Nine Months

And four days, but who's counting? [Points finger at self and mouths, "Me!"]

Let's just jump right in with the big news, shall we?

The twins are Sleeping Through The Night.

Ohhhhh yeaaaaaaaaaah!

Maybe not every night, but we're coming up on about a week of the most uninterrupted sleep I've had in...um...well...[Scratches head in confusion.] about 14 or 15 months. Most nights they go to sleep between 6:30 to 8:00 and wake up once at 11 for one last round of milk. Then they sleep until 5:30 am and will often nurse and then go back to sleep until 7:30 or 8:00 am. One night this past week, they slept from 7 pm 'til 7 am. It was the most incredible thing ever! Of course, I didn't go to bed at 7 pm and thus take advantage of 12 potential hours of sleep, but maybe some day I will!

"Psssh! What you so excited 'bout sleep for when you can play wif me?!"

Logan does have a good point. He and Emma are ridiculously cute. Massive levels of cuteness! They are a lot of fun to play with when I sit on the floor with them. They crawl all over me and it feels rather like having two large puppies yanking and tugging at me. Except that these puppies can giggle and babble "Mom-mom-mom! Da-da-da!". They also squinch up their eyes when they smile at you and bounce up and down as they practice standing.

"Are you callin' me a puppy?"

Logan is now a power crawler and can go really fast. We have tried to race the twins, but they keep getting distracted by toys or kitties or dustballs along the way. I think Logan is faster, since he doesn't do the funny crab crawl that Emma does, but since they won't race in a straight line, we'll never know.

On your mark...get set...Emma! There's no grappling in racing!

"Mommy, you not 'cuze me of cheatin', are you?" Blink. Blink. "I not ever cheat."

And they're off! But wait! Logan is distracted by a blade of grass.

"Mommy! Look! Doggie!" Nyeeerrrooooow! Emma takes advantage of Logan's distraction to pull ahead.

"Ooooh! Kitty?"

If you look at the above picture, you'll see Emma's left leg in a semi-standing position and her right leg tucked under. That's still how she crawls.

We were wondering if she was going to beat Caitlin's record for first steps: 9 months and 3 days, but, unfortunately, Emma missed her cut off date (June 30th to tie, June 29th to break the record). Looks like Caitlin retains the title of Undisputed First Walker in the family. Emma has been practicing standing up, pulling up, jiggling up and down and free standing, but still no solo steps. She likes to hold onto our fingers and cruise around, whenever possible. Right after we got home from visiting Caitlin at Grammy's house, Logan stood on his own for twelve seconds. I counted. Then, thunk! right into a sitting position. Perhaps he's planning on lapping Emma and will walk before she does?

"Heh heh heh! You never knows, do you?"

Caitlin gives Logan pointers on early walking.

The twins are both eating regular food like champs. Logan is still clearly more interested in eating than in nursing, while Emma is the reverse. However, both like cake and cobbler. They're always interested in trying out new flavors. Like door screen.

"Mmmm. Tastes...rubbery. Maybe I stick to meeyulks?"

Oh, did I mention that Emma is the first one to crawl right towards trouble? Yeah. We've starting calling her Screaming Goat. If there's a single piece of paper left in the room that she is in, she will find it, shred it and eat it. Books, newspapers, drawings, book covers, doesn't matter. Emma is willing to taste test all of it.

Logan, on the other hand, we call Angry Monkey. If you set him down in his highchair and there's no food on it immediately, he gets really upset and won't stop hollering until you stick food into his mouth and switch him over from screaming to eating.

"Not my fault service is terruhbulls at you house. You should maybe work on dat."

Life with twins is still like being stuck in a Baby Blender. Once they're awake it's Go! Go! Go! until naptime or bedtime. You go from waking-changing-feeding-changing-clean up-play time-fussing-screaming-naptime without any down time. I find that there's no time to eat or drink (They keep grabbing my glass.), sit at the computer and blog (They keep trying to type.), or even read (Emma the Goat tries to eat my book!). Those of you that can nurse and read at the same time? You don't know how lucky you are! All of my projects, baking, cooking, cleaning, gardening, farming, etc. all have to be squeezed into the small amount of time they spend napping or else I have to wait until they fall asleep for the night and hope there's still enough light left outside to work in. It also means that there are a lot of half finished projects around my house and the weeds...the weeds! [Sounds of weeping.]

One interesting new skill that popped up this weekend was pointing.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! A plane! No, it really is a bird.

No, not her! Emma! Emma has started pointing and gesturing. Being the well trained parents that we are, we spend all of our time guessing what she's pointing at and naming it. Who knows what she is really pointing at or trying to tell us, but by golly! we're gonna tell her over and over and over again that that is Daddy/kitty/Mommy/a nose/a car. We've also been working on a few words in Baby Sign Language since that worked so well for Caitlin and seemed to help her be a lot less frustrated while she was still pre-verbal.

"What's da sign for 'Hey, doggie! Gimme a ride!'?"

Early sharing also appears to be starting. We were at dinner recently and Logan offered Emma a bite of his bread, then took a bite himself and offered her another bite. It was really cute and Emma appreciated Logan's thoughtfulness, right up until he poked her in the eye with soggy, disintegrating Italian bread. Yum!

"I knowed he meaned well, but next time I going to hold da bread."

And that, my friends, is Life With Twins: Ninth Month edition. It gets a little easier each month and the sleep! The sleep is wonderful!

The End.
[Pinchy! Pinchy!] Some tushies are too cute to resist.