Solids!...did not go so well.

 If you have a child, at some point you will have to feed that child real food. If you have not yet had the pleasure of experiencing this day in your own life, please learn from the mistakes that we made today so that you may actually enjoy this experience.

1. Agree on who will put together the high chairs, and then agree that everyone should read the directions to put together said high chairs. I won't go in to details on this topic to protect the innocent...but I will say that no one in this house is innocent on this topic.

2. This is a milestone moment. You're going to want pictures of it, right? Make sure the camera battery is charged. Especially if you are the one that knows that you use the camera every.single.day. and may have never charged the battery since you bought it.

3. Ideally, someone will be the feeder, and someone will be the photographer. It's easier to feed a baby than to take good pictures, so if you are the most experienced party in both of these areas, you should be the photographer and your spouse, by default, becomes the feeder. (We actually did this correctly.)

4. If you allow your husband to feed your baby for the first time, and you are a bit of a Type A personality like I am, be prepared to give him instructions on how to do it that are on par with the instructions needed to build an airplane. If you don't do that...blame yourself when your tiny baby is making sad faces at you over a giant mouthful of food.

I could actually describe the events of our day, but I think these pictures speak for themselves. First up, Abby, then Jake.

Staring down the bowl...

What's happening? This looks good!

Okay, you're coming in a little strong.

Uh, I was not prepared for this.

Mommy HELP!!!!!

Waaahhhh what did he just do to me waaaahhhh!!

I have no interest in what is happening here.

Still no interest.

Still no interest.

Are you watching this? He is literally shoving this spoon in my mouth.

NothankyouIdon'twantthisinmymouthplease

Soooo I'll just let it all fall out.

AAAAAAAND scene. My camera died, I realized that no one was strapped in to their high chairs correctly, everyone started crying, and then someone read the clock wrong, and then someone else thought it was almost nap time, and the comedy of errors continued until it actually WAS nap time, and every living thing in our house slept for an hour and a half. And THAT was the best part of trying real food today! Oh, and somewhere in there, Ollie ate food from Jake's bowl. It was avocado and breast milk, and yes I tasted it, and yes it was good so I didn't blame him, but I was not happy about it.

Some adorableness from the past few days to prove that it's not all rough stuff around here:

Six months old

Jake and Abby are six months old! I saw a commercial the other day where someone said "you only have a baby for a year". NO. FALSE. I will have babies forever. I can't handle them turning in to toddlers, I'm not ready.

We went for our six month shots on Monday and GOOD LORD was it awful. Last month they only got Synagis, but this time they got everything under the sun, a total of 4 shots AND an oral vaccine AND a finger prick to test their hemoglobin that left Abby's hand looking like she was in a horror movie. They both screamed bloody murder basically the entire time we were at the doctor's office, then came home, slept for almost 5 hours, woke up for an hour, slept for another hour, woke up for an hour...then slept for 13 hours. Madness. I felt bad for them at the time, but ever since then they have been super cranky and squawky so my sympathies have worn off.

We got another great report from the pediatrician, and everyone is growing growing growing. Abby was 12 pounds even, and 26.5 inches long - she grew 2.5 inches in the last month!! Crazy. She is now 1% for weight on the growth charts, and 77% for height. Jake was 14 pounds, 10 ounces and 27.5 inches long - 5% for weight, 86% for height. Tall skinny babies! On Valentine's Day we are going back to the NICU for a follow up clinic where they'll see one of their old neonatal doctors, physical therapy, speech therapy, and a bunch of other people to see how they're developing. I'm happy that we will have them as good success stories for 31 week babies, so when other women who are in the place I was last summer waiting for preemies look up what to expect for 31 weekers, we are helping to have a good story to tell them. 

Here is our routine these days - I like to do this every once in awhile because some day soon I think I will look back with great nostalgia on the amount of naps that were taken during the day!

7:00am wake up, 7:30am breakfast bottles, 8:15am back to sleep for our first nap
11:00am wake up, 11:30am lunch bottles, play until nap at 1:00pm
2:00pm wake up, 2:30pm afternoon bottles, play until last nap at 4:00pm
5:00pm wake up, play and/or bath (yeah, still not doing this often enough) until last bottles and everyone asleep by 7:00pm

I would say this schedule works really well about 50% of the time, another 25% of the time Jake cuts one of the naps too short for Abby's taste, and the other 25% of the time Jake cuts EVERY nap too short for Abby's taste and then we have lots of tears around bed time! We're about to start tweaking it a little because we got the go ahead to start solids - so exciting! So we're going to start with avocado on Sunday (so that Jeff can be home to see it) and see how they do. I predict Jake will LOVE it, and Abby will smile a lot but nothing will end up in her mouth. We shall see.

