Sunday, January 11, 2009

Look Ma No Hands!

Earlier this week, Olivia started experimenting with standing all on her own!! Each time she does it, she seems to stand for a little bit longer.

She has also started pushing her grocery cart, that she got for Christmas, around the house! Pictures/video of that to come later!

Alex tried...

.....to root on the New York Giants for a victory over the Eagles today. But unfortunately they lost!



Even though they are knocked out of the playoffs...Alex will be sporting his Eli Manning jersey through the superbowl!

Who does Alex look like?

I did a post a while back about how much Olivia looks like Ben, which was confirmed when I saw baby pictures of Ben.

When Alex was first born, I thought he resembled my dad a lot. And as he gets older I see a lot of similarities between him and my brother, Dave and I think there are a few similarities with me as well (the eyes in particular). Here are a few pictures of my brother as a baby at about the same age Alex is now.



And here is me at about 8 or 9 months old.


And for good measure, here is Alex.


Nothing gets in Olivia's way!

Over the last 9 months we have always noticed, that Olivia is a very determined little girl. When she crawls, she crawls with a purpose. She knows exactly what she wants, she crawls until she gets where she wants to go, and nothing gets in her way!!


Now that she is experimenting with standing and walking, the same thing applies. If there is something she wants she goes after it and once again, nothing gets in her way. Not even Alex!

Then there came the toy bin!! We have a little basket in our living room where we keep all the toys, and Ben found Olivia like this on Wednesday afternoon:

We thought she was reaching for something and went a little too far in and got stuck. So before we got her out of course we got the camera and snapped the picture! But once we got her out she went straight back to the toy bin.

So we just let her go because if we stopped her she would just go back and she seemed happy with what she was doing. Next thing I saw she was laying in the bin and then got herself seated and played in there for a while.

Happy 9 Months Old!

Alex and Olivia turned 9 months old a few days after Christmas, so this post is a few days (ok maybe weeks) old, but they just had their 9 month check up last Monday due to the holidays. Ben and I find ourselves talking a lot lately how we cannot believe the kids are 9 months old already and about how fast they have grown! They really are starting to look like little toddlers rather than babies.

The hardest thing about having twins lately has been trying to figure out how to get them from the car into places. Alex grew out of his infant car seat about a month ago, so that meant the trips into day care involved carrying Olivia's infant car seat in one hand, and carrying Alex under my arm! Not always an easy feat, but it did the job.

Then over Christmas, Olivia seemed to be getting tight in her car seat - - which I was constantly telling her that she had to learn how to walk before we took her out of it so that we would not have to deal with how to get them both around. Well after a couple of days of her crying every time we put her in the car seat since the straps just seemed to tight, we came to grips with the fact that she had grown out of her car seat. This was fine, at the time, because Ben and I were both home from work and anytime we went out we each would carry a kid. But then as the days grew near to go back to work we had to figure out how we were going to get the kids into day care. The logical choice is the stroller, but since I do drop off and Ben does pickup this meant we would have to leave the stroller there, and then switch it from one car to the other EVERY night - - what a pain! (And I guarantee there would be one night where we would forget!). So we bought a single stroller, so Ben could put Alex in the stroller and carry Olivia out. Day care issue solved.....but what about the dr's office??

I took them to their 9 month appointment myself since Ben had school, and I was stressed all morning about how I would get them inside since I did not think they had a ramp to use the stroller. I called on my way and they said they do have a ramp but it goes into one of the exam rooms (the office is in a house), so to call when I got there and they would make sure there is nobody in the room and they would let me in. As I drove in, I saw the ramp and was not convinced the stroller would fit up the ramp, and the more I thought about it the office is so tight, I was not sure how I would maneuver the stroller through the office. So onto plan B.....I put Alex in the Baby Bjorn and I carried Olivia by hand. It was a lot but it worked out pretty well, so well in fact this is how I have been bringing them into daycare!

So onto their appts....they went really well. It was definintely hard keeping two kids on the table while they wanted to roll off, or fall off! They were both sitting in their diapers on the table waiting for the doctor to come in and Alex was just playing with his belly - - he kept pulling at the skin, it was so funny! I think his belly was all red by the time the doctor came in.

Alex is now up to 20 lbs 4 oz (50th percentile), and 28 1/4 inches long (50th percentile), and Olivia is 16 lbs 12.5 oz (25th percentile), and 27 3/4 inches long (55th percentile). As you can see their lengths are either the same, a little shorter, or a little longer than 6 months, but that is because I knew they screwed them up last time! Alex's head is in the 90th percentile and Olivia's is in the 30th percentile (YAY we have increased from the 25th!!!). But overall they are both doing really well! Here are a few recent pictures of them!