Milky and Big Girls Seats

We hit another milestone. The girls are now drinking milk! Our pedi wanted us to wait until the girls were at their adjusted year birthday. However, Wes had to take Lizzie on Monday to the pedi and told him that the girls weren't finishing bottles. The pedi said that it was probably the sign that they were ready to switch to milk.

Gracie watched me carefully as I got out the sippy cup and milk. She watched me pour it and put on the lid. I handed it to her and she started to suck. It took her a minute to figure out it wasn't formula. She stopped and just held it in her mouth. I thought she was going to spit it out but she didn't. She drank it all!

Lizzie didn't watch me fill her cup. She was too busy playing. When she took her cup, she drank it down. She loved it. She now even tries to steal her sister's cup.

Airplanes

Tonight we went with some friends to watch the airplanes land at DFW Observation Area. My friend was always posting pictures on Facebook and it looked like fun. We had a great time. The girls liked crawling in the grass. The pictures are below.
Yesterday we went over to some friends from college's house. They have a little girl that is about the same age as the girls. It was really fun to see the girls all playing together.

I just threw this one in because I thought it was cute.

Yeah Twins

Today, I took the girls to a play date with some other twin moms. Four sets of twins met at the play area at the mall. We played, ate, and played some more. It was really fun and exhausting. The girls fell asleep in the car and went straight to bed. I took a nap too!

The other big thing today is that the girls moved to their own room. Since they have come home from the hospital, they have stayed in our room. We first had their bassinets, then the cribs in our room. We decided that they were big girls and could be in their room (and I decided I could be a big girl and let them go to their room).

Playing on the slide with Trevor and Ashley

Lizzie, Trevor, Gracie and Caleb

Happy Birthday Wes!

Today is Wes's birthday so I decided to dedicate this post to him. I want to share what a wonderful husband, dad, and person he is. He was recently laid off and has been spending his days looking for a job and watching the girls. It hasn't been easy for him but he has taken it with a good attitude and takes the best care of the girls. Not all fathers get a chance to do what Wes is doing.

Twins Rock!

We received these onesies when the girls were first born and now one year later they can finally wear them! I came home from work yesterday and Wes only had Lizzie in it. I told him you can't have one baby in it and the other one not. It was just too weird. So, I had to change Gracie's clothes before we went to dinner and Babies R Us (which is our second home).

Right now, we are trying to work toward sippy cups. Lizzie has it down, but Gracie is still fighting it. We keep buying new cups to try but she is wise to our tricks......

July 4th

This was the girls second July 4th. The first one they spent in the NICU. They were about three weeks old. I remember feeling guilty because we left them early to go watch fireworks.

This year was more fun. We went to Oklahoma and visited family. We took the girls to a parade and went swimming in a pool. They ended up going to bed and not watching fireworks. We decided that their sleep was more important and we will take them next year.

Below are some before and after pictures of the parade.

Before

After

Done.....

I think I am officially done nursing the girls. For the last week, I've been trying to transition them both to all bottles. Because of their prematurity, they won't go on whole milk until they are 14 months old (12 months adjusted). I stopped nursing Gracie a week ago because she kept getting frustrated and biting me. So, I just nursed Lizzie.

Nursing twins has been both good and exhausting. When the girls were first born, I had to pump and then it was fortified and fed to them through a tube. They didn't get a bottle until they were about three weeks old. While they were in the NICU, I tried a couple of times to actually nurse Lizzie (Gracie wasn't ready). It was really embarrassing because all that was between me and about 10 other people was a curtain. Not quite what I had envisioned. Wes and I decided that I would keep pumping and wait until the girls were home before we really tried to nurse.

The girls were finally home and I was able to feed each about once a day because they still needed the fortified milk. The doctor we were going to at the time was not a big proponent of breast feeding and when the girls weren't gaining weight like she wanted, she wanted them to go off breast milk completely and go back to all formula. We decided she was crazy and switched doctors. The new doctor said he saw no reason to not be completely on breast milk. So, I started tandem feeding the girls when I was home and pumping when at work. Feeding them at the same time saved so much time because they would take about 20-30 minutes to eat. We slowly got it down to 5 minutes.

All this to say that I only thought I would last 6 months at the most and I lasted a year.

P.S. I forgot to mention the 6 months that I couldn't have any dairy because of the girls milk protein allergy.