Chloe and Will: ONE YEAR!

Happy (belated) birthday, Chloe and Will! We love you so!

Weight and height: Chloe is 22 lbs, 5 oz (83rd percentile) and 29.25 inches tall (52nd percentile). William is 21 lbs (44th percentile) and the same height as Chloe (25th percentile for boys). A year ago Will wasn't even on the growth charts for weight! 

Way to go, Will!

Sleeping patterns:  Knock on wood - Will is sleeping through the night more now! They still go to bed at 6 and wake up around 5:30ish. They both take a few naps throughout the day, although those naps are short at daycare. I love listening to the two of them in their room when they first wake up or when they're supposed to be napping. They chatter to each other and Chloe always makes Will laugh. They also inevitably destroy their room:  the changing pad and anything else that was on the dresser ends up on the floor, anything in their cribs (including socks) gets thrown on the floor, and Chloe knocks over the lamp on the little table by the rocker. God help us if they ever try to climb out of their cribs. As I write this, Chloe is supposed to be napping but I'm watching her run laps in her crib. Someone is clearly feeling better.  Update:  Now she's holding on to the rail, leaning back, and chanting gibberish. Go the f to sleep, girlfriend!

Eating habits:  Still no teeth for Chloe. She goes through drooly spurts and I think they're going to pop through then they don't. Who knows when those will come. Will has two teeth so he's starting to bite into things. They both eat whatever we eat, for the most part. Chloe is starting to get the hang of those puree pouches, but Will prefers to squeeze the contents onto his highchair tray. Puffs and yogurt bites reign supreme on the favorite foods list.

New discoveries they've made:  They love the sounds of items dropping to the floor, and they both are little charmers, saving their smiles and giggles for their benefit it seems. I've taken both of them to Target (Not at the same time! I'm not crazy!), and they had giant smiles on their faces whenever the cart moved.

Accomplishments: Chloe has been walking since shortly after New Year's Eve. She looks like a drunk midget. It's amazing, though, how much better she's gotten after a few weeks. Will is starting to stand on his own more without holding on to something. He wants to walk so bad, but hesitates, then drops to the ground and crawls to where he wants to go. He'll be waking very soon!

Places they went:  Our last month has been uneventful as far as trips to places. I love having both sets of grandparents close!

Special friends they've made: Dom is the favorite still; both Chloe and Will sounds like they say "Dom" sometimes, but it's hard to differentiate "DomDom" from "DaDa". Marbles is another favorite. That cat is so patient with them. I think she loves the attention.

The best part about having twins is the built-in friendship. They play together often, and I love watching them together. Sometimes their play gets rough or they steal things from each other, but most often they are giggling at each other.

Noises and babbles:  Chloe babbles all the time; she's a little chatterbug and sometimes it sounds like she's singing to herself. She likes to make this noise that's kind of like a growl so we call her Gremlin when she does that. She also makes raspberries when she's upset about something. She's done it a few times while I'm feeding her and she ends up spraying yogurt or whatever all over me.

Will is more quiet than Chloe, which has me worried a lot of the time that he's delayed. He's not far off the Ages and Stages Questionnaire for his age in communication, and I need to remember that he was almost a month early plus he's a boy. I hope I'm just being hyper-sensitive because of what I do for a living. Maybe I should cut him some slack since he's been expending so much energy jumping up to higher percentile ranks in his weight!

Firsts:
Christmas
We celebrated Christmas early with Brian's family, then spent Christmas Eve and Day with my family. Ally and Austin were in town so all the grandkids were there. Next year there will be EIGHT grandkids, with the addition of Jen and Ryan's little boy in July. Present opening was extreme chaos because all the kids opened gifts at the same time. Wrapping paper, bows, and tissue paper was flying everywhere, and I loved it. My parents made the kids a play kitchen out of their old entertainment center. It was too big to keep in the house, so the bigger kids played in the garage. We need that to happen every year! 

New Year's Eve
Babies can be so boring sometimes. The kids all went to bed at normal times. We did the countdown on Netflix for Dom, then we managed to stay up until like 11:02 so we could see the ball drop in NYC.

First Birthday Party
They LOVE cake. Their cake smashes were so much more exciting than Dom was with his cake smash (Dom didn't like his cake!). My perfect photos didn't exactly work the way I wanted it to because Will had a poopy diapy that we didn't know about until Chloe had already dug into her cake, and we think the audience scared him. Baby girl didn't care about everyone watching her, though; she had to show everyone her handfuls of cake and frosting. Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us!

