5 months!

These sweet girls are 5 months old! 

We took lots of pictures this month {it's too hot to do anything else!} and had several spit-up induced wardrobe changes.  I didn't mind...just meant we got to play with more clothes!  :)  These first few cracked me up - first Emily is fish-hooking Caroline in the mouth and then she is eating her hand! And I love the one where their arms are locked together.  Sweet girls! 

I think I only took single pics of C here because I realized the lighting was weird - but I love these!

And this picture is blurry....but I love it because you can see a blur of Will on the right, as he was entertaining the girls while I took their pictures.  He loves them so much, and you can already tell that they love him back.  

and then there's this...

In their fifth month, Caroline and Emily have been busy learning new things like rolling over from front to back, sitting in their bumbo chairs, squealing, yelling MUCH louder, cooing, and being generally super fun and adorable.  {Their adjusted age is 3 months, and I feel like that's about where they are developmentally and size-wise.}  They are sleeping in their crib at nights, and usually taking naps in the rock & play sleepers, just because it's convenient.  I think they would do fine napping in their crib, but since they can still sleep through most noises, I just put them down wherever we are playing.  I know that will change soon...but I'm enjoying it while I can!  They continue to be super sweet, and they still just want to be held as much as possible, although they will usually settle for being able to see us when there aren't enough arms for being held.  :)  

We're really seeing personality differences now, and I am constantly amazed that two babies who have the exact same DNA and have had exactly the same life experiences so far can be so different!  Emily is totally laid back, tends to hit the physical milestones a day or two before Caroline, and I'm convinced that she would sleep through the night if C didn't exist.  She also has the ability to just chill until she gets tired, and then fall asleep {while C almost always needs her paci}.  Caroline, on the other hand, is more vocal and has tended to hit the vocal milestones first (squealing, cooing, etc).  We joke that she has a lot of "highs and lows" because she is so cute and talkative, but she can get really mad, really fast.  :)  I think it's fair to say that she has doubled her volume within the last 3 days, and she's not afraid to use her newfound voice to let me know when she's tired, would like my company, or when she's ready to eat.  Speaking of eating...C still loves to keep a 3 hour eating schedule at nights, although most nights she will give me at least a 4 hour first stretch.  So sweet sleepy Emily gets woken up just as much as I do, because I always feed them together, even at night.  We haven't started any kind of sleep training yet, because that is recommended for after 4 months of age....which is 6 months for our sweet preemies.  So for now, we keep our feeding dates in the wee hours, and as crazy as it sounds right now {after being up every 2 hours last night...}, I'm sure I will miss these quiet times with my girls.  Even though they have been teeny tiny, completely dependent babies for longer than most, I am already getting sad to think that it won't be long before they are stretching to get out of my arms so they can crawl around, play with toys, etc.  I'm soaking up every minute of sweet baby time I can get! 

Here are some pictures from the girls' 5th month:

E's first bumbo experience

C enjoyed it too.

some tummy time with entertainment provided by big brother {see his foot in the upper left corner? I believe he was practicing for the 2028 men's Olympic gymnastics team}

I promise Will really does get out of his pajamas on most days.  {Some days.}

We had AC troubles on one of our last days in the old house, so the girls worked on their "celebrity by the pool" poses.

Emily was the first to roll....here's before...

and after!

Caroline mastered it on the very next day.

ta daaa!!

And Emily reeeeeeaaalllly wants to roll from her back to her front {in yellow}.  She just can't quite figure out what to do with that right arm - gets in the way every time!

Will rediscovered the bumbo.

{no, we didn't decide to redecorate with a retro flair.  our temporary home is furnished with my grandparents' stuff, and ours is in storage.}

Emily

Caroline

Awesome shirts made by one of our sweet friends after I drug her out to the Twilight movie when she had not read any of the books nor seen the first three movies.  What a trooper!

I left Emily laying on this mat - with her head on the frog pillow and feet at the end of the mat.  When I came back from changing C's diaper, this is where she was...wiggly girl!

Cutie Will drew me a rainbow! :)

sleeping sisters

triple tummy time

Go Rangers!!

