our sweetheart summer

To my sweet wittle itty bitty cuddly wuddly Summer,

My little "snuffles"--you make such a funny face when you scrunch up your nose and breath out of it really fast.
You are very petite and itty bitty compared to your sister!
Unfortunately you are accident-prone. It started early on when you fell off the couch as a newborn, then got burned by a zipper (pajamas straight from the dryer are dangerous, who knew?!) and now recently you've tumbled out of your swing onto the metal stand!
Updated to include that you fell off the bed today and it was a long ways down!
Poor little baby! I vow to keep better watch over you!

Daddy and I both agree that you are VERY smart! You absorb everything around you and know exactly what is going on. You figured out how to open your mouth really wide when you see a spoon, you know that fussing equals cuddle time with mommy, and you love to "talk" to me and try to copy me.

You are my sunshine :)
I melt when you smile that gummy smile at me.


I love how you always seem to have something in your mouth. No teeth, just toys/fingers/toes/grass/anything, really.




Even when you aren't smiling, I always think it looks like you smile with your eyes.


I love you my little smartypants!

mischievous emsley

Dear playful, loud, mischievous emsley,

Who taught you how to scream and growl?! You LOVE to hear the sound of your voice--the louder, the better.

Growling is also super fun. You are a growling monster and it is adorable.
You are a little chunker!
I am thankful that you are still as patient as you were as a newborn. Always content to jump in the jumper while I'm dealing with a crisis in the other room.
You are a smart baby, too! You are so close to crawling--just need to get that tummy off the floor and you'll be cruising!

Even though you can't crawl yet, you roll all over the place. Somehow you end up in the exact place that I don't want you to be, with the thing that I don't want you to chew on.
You collapse the playmat:

You play with big-boy toys that I try (unsuccessfully) to hide from you:
Busted!

You find your toy basket and go wild:


And my all-time favorite...you get stuck under the couch. LOL



I love my funny little emsley!

see me

A lot of people have told me that they can't see my blog posts in their reader, and I finally figured out that its because my blog used to be invite-only and then I changed it to public. If you don't see my updates in your blog feed (and you want to...LOL) then I think you need to un-follow my blog, and then go back to it and click "follow" to start over. I hope that works! Love you guys!

outside

I am so glad that the babies love to be outside as much as I do :)

Yesterday was a gorgeous day--nothing better than being able to take a warm sunny walk in February!



No matter how fussy the girls are, as soon as they get outside into the crisp air they are completely different babies. A few weeks ago Summer was really sick with an awful stomach bug. The only way I could get her to calm down from non-stop crying was by going outside. Emsley thought it was a great idea!



Can't wait to take them to the park someday!

shopping

...this is how we do it.





I guess its a good method of saving money because I can only buy as much as I can fit underneath the shopping cart, which isn't much. :D

growing babies

lots of people always say that they are amazed how fast their babies grow up.
"time flies", "they grow up too fast", "in the blink of an eye"...
honestly, I never think that!

I often think about how incredibly SLOW the past 8 months have gone by. everything with preemies is excruciatingly SLOW, just creeping along at a snail's pace. moms of preemies know too well how the "newborn stage" for us seems to last forever.
when I was pregnant, I didn't understand why having a baby a few weeks early would be a problem. I worried for their health, of course, but I was also excited that I wouldn't have to be painfully pregnant any longer. plus, the thought of being able to see my babies early was exciting. ;)


little did I know that having my girls born 8 weeks early would make such a huge difference compared to a full-term baby!
I always see updates from my friends with babies much much younger than summer & emsley, but so far advanced in milestones. crawling. laughing. eating from a spoon. sitting up. just yesterday at target a man walked by with a baby sitting upright in his cart and holding a cup. he looked at both my babies (lying in their carseats) and seemed surprised when I told him their age. he was also eager to tell me that his baby was 5 months.
congratulations dude.

I hate comparisons and being told not to compare. for me its not about comparing what your baby can do and what mine can't (yet). honestly, its not about that. its more about my sanity as a mom of twins. I just want to be able to give them a bath without the infant tub! I just want them to hold their own bottles so that my arm doesn't go numb trying to feed both at once! Or for them to sit up by themselves so that they can play and not get frustrated that I leave them lying on their backs all the time.
I know they'll do it eventually, they are so close! I guess it makes it all the better when you've waited so long...they were around 4-5 months before I got a real smile and it was so worth the wait!



I am so so SO grateful that they are healthy and growing strong, and especially thankful for the modern medicine that saved emsley's life. I know that they won't be babies forever, and I am so grateful for every day that they grow up a little more. Being a mom of twins is really tough sometimes!
Another stranger with twins told me the other day "The first year is the hardest, but just wait until you get them potty trained, then its heaven!" :)

smiles all around!

a big thank you to joel who graciously took this ol' computer to the apple store and fixed it after working on saturday!

now you can see that emsley loves her exersaucer:


...and I love going in after they wake up from a nap! happy babies!



slowly but surely learning to sit up!



...and the occasional meltdown. sad face!

you need an update, right?

welp, good news and bad news.

good news is that apple sent me the brand new iLife cd for free! which means that I can use iPhoto again and start catching up on my blog photos. I have a ton on my camera just waiting to get put on here! :D

...yeah, now the bad news: Baby Signing Time is stuck inside my computer, forever haunting me.
which means that I can't install the new iLife cd.
which means no photos for you.
whenever I try to eject it, it just makes a groaning noise and then starts up playing BABBY BABBY BABY SIGNING TIMEEEEE!! over and over and over.

HAH! its almost comical.
almost.

I'm off to jimmyrig a paperclip to try and manually force Rachel Coleman out of my disk drive. wish me luck. :)