9 months!

Happy 9 months, sweet Caroline {left} and Emily {right}!  

    

And ladies...what a month it has been!  I would say that Will was generally a very healthy baby, partly out of luck, partly because I am a germ-o-phob, and mostly because he had no older sibling to bring germs into the house.  But man o man...it's a different story the second {and third} time around!  Fingers are crossed...we are currently all healthy except for poor Emily's diaper rash, and I am hoping we can stay that way for awhile!  But other than battling constant bugs and rashes and allergies, this month has been fun!  The girls are very active and mobile.  They can army crawl across the house if they see something interesting, and they are maniacs for certain toys!  Caroline will barrel through people, toys, laundry, and anything that gets in her way when she sees something she wants.  I love their determination, and it's so cute to watch them get around while dragging their little legs behind them.  They will both sit up with assistance, and can balance on their own for just a few seconds, but they aren't quite sitting alone yet.

Both girls are also very talkative, and I just love their little voices!  They babble all the time, and I'd say that Caroline is a little more talkative than Emily at this point.  Caroline is also much louder.  We joke that she is the loudest human on the planet, haha!

Caroline and Emily are both enjoying solid foods these days.  They like everything except peas so far, although I've been known to mix peas into their yummy foods so they won't notice that they're eating them.  Emily might have a sensitivity to sweet potatoes...random, I know.  She's been dealing with this awful diaper rash, and then twice, both on sweet potato days, the rash has been on her back too.  Soooo...I don't know if it's a coincidence and related to the diaper rash, or if she might have an allergy, so we are avoiding them for now.  Caroline is a very neat eater {most of the time}, and sometimes her face and bib will be totally clean when she is finished.  Emily, however, is hilarious when she eats.  She blows bubbles, sputters food all over me, sticks her tongue out while eating, and laughs constantly.  She ends up with food all down her bib, stuck deep in her neck rolls, and everywhere from her chin to her forehead.  :)  Again...these are the most different identical babies you can imagine.  

And finally, we all got well enough to do some legit sleep training at the end of this month, and thank goodness!  Matt and I had gone almost 9 months without more than 3-4 hours of sleep in a row, and usually it was more like 1-2 hours in between wakeups from one or the other of the three kiddos.  We ended up splitting up the babies into separate rooms {temporarily}, because while they were learning to put themselves back to sleep, whoever was making noise would always wake up her sister, who would just be MAD.  Once we moved them into their own rooms, it wasn't nearly as hard as I anticipated.  Honestly, I was afraid feisty Caroline might just scream all night, but she completely surprised us by figuring it out with hardly any crying!  Both babies are sleeping muuuuuch better now, and so are the rest of us.  They typically go to bed at 8pm, and I've been waking them up before I go to bed for a late night feeding {mostly to make myself feel better on those first few nights that I was cutting out their 4-5am feeding}...but I think we will be cutting out that late night feeding very soon.  And although they will sometimes wake up and fuss at random times in the night, they have learned to fall back asleep on their own, and they even both figured out how to find and replace their pacis!  Will was younger when we did sleep training, and I think he wasn't coordinated enough to get his paci back in, so he started sucking his thumb.  I'm kind of glad the girls have been able to keep the pacis, because I feel like it will be easier to take those away later on.  Not sure how we're going to convince Will to give up his thumb...it's totally his security blanket.  {sweet boy}

Pretty girls weren't super interested in pictures this month.

Caroline

Emily

{sorry Em, had to use this double-chin pic because you weren't smiling in the others!}

We LOVE the exersaucers and the jumperoo this month!

 Will still asks to hold his sisters all the time, and they just absolutely adore him.  They watch his every move and laugh at him all the time.  Such fun!

And finally...as I am writing this, I am sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, while Matt is having ankle surgery.  Eek!  Praying all goes well and he has a speedy recovery.  Should be an interesting few weeks, as I have a feeling these kiddos are not planning to slow down to accommodate his healing time.  ;)