eight months

What a busy and crazy few weeks it's been!  I'm a couple of weeks late posting about the girls' 8th month because computer time has been almost non-existent lately.  In addition to all the house stuff that consumes every moment that the kids are sleeping {which doesn't include very many moments}, we have been fighting lots of sickness over here in the last few weeks.  ARGH.  First everyone had a cold, which turned into an ear infection for Emily...which led us to find out that she {like Matt and me} is allergic to penicillin.  Poor baby.  So she had to have a second antibiotic, and two antibiotics for a tiny little one upset her stomach to the point that she is STILL dealing with a terrible diaper rash.  And on top of all of that...we all passed around a stomach flu/fever type bug that hung around for almost a week....which equals several weeks when there are five people for it to go through.  Really, no fun at all.  So we're saying a little prayer that we can all get well and stay well for awhile.

But on to more fun topics....the girls are 8 months old!!  They are so sweet and loving.  This month has brought lots of smiles and laughs, lots of babbling {dada, mama, baba, nuh nuh}, and some rocking back and forth on all fours that makes it look like these girls want to crawl, even though they aren't sitting unassisted yet.  Is that even possible?  

                                               caroline                                                                                         emily

 

C was not really feeling the 8 month pics.  Maybe because we took our Christmas card pics that morning, and she was just over it.  This is the face I got 90% of the time I was trying to take her picture, so I finally had to call Matt in to help.

Good work, daddy!

Emily was all smiles!  :)

We also have grown some teeth and a little bit of fuzzy hair this month, woohoo!  Caroline was first to sprout a tooth, and she actually got her second one just a couple of days after the first.  Emily's first tooth came in about a week after Caroline got hers, and tooth #2 just broke through yesterday.  Does anyone else think it's odd that identical twins would not be getting their teeth at the same time?  Same DNA, right?  But these babies are about as different as possible, so I don't know why I'm surprised.  :)

We started a bit of sleep training in the last week or so...mostly for Caroline since Emily has been sick.  {and let's not kid ourselves...C is the one who really needs the sleep training}  I was pretty reluctant to get started for several reasons, but nighttime had gotten pretty out of control around here, so we have been trying to help the girls learn to put themselves back to sleep on their own.  I can't say that we've been successful yet, but I think we have made a bit of progress.  {And by the way...don't believe people who tell you that twins don't wake each other up when they cry.  They do.  Almost every time.}  So we're definitely working on sleep around here....hopefully we will all be sleeping through the night in the near future.

Sleep issues aside, we've had so much fun with these sweet babies over the past 8 months.  What blessings they are!  I feel like this time around, we are so much less focused on when the next milestones will be hit, and just enjoying each little stage as it comes.  It's interesting to me what a different perspective I have on the second and third babies compared to the first.  Knowing how incredibly fast they grow up makes me want to hold on to every moment along the way.  They are sweet little babies for such a short time!

Happy 8 months Caroline and Emily.  You are so loved!

happy halloween!

Happy Halloween!  

Have you felt like our blog has been neglected lately?  It has.  Moving, unpacking, and simultaneously remodeling a house with three kids under three is crazy.  CUH-razy.  We are definitely living in somewhat of a construction zone around here, but hopefully after this week some of the house-wide interior projects will be finished, and we can start getting a bit more settled.  Currently all of our furniture is in the middle of all the rooms while baseboards are being caulked and painted....so that's fun when we have to get up at all hours to tend to babies.  It's dark, and you never know where boxes, furniture, and random belongings might be.  :)  However...in the midst of all this craziness, we had a very fun Halloween!

Last night we carved a pumpkin.  The plan was actually to get six small pumpkins and carve them into the same stacked jack-o-lantern that we have been reading about in Dragon's Halloween...one of Will's favorite books.  However, by the time I went to buy pumpkins, the two stores I had time to go to only had bags of assorted gourds and this one little pumpkin.  So...much like Dragon, we made it work with what we had, and carved the teeniest jack-o-lantern ever!  

strategizing

Matt drew all the different face options, and Will picked his favorite.

Digging out the seeds.  Will looks hard at work here...

In reality, this is what he did most of the time.

Matt did the carving...

And Will put in the candle.

cute!