Life is so fun with these four!

move #1

I'm a bit late posting about this, as it happened two weeks ago, but we are officially moved out of our first house.  :(   We moved out the weekend before our closing day of July 27, and what a good decision that was!  We originally planned to make the move on the Wednesday and Thursday before our Friday morning closing, but there was some talk of Matt having to leave town on Wednesday, so we decided to go ahead and move during the weekend before.  Matt didn't end up leaving town, but it took us the entire week to move!  We got all the furniture and big stuff packed up during the weekend, but geez...we had a bunch of stuff in that house!  It took several days to make all the little trips to finish clearing out the garage, electronics, and random stuff we kept finding.  We ended up with our belongings spread out between one big Pack Rat pod, one random small storage unit we rented at the last minute, two entire rooms at my parents' house {thanks mom and dad!!}, and of course, our temporary house.  It was an adventure for sure, and we were very sad to leave 9311 Leaside.  We're all settled into our temporary home, which is a bit snug {the babies are sleeping in the living room}, but is working out just great, and we are so thankful to have a place to live while we search for a new home!  Here are a few pics from the move:

Not really pulling their weight on moving day...

Kind of a weird feeling to pack this pod with no idea when or where we will unpack it!

We all five went back for one final walk through on the night before closing, and we decided we needed to leave a little something behind...

{inside the top of the door frame on the master bedroom closet}

We also took one last look at our wood floors, which we refinished and stained ourselves the first year we lived in the house.  We decided to do this project ourselves because I had seen somewhere online that it was a simple DIY weekend project.  {don't believe everything you read online} So we waited for a 3 day weekend, rented a sander, bought some stain and varnish, and went to work.  I'll spare the details, but it ended up being about a 3 week project that involved renting the sander many times, buying LOTS of supplies, and living with all of our belongings crammed into the kitchen and back living room because those are the only tile areas besides the bathrooms.  Not to mention that the fumes we inhaled probably took a few years off our lives and killed quite a few brain cells.  We can very literally say that we put our blood, sweat, and tears into these floors!  So we had to take a picture of the one spot in the hallway that we managed to accidentally nick with the sander on the very last day, after staining and varnishing, and never could get to look quite right.

Great first house!

I have to share one story about these pictures.  As I mentioned, we brought all three kids with us for this little excursion.  So when we wanted to take a couple of pictures out front, we left them inside.  To be more accurate, we left the babies inside in their carseats, and we let Will play in my car, which was in the garage.  {Don't worry, it was off, and the keys were hidden from him!} He loves playing in the car, and we had forgotten to bring anything for him to do while we hung out in a completely empty house.  Soooo...Will was playing in the car in the 100ish degree garage, and the babies were resting in their carseats, but getting antsy because we were dangerously close to their feeding time.  And Matt and I headed outside.  For like 2 minutes.  On our front door is one of those latches that you can only latch from the inside - the kind that flips over the little knob on the doorframe so you can open the door about 2 inches to talk to someone, but it's still totally locked.  So, after taking our pictures, we headed back inside...only to find that the latch had LATCHED somehow!  In all 6 years we lived there, this had never happened!!?!  We don't know if it got caught on Matt's sleeve on our way out and some how got moving and latched itself as we were closing the door {is that even possible?}....or maybe there's a ghost that was mad that we were leaving?!  It's really pretty much impossible for this to have happened, but it totally did.  So suddenly we were outside, the babies were inside, and Will was in the hot garage....and all doors to the house were locked!  We didn't have our phones, but even if we had, there was no one who could have helped us.  I had all the house keys in my purse for closing the next day, except for one that Matt's mom still had, but it was to the door that was latched from the inside...so would have been no help.  {sorry this is turning into a book...}  So as I was just starting to have heart palpitations about my babies all being locked away from me, hungry and hot, we had the idea to go around to the door between the garage and the patio {also locked} and see if we could get Will's attention.  By the grace of God, he had apparently gotten bored with playing in the car {which has never happened in his entire life} and had opened the car door, so he was able to hear us knocking on the patio door.  And also luckily, he is obsessed with turning locks, and he happened to be JUST tall enough to reach the deadbolt on the door.  So Will saved the day by unlocking the door to the garage when we asked him to!  Amazing...and so unlikely that everything worked out just right so that he was able to let us in.  If he hadn't been tall enough, there wasn't even a ladder or step stool in the empty garage.  And if he hadn't heard us, we would have had to break a window in our own house, about 14 hours before turning the keys over to the new owners.  Sheesh!  So it was an eventful final evening at our first house for sure.

