes little satisfied noises while he is eating them too! I've put some banana and avocado pieces on his highchair tray but he wasn't very good at getting them to his mouth. I don't think it will be long though until we can start transitioning him to table food.

Sleeping
I wish I could report that the twins are sleeping through the night however we still struggle on this front. Most days they don't nap very well so they are in by about 6 most nights and usually they are quite exhausted. Sometimes Emily will sleep straight until 5 am when she wakes up for a bottle then snoozes again for another hour however the last few nights she's been waking up more often. Alex was waking up around 2 or 3 for his bottle but that has changed as well and now he has been having a bottle around 10ish then another at some point in the middle of the night. Neither of them have any teeth yet so it's possible all this new night waking is due to teething but who really knows! Lizzie started reliably sleeping through the night at 8 months so I'm hoping that they will do the same thing. I'm crossing all my fingers and toes.

Moving
I am very pleased to say that Emily is doing a great job with sitting! She has always been the stronger of the two and continues to excel at this part of development. You can now put her down sitting and walk away knowing that if she does tip over she tries to stop it so it's never a very hard fall. She's also been skooching forward when on her belly so perhaps crawling isn't far behind. She's not very interested in rolling though. We know she can physically do it but she never wants to do it. Alex is also making strides in the sitting front. His core strength has really improved and he is able to sit for a couple seconds at a time and you will see him try to balance himself. He rolls a lot when he is in his crib, mainly from front to back but also has the ability to roll from back to front but is not using it yet as a means of moving around the room, thankfully!

Communicating
Both babies make lots of noise but I wouldn't really say either is babble yet. Alex seems to have a wider variety of noises where Emily mainly makes "ah" sounds. We are working on teaching them to say "mama" and "dada" but since they have always been behind in the communication area I'm not holding my breath that it will happen soon.

Health
Alex was diagnosed with benign extra axial fluid accumulation (extra cerebral spinal fluid in between his brain and skull) and will be seeing a Boston Children's neurosurgeon on January 11th. Since they have decided it is benign I don't think any one is particularly worried however we need to follow up on it and make sure it doesn't cause any developmental issues. Emily had the Croup a couple weeks ago. Thankfully it came on in the morning after I'd already made an appointment with the pediatrician so while it was definitely scary listening to her labored breathing, it wasn't as bad as it could have been had it been the typical Croup which generally hits at night. The pediatrician gave her a dose of steroids to help lessen the inflammation which was causing the breathing issues and that helped a lot. She was very listless and clingy for a day then pretty much went back to normal. He gave us a second dose for the next day as well. Both of them have been vaccinated against H1N1 and seasonal flu as well.

You Must Have Your Hands Full

Yesterday I took all three kids to get their H1N1 vaccinations on my own. The twins were in their car seats which were snapped in to the double stroller and Lizzie walked next to the stroller holding on to a strap. It wasn't a long walk from the car to the pediatrician's office but along the way (and on the way back) I think I heard "you must have your hands full" about 20 times. No shit. Really? Do I? In fact I don't think I noticed until you pointed it out to me! :+)

All in all it went quite well. Since we were just their for the vaccinations clinic we didn't have to wait a long time and the shots/mist didn't take long either but I still found the whole situation quite stressful. I think it was more the anticipation that things would go horribly wrong then what actually happened though. Lizzie has a history of behaving like a complete monster when she goes with me for the twins appointments so I was preparing myself for that. Thankfully it didn't happen though.

So now my whole family, including Greg and myself, have been vaccinated against both H1N1 and seasonal flu. The twins still have to go back for their booster shots but I feel like I can relax a little and won't be so paranoid. Honestly I'm not afraid that the flu will cause any major problems, I'm sure they would be at the hospital before that happened but I really don't want to deal with three miserably sick kids and I don't want to be sick either. Have you ever taken care of kids when you were sick? It's horrible!

On another note, the twins are 7 months old today! I'll be back soon with an update on their progress.