Month in Review

This past month has been a pretty busy month especially with our trip to Michigan, the kids starting day care, and Ben getting ready to go back to work. But Alex and Olivia have been keeping us busy and are growing so much every day. It is hard to believe they will be five months old this Thursday. I suppose when you are so busy the time seems to fly by so quickly.

Here are a few highlights from the last month:

We decided to bring out the highchairs in preparation for feeding the kids baby food. Although we won't start feeding them baby food until they are 6 months old, we thought it would be a good idea for them to get use to their highchairs. So every night when we eat dinner the kids sit at the table with us in their highchairs. Olivia does not seem to mind the high chair, while Alex does not like it at all. I am sure once he learns that he will get food while sitting in the chair (he loves to eat) he will like it much better. But for right now, he typically does not last more than 5 or 10 minutes in his high chair without a meltdown.

Alex and Olivia have discovered that they have feet. They love to play with them every day and Olivia is even starting to figure out how to get them in her mouth. The picture below is not the best, but here is Alex hanging out in his crib one morning fascinating himself with his feet.

As mentioned in a prior post, Olivia now sleeps on her belly most nights. And she even scoots around her crib while sleeping. We decided to take the bumpers out of her crib in fear that she would push her face up against the bumper and would not be able to breathe. However with removing the bumpers comes consequences.....she flings her pacifier out of the crib (I once found it underneath the middle of the crib), and she gets her limbs stuck in between the crib rails (check out her feet below).

Olivia has also developed the habit where she likes to sleep with her butt up in the air. Ben and I are constantly discussing how it just does not seem like a comfortable position.

Finally, the kids have started taking a liking to Dudley. When Ben plays fetch with Dudley, the kids watch Dudley and laugh at the whole process. And as of late, Olivia has started to reach out for Dudley and try to pet him. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures or videos of this yet, but stay tuned!

The Dominant Twin

A little while ago, Ben read an article about twins and the article talked about how in a set of twins there is typically one that is dominant over the other. Over the last couple of weeks we
have been slowly learning that it appears to be true with the Jarboe set of twins. Olivia seems to
be emerging at the dominant twin (it might just be because she is moving more than Alex but
she is definitely the dominant twin right now). Check out the evidence.

Olivia telling Alex to get out of the way by kicking him in the face:

Olivia discovering that she can pull Alex's hair.....

And finally, Olivia putting the choke hold on Alex.....

If this is what Olivia is doing at about 5 months of age, I can only imagine what it will be like when they get older. I think we might have our hands full...which shouldn't be a surprise to me as I did similar things to my brother when I was a kid (and I was 3 years younger!).

Technical Difficulties

I apologize to all of you who have been eagerly awaiting new posts on Alex and Olivia. I have a lot of ideas for posts because so many things have been happening. However, every time I sit down to do a post we have internet issues and I cannot load pictures for some reason.

So please stay tuned, hopefully we will get things working soon!

Our Week in Michigan

After the long drive, we had a really good time in Micigan. We were there for a week and it was really nice to have a few extra hands to help out with the kids. My parents helped a lot with the feedings and they also gave Ben and I the opportunity to get out and do a lot of things by ourselves. We spent a day shopping at outlet stores about an hour a way from my parents, and we also made a stop at Bronners, the world's largest Christmas store. We also went out to breakfast one morning, and went to a Detroit Tigers game. Also, on our last day there my parents said they would take care of the kids in the morning and would let us sleep in as long as we could in preparation for our overnight drive. So Ben and I slept in to 11 a.m. - - it was great! I cannot remember the last time I slept that late! So needless to say Ben and I had a good time.

The kids also had a good time. Olivia learned to roll over shortly before the trip so she became a rolling machine while in Michigan. She even learned to roll over in the pack n play while she was sleeping. She finds it quite entertaining, but we don't when she gets angry from being on her belly and does not know how to roll back over. We end up having to go flip her every time she gets angry which typically ends up being at around 3 or 4 in the morning. She now sleeps on her belly every night! Alex learned to roll from his belly to his back while we were in Michigan too! He only did it a few times. He has not rolled from back to belly yet but it is not too far off. The kids also got to spend some quality time with family while they were there. They got to meet their Great Grandma Krajczynski and got to see their Uncle Dave again.

Here they are with their Great Grandma:
And here they are with Uncle Dave. Olivia enjoyed her time so much with Uncle Dave that when Grandma Krausman took her from him to feed her, she cried so hard that you would have thought someone hurt her in some way.

Road Trip

This is a little overdue but Ben and I have been spending the last week recovering from our trip to Michigan.

Before the kids were born, we decided that we would take a road trip this summer to Michigan to see my family as we had not been to Michigan in 2 1/2 years. Many people thought we were crazy for taking 2 little ones on an 11 hour road trip but we figured it would be easier than flying considering all the things we would need to bring with us on the plane.

So on Friday, August 1st after we fed the kids at 7 p.m. the last minute touches on packing the van (thank goodness for the van - - it was packed full!) and left the house at 8:15 p.m. for our drive to Michigan. At times we thought we might be crazy for driving through the night. However, we figured it would be easiest on the kids if they spent the 11 hours in their car seats during the time they are use to sleeping since they usually fall asleep in the car anyway. Plus, we did not want to stop and feed the kids every 4 hours as we would have had to do if we drove during the day as that would have just made the trip extra long.

The ride to Michigan went pretty smoothly and at times was pretty interesting! This is what we were experiencing at 3 a.m.....I hope you don't get sick from watching the video but if you listen closely you will hear Olivia talking away...


I am not sure if she was awake or just talking in her sleep.

A few times we had to turn on lullabies to calm Alex down to get him to go back to sleep (the lullabies were not very helpful in keeping the drivers awake)....we realized he was just unhappy with his wet diaper as usually he can sleep through the night but I think it is more uncomfortable to sit in a wet diaper rather than lay in one all night.

On the way to Michigan we had to stop to feed them just about 45 minutes from my parent's house and on the way home we did not feed them until we got home.

The road trip was a big success - - the kids were so good in the car. We plan on attempting the road trip again next summer to Indiana.