Likes and Dislikes:

A few of Chloe's favorite things:
- Playing peek-a-boo. She'll pull anything over her face and pull it down again.
- Smiling, giggling, and chattering.
- Food. All of it, especially fruit.
- Her blankies. She's a big fan of Aden and Anais swaddle blankets.
- Climbing stairs and walking.
- Chewing on wipes.
- Playing in water. 

Her dislikes:
- Strangers.
- Not getting her way.

A few of Will's favorite things:
- Pooping. Dude poops all the time.
- Stealing things from his siblings while laughing a little evil laugh.
- Playing airplane. Watch for drools (he drooled in my mouth once!).
- Being tickled. He'll curl up and laugh.
- Climbing everything.
- Driving cars and trucks back and forth.
- Cheerios and Puffs.
- All electronics, especially my phone.
- Mommy milk. He rolls his eyes back when he gets a bottle.
- Playing in water.

His dislikes:
- Anything getting in his way of something he wants to do.
- Having something he's playing with or looking at taken away.

Well, this is my last monthly update. Thank you all for all the support and prayers throughout my pregnancy and this past year. Mom, Dad, Julie, and Mitch - thank you for everything you've done to help us!

I think Dom, Brian, and I surpassed whatever expectations I had in my mind for us as we ventured into life with twins. I'm so proud of the big brother Dominic is, and the father Brian is. We are a great team! I'm proud of myself for making it a year of pumping for two. Chloe and Will definitely made me feel complete and immeasurably happy. Most of all, I'm excited for what's to come. That's enough sappiness for now.

Chloe and Will: 11 Months

Just a few days late. We're in Christmas mode over here!

Weight and height:  Heavy and tall.  I found a newborn diaper in my work bag because I was going to use it for an object schedule for a student last year. I couldn't get over how tiny it was. It amazes me to think that a newborn diaper was too BIG for Will. This past year has just flown by.

Sleeping patterns:  Long daytime naps at home and sometimes at daycare. Will has started to sleep through the night a few times. The number of times he has done that probably equal the number of times that Chloe wakes up during the night. Baby girl likes her sleep like her mama.

Milk drunk Will

Goofy mornings

Eating habits:  Chloe loves stuffing. Will loves yogurt. And they both love beans, Cheerios, puffs, and yogurt bites.

Being goofy during breakfast

working on drinking from straws with their Christmas cups

A little excited about black beans

Angry because her spaghetti was gone

New discoveries they've made:  Throwing and dropping things is so fun! They've both thrown the changing pad off their dresser while in their cribs. And the space under their highchairs is covered in Cheerios.

Accomplishments: They both will stand on their own for a few moments and they love to walk around the house pushing things. Chloe has taken a few steps on her own before face planting. I can't believe they are so close to walking already!

Places they went:  Thanksgiving in Omaha then at my parents' house.

Special friends they've made:  Santa! They know him! We visited Santa at the zoo. Chloe was like, who the hell is this person holding me and started crying. Dom was such a great big brother and tried to console her. Will was so tired that he was just out of it.

Will loves Marbles. He gets so excited when she is near and he likes to grab big fistfuls of hair and cat fat and then pulls her toward him. She keeps coming back for more so she must like it. Strange cat, but I'm glad she's so good with the kids.

Noises and babbles:  They both babble quite a bit and say "Mama" and "Dada" (though they say Mama more!). I think they've both said ba for ball and mi for milk. Chloe has this fake cry that she uses to protest or if someone gets in her way. Will angry cries if you take something away from him. But he laughs at everything so that makes up for his angry cries. I love listening to them talk to each other. It's so adorable.

Firsts:
Thanksgiving
Their first Thanksgiving was more fun than Dom's because they ate a little of everything (Dom wasn't a fan of the food on his first). Chloe is obsessed with stuffing. She usually eats so daintily, picking things up with just her forefinger and thumb, but she was grabbing handfuls of stuffing and shoving them into her mouth.

Tooth
Will has two teeth that are poking through! One is about half way in. Baby teeth are so cute! 
 
Other adventures:

Their favorite place to play

Playing in water at daycare. They sent a video of Will - he loved it!

Baby girl creeping in the background

They said she looked like she was sleeping and when they came over to take a pic of her she just popped right up.

Dot painting with Uncle JD

Do you know where the weight room is?

Merry Christmas!

Chloe and Will: 10 Months

If you would have told me a year ago today how much I'd love being a mom of twins, I would have said you're crazy (actually multiple people told me I would and I thought they were slightly crazy). I LOVE being Chloe and Will's mom. They're the best. And these two goofballs make me love Dominic and Brian even more because I love watching all of them play and take care of each other. I love my circus.

Dad picked out the socks and Mars wanted to photo bomb

Not amused.

This picture kills me! I think she was mad about Marbles coming near her. Clearly not amused here.

Meanwhile, Will is looking all GQ.