Our Halloween girls

{they hardly ever look exactly alike to me these days, but I feel like they look pretty identical in this picture!}

For Halloween, we had a frog and two sweet ladybugs.  This was Will's first year to go trick-or-treating at houses other than his grandparents', and he had fun! {C & E came too...you get to do fun stuff when you have a big brother!}  Will also got to trick-or-treat at Matt's office yesterday, so he got the hang of it before the big night.  He also may now think that Matt works in a place with lots of costumes and candy every day.  :)

Family pictures with this crowd are not easy.

I was going to try to pick the "best" one, but there wasn't a clear winner...

We had a little more luck when we separated the kids...it's easier to force them to look in the general direction of the camera when you're one-on-one.  

And this was by far the best shot with the grandparents, so you can imagine what the others looked like, ha!

Definitely should have gotten tights or bloomers for the girls...they grew a lot this month and their dresses were a wee bit small and short.  Sorry ladies!

After the picture-taking, Will wanted to be a tree frog before we headed out for trick-or-treating.

And of course, he got to do a little flying with Daddy...always heart-stopping fun for all.

Happy Halloween from our crazy family to yours!

will "the voice" hawkins

One of Will's absolute favorite things to do right now is make movies on my phone...mostly of himself singing or sliding into his ball pit.  And then he wants to watch himself over and over.  He cracks me up!  After hearing that some of you enjoyed his rendition of "take me out to the ballgame," I thought I'd share a couple more favorites.  

We're already in the Christmas spirit over here...and yes, we've had many debates on the issue of "park" vs. "hark" the herald, but he just won't back down.

He has pretty much every Fresh Beat Band song memorized.
{sorry for the intense chair rocking...might make you dizzy just watching!}

seven

Happy to be seven months old!!

Caroline

Emily

The cute stickers are pretty useless at this point.  As soon as I stick them on, the girls rip them off and start chewing them.  So they go on the chair.  :)

My favorite thing about these pictures is that Caroline is smiling because Will walked up on the side of the chair and started singing to her.  So sweet!  

{And she's sort of sitting up on her own for the first time, with some help from the armrest}

Will joined too.  These girls love their big brother and are always watching him!

And here is Emily telling me she's pretty much done with pictures.  ;)

Caroline and Emily are pretty adorable at 7 months old.  They love to laugh and smile, and it doesn't take much to earn a giggle.  It's so fun to reach the stage where you don't have to do cartwheels and a full comedy routine to get a grin.  :)  They are getting wigglier and more mobile every week...barrel rolls are a popular way to get around, and they flip on their tummies almost immediately when they get set down now.  Both are pretty easy to console when they get upset...they just want to be held.  I hate when I sometimes have to leave a crying baby while I pick up her sister, but I guess that's the life of twins when mama only has 2 arms.  I have gotten much better at the simultaneous pick-up and double baby hold, but it doesn't work so well when someone gets really worked up and needs some one-on-one attention to calm down.  However, they often seem to alternate so that one is fussier during the day and the other tags in at night.  While this means less down time for us, it's nice to avoid double-super-meltdowns whenever possible!

We're still waiting for some progress towards sleeping through the night.  I think we are definitely ready for a little bit of sleep training, but we are waiting until we are in the new house and have a bit more space before we get going with that, mostly for Will's sake.  Have I mentioned that Caroline can be REALLY loud?  Like....Really.  Loud.  So right now, we are up every few hours and still doing feedings twice a night.  I like to think of it as extra bonus baby snuggle time without a toddler climbing on my knees.

Speaking of feedings, we just started oatmeal cereal this week.  Actually, we tried it once a few weeks ago, but it seemed to make the girls fussy, so we gave it a few weeks and started again this week.  I've just been giving them a chance to try a bit at lunchtime each day, and although I don't think much is going down, they seem to enjoy trying.  Will never loved cereal, but he LOVED food...so I'm excited to try some new things with the girls soon.

How about some more pictures?  :)

oatmeal!!

Caroline

Emily

First time in jeans {actually jeggings, ha!}

sweet little bloomers

Bathtime fun! {C}

{E}

We have the breathable bumpers, which have a little gap where they velcro on...and the girls can peek through at each other!  So cute.

There aren't many clothes that can be passed down from big brother to little sisters, but I always loved this little yellow "hug me" shirt when Will was a baby, so Caroline got to wear it the other day.

I turned my back for 2 seconds, and C barrel rolled across the room!  {she started next to E!}

We are loving the cooler weather and took a short walk yesterday.  It had to be short because carrying two almost-14-pound babies in carriers is a back killer!  Sheesh!

Being 7 months old is exhausting!