a sweet interaction

i caught the girls squealing and giggling at each other this morning. i recorded a quick video of it on my iphone because bill has our camera in greece (jealous!!). the video is a little wack, but it was too sweet not to post. especially since this is a way for bill to see the girls.

E&C 6 Months!!!!

claire and ellie have blessed us so richly these past 6 months. I have definitely had plenty of moments where I thought I wasn’t going to make it to the end of the day. over the past month though the girls are starting to turn a corner. their level of fussing has definitely decreased from what it was and the girls are beginning to have little “chats” and really engage with one another. it is delightful to watch our kids interact and especially to watch ellie and claire when they stare in amazement at their big brother – charlie. the girls’ personalities are becoming more apparent and we are seeing subtle differences between them.

eleanore

• weighs 14 lbs and 2 ounces (14%).
• she continues to be more patient than her sister and will occasionally lay and watch charlie play or watch claire play with a toy.
• likes reading books – whenever we have a chance to actually read them to her.
• is days from crawling. she easily gets up on all fours, moves forward awkwardly, “mountain climbs” with her feet, but can’t get forward because she can’t figure out how to move her arms forward.
• continues to do planks constantly. she is so focused and goal oriented. I swear all along she has been working this hard to get stronger so she can crawl. she is a living ball of muscle!
• is a happy sweet little girl. when she makes eye contact with you she just lights up and gets a huge gummy smile.
• can sit well, but can’t be left without a boppy behind her. she will get distracted while sitting and just plop over while continuing to hold on to her toy.
• enjoys her bath time more than claire because she is able to relax in the tub (claire has her arms in constant motion so water is always flipping everywhere!)
• a bit more gentle than claire.
• still spits up – especially after eating solids. yuck!

claire

• weighs 14 lbs and 6 ounces (20%)
• is not patient. whatsoever! she always gets her bath first so that she can be the first to eat.
• will not sit still to look at books. when you try to read her a book it is almost as if she is appalled at you. she will constantly twist and turn and try to look around for something to grab, but she will rarely pay any attention to the book (the exception to this is the big first 100 words book).
• loves wrestling with toys. she spends quite a bit of time just wrestling with the jingly lion or moose we have and will just attack it.
• can sit well, but can’t be left without a bobby behind her. to really stay sitting though she need to have something that she is engaged in otherwise she will spy a toy somewhere else and just face dive right for it. she has the battle wounds to prove it.
• loves playing with charlie’s cars. if you put them anywhere in her sight she will eye them and then work her way over to them and get her little mitts all over them. thankfully charlie is not too threatened by this yet.
• most of her movement is by rolling, scooting backwards, or by picking up one half of her body and moving it forward.
• when she is sick of eating solids (or full) she will start blowing and playing with her food and it starts spitting everywhere. funny now, but won’t be funny in a few months.
• used to be our teenager when it came to sleeping in, but has now decided to be our early riser. she will consistently sleep through the night, but when she gets up to eat at 6 am she wants to get up for the day! ouch!
• enjoys watching tv! it is hysterical. if charlie is watching doydge (george) during lunch and claire is on the ground you will catch her staring at the tv totally engrossed. charlie never did this as a child. I even tried to get him to watch a dvd when I was sick once and he would have none of it.
• if you even lift up a toy in front of claire her arms instantly come up and her little hands start reaching and grabbing for it.
• when smiling she often has her tongue sticking out.

both

• are saying “ahhs", “bs”, blowing bubbles and moving their mouths around while making noises.
• love squealing! they are such girls. charlie just giggled. it is super hard to get them to giggle. in order to get them to giggle you really have to toss them around.
• teething like crazy. they are chewing on anything they can get their mouths on.
• eating about 2 meals a day. one late morning and one mid afternoon. usually some cereal with fruit or veggie or both.
• really like hanging out in their entertainer or jumperoo. I have moved them both upstairs and they can face each other in them which they really like.
• are sleeping really well. we start baths around 6 pm and they take 9 ounces by bottle right after. they fall asleep and we do a dream feed around 10ish where they both take anywhere from 3-6 ounces. on a good night they sleep until 7 am, but often times one of them is up just once to eat.
• are not napping as well as they were before. I am hoping that now that we have their nights established and will be going to the rac in the mornings they will fall back into taking a long afternoon nap.