Weight and height: I don't know...I forgot to weigh them. But they're both about 27" tall. I did remember to do that part.

Sleeping patterns:  Oh, Will, will you ever sleep through the night consistently?  Teething and colds have led to more frequent times awake.

Eating habits:  They eat pretty much anything now, which is awesome. Will doesn't like baby food any more, really, and just holds out for the good stuff. He loves to just shove food by the fistfuls into his mouth, but about 3/4ths of what he attempts to shove in his mouth ends up stuck to his clothes or on the floor (cue cat obesity). In contrast, Chloe daintily picks up foods one at at time. Puffs are considered baby gold. It's hilarious to watch them attack the puffs.

You guys - I have been pumping for TEN months. That's over 300 days, times that by about 4.5 hours per day and that's about 1350 hours. I have pumped in my car, while driving, during conference calls, during meetings (thanks to my lovely team members who don't make me leave!), through two bouts of food poisoning, through the most awful stomach virus of my life, through c-section recovery, on the bathroom floor at Carver Arena because my car adapter broke, in front of my super conservative grandparents...Mostly I pump in two places:  Sitting on my bed at home and in my team leader's office (thank you so much, Stacy!). I'm still pumping three times a day, and will start weaning off my lunchtime pump in the next couple weeks. Exclusively pumping has been such a difficult journey, but I'm so glad I knew about this option so that I could/can still breastfeed my babies. I'll always answer anyone's questions about EPing because I hope that more mothers will know that there is an option if direct nursing doesn't work out. Brian asked me the other day what made me set my goal at a year, and I think it was because I needed to give my tiny winter babies every health benefit I could give them.

New discoveries they've made: FOOD.

Eating noodles, her favorite food

Loves to eat!

Accomplishments: We have stair-climbers now!  Chloe is super fast at going up. Down, well, she just dives off the edge and slides down on her belly face first. Thankfully we only have seven stairs...

Places they went: We had forced family fun at Night Eyes. It went well until Dom decided to be a toddler asshole at the end and refused to take a family picture. Dude should probably nap still but oh well.

Chloe loved watching D jump in the bounce house. Will just wanted his milk.

No one was here taking pics and as soon as we tried everyone was lining up behind us. WTF, people.

Our life is just chaos.

Tired.

Special friends they've made:  Their lead teacher in their room at daycare calls them her shadows. I don't blame them because she's the best.

Noises and babbles:  Will is finally talking more. Baby boy had me all worried that he was going to be behind in verbal communication, but as soon as I wrote all my concerns down on their Ages and Stages Questionnaire for our pediatrician, he started babbling more. He just likes to keep me on my toes.

Chloe never stops chattering. It's hilarious to listen to her talk on and on. Both of them sign more every now and then, and Chloe signs milk sometimes (but usually just says "mi"). Will's favorite word is "Mama" - he is a Mama's boy through and through and I'm not ashamed to say I love it.

Firsts:
Halloween
Their first Halloween was so fun. One of the first pins I found when scouring Pinterest for twins information last fall when I was preggers was a pin of twins dressed as chicks. It was so adorable so of course that was their costume. Yes, I had it planned for over a year. I absolutely loved watching them crawl around our living room in their costumes while molting all over.

Pumpkin heads

Jailbirds for daycare Halloween

Slept pretty much the entire time we trick or treated

Farmer Dom's harvest

Moving
They both started crawling two days after the last post. They both walk while holding on to our hands. Will loves walking. Chloe tends to drop after a few steps. Will's favorite thing to do is to stand and shake the gate. They both love to maneuver around whatever we put at the bottom of the stairs to sneak up them. Stinkers.

Race
We did the Tour de Lights Family Night. Fun until the babies decided they were tired and were sick of sitting in the stroller in the cold.

Dom got to hold Thor's hammer!

Other adventures:
Our daycare takes pics sometimes and I love seeing how happy they are at "school"!

Watching Blaze and the Monster Machines before school

Mean mugging

Celebrating their cousin's birthday

Attacking Dom's toys. D wasn't too happy about sharing.

Snuggling and watching Rudolph

Brian went to a Hawks game and I had to fend for myself with the three kids. Each time I pumped all three were climbing on me. Not pictured: Dom lying on my legs.

Watching big brother play outside

Sharing puffs

I can't wait for Will and Chloe's first Thanksgiving and Christmas! Holidays with just Dom are awesome, so now it should be even more so!

P.S. GO HAWKS!

P.P.S. I wrote this post over a week ago...So Thanksgiving already happened and we discovered that Chloe LOVES stuffing. Pictures to come in the next post!

P.P.P.S. GO HAWKS! Can you believe they're undefeated?!?! What an amazing season!