What does this say of things to come?

Happy Valentines Day

2 Valentines to add to my list this year.

Of course this guy will always be my #1 Valentine.

5 Months

An update about Siena and Aria at 5 months.

• Both girls are sleeping about 11 hours a night now.  We still have our occasional wake up early but dare I say it’s not that often (don’t tell them I said that, I don’t want to jinx myself.)
• They love to talk to me and we go back and forth.  Siena has decided to talk constantly.  She has been a little quieter until now and that has definitely changed.  Aria has started mimicking me a little and still has the sweetest little voice.
• Both girls are laughing so hard.  In fact sometimes they are laughing so hard I think they’re going to gag themselves.
• They are playing with their toys much better.

Things Aria would do ALL day if I let her:

• Sit up in her bumbo or with someone holding her
• Suck/chew on her firefly stuffed animal, or really lick and suck on anything
• Watch TV…no matter what’s on, she’s interested
• Kick her legs, and let me tell you she can get those legs going so fast.
• Drool and spit up…never ending.

Things Aria would never do if we didn’t make (er…encourage) her:

• Lay…on her tummy or on her back.  She lifts her legs and head at the same time and grunts at us until we pick her up.  She’s going to have some strong abs.

• Roll Over, I swear she has absolutely no interest in rolling over, she sees no need when she can just sit all day.

Things Siena would do ALL day if I let her:

• Play in her Exersaucer or Johnny jumper
• Lift her legs and then slam them into the ground, crib mattress, bath tub water, etc.  In fact that is what woke me up this morning, I could hear her doing that from the other room.  I don’t even know if she was awake.
• Say Ah-goo, she is so proud of herself with her talking all of the sudden and talks constantly.
• Smile at anyone who looks at her and looks around to see if anyone is looking or wanting to talk to her.
• Kick off her socks.  She has learned to use one foot to push against the other foot and get her sock off…it’s so annoying.  We’ll all be happy when it’s summer and I don’t care if her feet are covered.

Things Siena would never do if we didn’t make (er…encourage) her:

• Lay on her tummy 
• Take a nap for more than 40 mins.

Let the feedings begin

We started both girls on rice cereal this weekend.  Siena has been showing signs of being ready for a little while but I've been in total denial.  I thought I would be excited for this milestone but it turns out I'm in complete denial my girls are getting this big.

So I finally relented and we did our first rice cereal on Saturday.  Here's how it went down.

Actually it went better than I thought it would with a few funny faces but not as much as I was expecting.  And since then they've both been eating pretty good.  The first bite is always followed with a look like why are you putting this in my mouth but they get more in than they push out which I think is a good sign.

The first day we used their bumbo to feed them and it became apparent pretty fast that it wasn't going to work like that for long.  So I suggested to Shane that we get out their high chairs to which he replied, ok.  I then turned to him and said "REALLY?"  to which I got a weird look like why are you freaking out when I just agreed with you.  It was a test...I'm so not ready to have 2 high chairs in my house.  Not that I care about the high chairs but that just means I have 2 girls old enough to sit in them.  I know, TOTAL DENIAL.  So we did it and they actually love sitting in their high chairs so I guess it turned out ok.  Here's a picture of them in their high chairs the 2nd morning...yes I left the rice cereal on their faces on purpose.

Our first bath together

And I think we're going to be good bath friends for a long time...

We've been bathing the girls in our oversized kitchen sink which has been working really well.  We have a good routine down, I bathe the girls while Shane switches off getting them ready for the bath and then for bed.  So we decided to move it upstairs tonight so we can bathe them together.  Soon they'll be sitting up and playing and they enjoy their bath so much I thought they would like the big bathtub, which they did.

Independence

 
I'm not sure if this is independence for the girls or for the parents...and I'm not sure if this makes me happy or sad...nonetheless independence it is.

It does come in handy when one person is in charge of feeding two babies...

Binky Breaking

After I posted my 4 month post talking about how the girls were sleeping pretty good through the night, it went down hill and went down hill fast!  All of the sudden I was getting up about 10x's a night to replace binkies.  The same was happening for their naps.  Both were dependent on their binkies to stay asleep although Siena more than Aria.  So a couple weeks ago both Shane and I had had it.  I seriously thought I would lose it if I had to replace a binky one more time.  So we both decided that we were done.  No more binkies for sleep and we were doing it cold turkey.  I called my sister in law Whitney for moral support since she had done it with Max the month before.  Everyone told me it takes 3 days.  So we were mentally prepared to last 3 days and get them off the binkies for sleeping.

I called my sisters that were going to babysit them this week to warn them and make sure they were committed to the cause.

The next day, I sent the following email to my family:
______________________________________
To: Family
Subject: Binky Breaking Update
Since I know everyone is wondering how our night went, here is the update:

First of all, all 3 naps went fairly well yesterday.  The hardest was Siena on her last nap woke up after an hour and cried 10 mins, not that hard though, and went back to sleep.  Very manageable.

We fed the girls, gave them a little lecture on sleeping without binkies, and even sang them Lionel Richie's 'All Night Long' song.  So we put the girls down, put monitors in both their rooms and shut the doors so they wouldn't wake each other up.  We mentally prepared for lots of crying and went downstairs.  Aria was really tired because she has decided to give up her little 6:30 cat nap this week.  So she fell asleep without making a sound.  Siena started crying at 8:47.  She would cry a little and then stop, then cry a little then stop.  She never even got that loud.  At 8:54pm she fell asleep.  7 minutes...that's it....I can handle that.

We went to bed thinking it was still going to be a long night.  At 4:30am I woke up....to silence!  I was in shock.  Not a peep from them yet.  At 5:30 I heard Aria wake up, she cried out 3 little cries and went back to sleep.  I never heard a sound from Siena until we got them up at 7 this morning.  I'm hoping this isn't beginners luck and today will be worse but seriously, all I could think about this morning was 'Best Parenting Decision EVER!'  We are both soooo happy that we didn't have to get up out of bed once.

Jennifer, are you still feeling committed to watching the girls today?  Hopefully they won't cry too hard and will nap good for you....and to answer your question of 'I feel bad, are they suffering?'  the answer obviously is no...

So that's the update! So happy...
Sheri
________________________________________

So Jennifer gets the girls that afternoon to watch them and here is her reply to my email:
________________________________________
From: Jennifer
Subject: Re: Binky Breaking Update

__________________________________________
LOL...I cracked up.  Jennifer had found the 'emergency' binkies in the diaper bag.  Ok she just did it for the picture but seriously so funny.  I also love this picture because you can see how blue their eyes both are.  And this was taken from an iphone without any editing.

Since then they have been doing great.  Naps still aren't that great and the nights aren't perfect but still is about 95% better than before.  It's heaven and I still stand by my line of 'best parenting decision ever."  However, I don't regret giving the girls binkies at all and would do it again, it was just time they learned to sleep without them.