With Jeff working 6 days a week and sick recently, I have basically been taking care of the babies almost non stop for the last 3 weeks. To keep from going crazy, I have swallowed my germ paranoia and taken them out for some adventures - to Carter's one day, to Baby Gap another. I find it's easier to get out of the house with them if I have retail therapy as a motivator. They nap in the car, they don't fuss in the stroller, and so far no one has gotten sick, so it's working for us. I'm still going to avoid grocery stores and malls, but an empty store in the middle of the day seems pretty safe from a germ standpoint, so I think everyone will survive if we get out every once in awhile.

Finally, everyone has started rolling all over the place, and Jake especially is trying to crawl SO hard it's hilarious to watch. I feel like I can see the minutes of having tiny babies slip by so quickly, so I am trying to enjoy every one of them!! Here's some pictures from the last month:

Hmph.

Dear Abby,
You are making me look like a fool on the internet! Why you chose last night for the longest craziest crying spell of your short life is beyond me. Also...NOT cool baby. Not cool at all. But thank you for being very sweet again today.

Dear Jake,
No gloating. You totally started it and you know it.

P.S. I returned the ponies today.

Thank you

Dear Jake and Abby,
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for deciding that you would start sleeping 12-13 hours a night uninterrupted just in time for Daddy's busy season. Have you noticed how I am super fun and patient and awesome every day now? It's because I'm not tired! I get tons and tons of sleep every night! I can stay up late watching TV and cuddling with Ollie and shopping online (sorry Jeff!) and not worry about sleeping every single second I can. And you are still taking 3 naps during the day! They're getting shorter but I'm totally cool with it, because I love that you can stay awake longer and enjoy it. Your timing for this whole learning to sleep all night thing could not be better. We love you for it. Everyone gets a pony.
Love,
Mommy

Our old home away from home

Jeff is traveling a few days this week, so of course this morning I realized that my pump broke and I would need to visit the lactation consultant at the hospital to get a new one. (Jeff refers to my pump as "my best friend" and it's not far from the truth - I was legitimately panicky at the thought of a day without it. I'm weird like that.) So, off we went to CDH to this afternoon to exchange my pump.

Because I don't take the babies out in public a lot, it's still surprising to me that the double stroller attracts so much attention. I've never really been a baby person - it would never occur to me to stop to look at a baby on the street, or to ask someone what their baby weighs or eats, and even now unless it's a baby I am related to or almost related to (Allie and Jess, talking about your kids) I'm not interested in holding the baby. ESPECIALLY now - I get enough baby holding at home! So it's always unexpected to me that there are so many baby people in the world, and they go freaking nuts when they see twins. Right now it seems a little strange. I am sure by the end of this summer it will drive me insane, like when people thought it was okay to touch my belly while I was pregnant (hello?! NO! Not okay!).

I was super excited that the first person we saw when we went up to the Mother Baby floor was one of our old NICU primary nurses! She recognized me right away (bonus), told me how great I looked (double bonus), AND remembered Jake and Abby (ding ding ding for the win)! It was so much fun to chat with her for a few minutes about how they're doing and what they're up to these days. Also, they were totally adorable, and I was so proud that they didn't immediately barf on themselves or start screaming when I was trying to show them off. While we were waiting for my new pump I saw a few more nurses that I recognized from my time at CDH last summer, and it was so neat to see how excited they were to meet the babies. What was just a random errand turned out to be really fun, so it was a great day.

As we approach Jake and Abby's six month birthday, I've been thinking about all of the things I have learned in the past six months. Like, the sound of a pacifier hitting the crib when you are steps away from it can be a noise worse than nails on a blackboard! It was just about one year ago today that we found out we were going to be having a baby, and if you had told me then what a roller coaster ride we were in for over the next 12 months, I would not have believed you. Now I can tell the difference between their cries on the monitor, and when they're bored, and when they're getting tired, and the things that will definitely make them throw up (bottles before tummy time are like beer before liquor around here). Every once in awhile they'll do something so them and I'll laugh and say, "I knew you were going to do that! I didn't meet you yesterday!" but sometimes it feels like it. I can't believe how fast the time is going by!

In other news, *sniff sniff*, I think we are approaching the end of the days of the babies sharing a room. Jake isn't as great a napper as Abby is, and the result is that he wakes her up sometimes. It's nothing unbearable, but if we have room for them to be split up and they sleep better that way, why not? So we're going to work on that in the coming weeks.

If you've made it this far in my rambling post, here's your reward!

I can't get enough of these sweet faces!

I'm going to start showing people this picture when they ask what Ollie thinks of the babies...

...or I could always show them this one.

Jake: Is The Bachelor really going to pick THAT girl?! Abby: Yep. Dumb.