sweet twin things:

• the girls are now officially having conversations. I will catch them staring at each other and chatting. one will start cooing or making noises at the other and then they will pause and the other one will burst out in a huge grin and then they will start making noises and it goes in cycles. it melts my heart!! and if you are lucky to catch them talking at this stage (it doesn’t happen that frequently yet) it is quite amazing to see these two little identical people communicating.
• this is a bit odd to discuss and someday the girls will be appalled that I am bring this up but it is weird. they have the same bowel movements! they are now in the pooping every 6-7 days or so stage and will both not have pooped for multiple days and then both squeeze out a little nugget. then a few hours later they will both produce another nugget. I am amazed that they can even keep their bms in sync.
• when ellie smiles her left eye gets squinty and when claire smiles her right eye gets squinty.
• if you place a toy between the girls they both start to go for it. if one of them gets ahold of it first and really starts playing with it the other one will just sit back and admire how her sister plays with it. they really don’t seem to be jealous or continue to go for it (I am sure this is just an age thing, but it is sweet).

ellie and claire wrestling. claire is on the bottom.

 

“we love wrestling!”

claire playing with lightening mcqueen.

ellie stuck under another chair.

their new set up. how cute that they are grinning at each other.

one last smiley one. they just love attention.

half way…

ellie and claire are 6 months today! hallelujah! what am I most excited about??? being able to get back to the RAC! I cannot wait to start putting all 3 kiddos in childcare and getting a workout, shower and some reading time in most mornings. it makes me a better mom.

a big detail post is coming next week after their appointments, but I had to post a picture of me with my 6 month old honey badgers. I love you girls so much! claire is on the left.

best bubba in the world

trip home

last week we packed up the fam again and drove across wisconsin. we met my parents in waupun so they could take our crew and go to green bay and bill and I could head south to Oconomowoc. we planned to meet up with a neurotologist and his wife to discuss what life looks like as a neurotologist. the kids did great during the drive (we have mastered the art of driving with our crew – but you really need 2 people to manage everything). we enjoyed our chat with the dr and his wife and have a lot more to think about.

friday and saturday we did a lot of hanging out. bill drove to minneapolis on saturday afternoon to fly out to pittsburg for a course. I stayed at my parents with the crew until wednesday.

charlie having fun with the plasma car.

charlie was most excited about skid steer rides.

charlie working on his smile. he is now saying cheese, but it still doesn’t look like his normal sweet smile.

ellie working on her crawl stance.

my parents were responsible for all 3 kids during dinner and bed time for 3 nights in a row (we were in Oconomowoc, we went out to dinner alone, I was at a wedding). they did great and I enjoyed the break. my dad held ellie for a little “snap” before bedtime and she crashed.

sweet siblings. charlie and claire.

peekaboo ellie!

It worked out perfectly because while I was home one of my close high school friends got married. it was a really small ceremony at a frank lloyd wright designed house "the schwartz house" in two rivers wisconsin. I was able to go to the wedding with another friend and her husband.

beautiful erin.

me, erin and kacie. love these girls!

sunday morning we headed to bay beach a small amusement park in green bay. every ride is 10 cents. my mom was obsessed with getting charlie there. I have to admit he LOVED it.

here we are entering bay beach. ellie and claire were along for the ride.

we hit the carousel first. he was in shock.

on the ferris wheel with g. pops.