Maybe we got a little sentimental about leaving, but we really did love that house and all the memories we made in it.  But we're also excited to move on and make new memories with our family of five!  Now we're just waiting to find out where exactly we will be...the house search continues...

One last picture of C, after we returned from our adventures.  :-)

too fast!

I'm having one of those "hug your babies extra tight" kind of days.  You know, the ones where you just want to squeeze them all and say an extra little prayer of thanks for being given such blessings?  There are several reasons I'm feeling this way today, but most of all, I think it's because I've been realizing how quickly this time with little ones goes by and how sweet it is.  So with that in mind, here are some pictures and videos that I've taken on my phone this week of some of the little moments that I don't want to forget. 

{Caroline hanging out with me after everyone else was asleep!}

Will's favorite activity right now: puzzles!!

July 4th

We had SUCH a fun fourth of July this year!   Maybe it was no more exciting than usual, but after being somewhat housebound for the past few months with newborns, just getting out and doing some things seemed extra special.  We started the day by checking out the LH 4th of July celebration.  We didn't make it in time for the parade, but we went to the carnival part, and Will LOVED riding the train, playing in the splash park, and of course, playing on the playground.

After grilling out for lunch and giving everyone some time to nap, we headed over to visit Ben, Holly, and Brian at their new house!  Will, Ben, and Brian played in the kiddie pool while the rest of us played with the babies and watched their antics.  And then in the evening, Will got to see his first fireworks show!  We went up to the DAC {thanks, Websters!} and it was a blast.  Although we had to bribe both boys with fruit snacks to keep them on the blanket through the end of the fireworks, I think they had a great time.  Plus, we all got to watch them race back and forth from our blanket to a nearby tree about a hundred times before the fireworks started.  Pretty sure they both slept well that night!  Here are some pictures from the day.

4 months!

 Caroline and Emily are 4 months old!  

What sweet girls we have!  At four months, Caroline and Emily are technically 2 months old developmentally {we go by their adjusted age since they were 2 months premature}, and so far the adjusted age is pretty accurate for them.  They have really changed a lot in the past couple of weeks, and we're loving all the smiles and interaction.  They stay awake for longer stretches, smile when they see us, and continue to love to be held more than anything.  Both girls found their hands this month and are pretty obsessed with them.   And while Emily started smiling consistently a couple of days before Caroline, Caroline found her voice a couple of days before Emily {and still "talks" more}.  I love hearing them make sweet little baby noises!

We visited with Dr. D this afternoon, and here are their 4 month stats {percentages are based on the regular 4 month averages, so they are still teeny!}:

Caroline:

10 lbs, 5 oz {less than 5%}

23 inches long {10%}

16 inch head circumference {45% - whoa!}

Emily:

10 lbs, 4.4 oz {less than 5%}

22 3/4 inches long {9%}

16 inch head circumference {45%}

One disclaimer on their weights...to be fair to Emily, Caroline had her dry diaper on for the weigh in, and a different nurse weighed Emily and took off her diaper.  So I feel like C got a teeny bonus there.  ;)  We are so excited that their lengths put them on the big girl curve this time {over 5% is on the actual curve}, and although they are still below 5% on weights, they are SO close!  They are growing well, and we're so happy about that!  And where did those heads come from!?  Will is usually on the upper end of the curve for head circumference, and I guess the girls are quickly catching up there.  They're right on track for regular 4 month olds!  I haven't noticed them looking like bobble heads. . .

And we can't take monthly pictures without a couple of shots with big brother.  Enjoy!