I ditched ellie and took charlie on the helicopters.

the helicopters went up and down with a bar and around in a circle. pretty fun.

g. pops took charlie on the scrambler. this thing will make a lot of people sick. if bill had been there he would have been puking.

delighted to drive the boats.

to say charlie was in love with the race cars in an understatement. he definitely rode these a few times. they even turned in and out of the circle.

he started to well up and throw a tantrum when he saw g. pops coming to get him. we were trying to explain to him that he could go on another ride that he would love just as much, but it was so hard to grasp.

on the “firetrucks” as my mom called them charlie started to get dazed and confused. he was getting super tired but was determined to keep riding. this kid would never quit on his own.

charlie didn’t even know how to handle the fighter jets.

the girls crashed and it was time to go home and watch the packers win!

nana loves to do tons of stuff with charlie. she ran up and down the “big mountain” (my parent’s hill to the river) with charlie pushing the cozy coupe a million times. she also really wanted to fish with charlie. he only lasted for a bit but here is a picture before they went down to the dock.

I can’t believe I didn’t get one picture with my mom and the girls! sorry mom! we need to fix that. nana spent many many hours sitting on the floor playing with the girls, holding them, putting them down so I could get a break. I loved the delicious meals and relaxing time. love you! my parents also need props for basically training charlie to sleep in a big boy bed. they put him down most naps and bedtime and he did fantastic. the threat of “if you get out of bed your mom will come up and put you in your carseat” did help a bit.

daddy book reading

wish I could say we do this all the time, but we don’t. this was a rare moment where everyone was interested in the same thing for about 2 minutes.

what a great friend

becca is the best. she will come over to say hi and help me through the chaos. somehow she ends up like this. amazing!

stilettos

the girls are already practicing for when they will wear high heels. this is ellie, but claire loves to do it too.

both girls love to get up on their tippies toes and walk around. it cracks me up!

crawling attempts

ellie was trying so hard to crawl. she can get up on all fours and then she lunges forward, but she can't figure out how to move her arms to go with her legs. she might have some rug burns pretty soon on her face if she can't figure it out. i snapped this video today at my parents house. don't mind the weird cat blanket - it is a long story.

charlie’s first day of music class

I could not resist taking a “first day” picture before I took charlie to his music class last week. he is taking a once a week “growing with music” class. people rav about his teacher, brenda, and when I met her last week she seemed fantastic. 

check out his adorable jean butt and toms shoes.

here he is with his friend kaia. how sweet that he is reaching for her hand!

big changes

within the last week charlie has stopped using his bapoo and sleeps in the big bed and ellie and claire sleep unswaddled. these are big changes for babies who were wearing the miracle swaddle blankets to fall asleep (think baby straight jackets).

charlie decided to jump out of his crib and so his decision to move to the big bed meant no bapoo. it is funny how you can expect these changes to be dramatic and then they suddenly surprise you. bill just told charlie that big boys don’t have bapoos and babies do and that was the end of it. he has basically forgot about it since then and has not asked for it this whole trip. he is doing ok sleeping in the big boy bed. it was a quick change at home and then we were traveling to green bay so he has basically learned how to sleep on a bed here. after one nap in the car seat again he has been doing much better. who knows how things will go when we get back to rochester, but I am sure glad his bedroom door locks from the outside .

the plank

meet ellie – future pilates/yoga instructor. here is ellie’s plank move.

if she didn’t have jeans on you could see the space between the carpet and her legs. she sometimes goes into a pike.

it is hard to capture in this picture, but she literally does planks all day. she will try to get something and go into a plank. she is also beginning to pull her knees up to her elbows and will sometimes get up on all fours.

here is claire on all fours. she is also working on her crawling skills, but doesn’t do ellie’s plank move.

they are really moving a lot and I think will crawl/move forward somehow pretty soon. this is how they currently move forward. they pick up one half or more of their body and push off with their toes and plop forward. they spend a lot of time with their faces in the carpet.

bill and I are calling this time the calm before the storm. they are not as unhappy as they were a month ago, but once they start moving things are going to get crazy.