Let's Do the Time Warp Again...

First things first..... I have not fallen off the planet.... I've just been really busy for the last almost month with personal stuff. I've also had quite the social calendar lately. Last weekend I went to my friend C's daughter's Bat Mitzvah. It was mostly in Hebrew which is so not a language that I know or understand. Thankfully the party that night was in English and was amazingly fun. I was so in awe of how poised and grown up MAG has become over the years that I have known her and I've known her since she was basically just a twinkle in C's eye. It's amazing to think that 13 years have passed so quickly. It makes me appreciate my girls so much more. It still floors me that Anna and Lily are 10 months old already. I'm so in awe that less than a year ago they arrived. They were so tiny back then. I can't believe that my little 5lb 9oz and 5lb 6oz babies are now starting to tip the scales at 20lbs each. Before I know it, May will be here along with their first birthday.

Anna (purple sleeves) & Lily (pink sleeves)

Kid Updates

So let's see it's been a while since I've been here to blog.. life has been extremely complicated so I'm not going into it here right now... but for this post at least I'm going to focus on my girls and how they are doing and what they are currently up to.

We had our 9 month appt on Feb 19th and the girls are healthy as anything. Anna weighed in at exactly 19 pounds and Lily weighed in at 18 pounds 9 ounces. They have definitely grown since the 6 month appt back in November. Thankfully at the 9 month appt we had no shots at all so the girls were in a good mood before and after the appt.

Anna has some huge milestones to report. She can crawl, she can pull herself to standing, is starting to cruise the furniture and is no longer eating baby food. She is now a table food eater. She truly enjoys eating real food. She also is starting to sprout some teeth. I finally saw one coming through on the top. So we might be up to 3 teeth for her with maybe 3 more on the way. Anna is starting to talk, just the other day she added the word Mama to her repertoire. This is in addition to Dada and a really exaggerated Ok.

Lily is working on the crawling thing still. She is starting to go backwards. She'll get it eventually. She has joined Anna in the revolt of all things Baby Food related. Though she hasn't figured out that it means that she has to eat real food and not just her bottles of formula. We've recently learned that if you don't look at her while she's eating that she might actually eat something that you put in front of her. She's also starting to fight back when Anna takes toys from her now. Go baby go. Lily is starting to talk a little bit too. Not as much as Anna but she's making her needs known. Thank goodness I am doing Baby Signs with both of the girls. It's been so helpful to know what the girls need and want.

Gated Community

Well with one baby crawling and one baby not, it is finally time for some gates around here. Especially since I have found Anna in quite a few weird places lately. A friend of mine that is also a twin mom offered me one of her gates and I took her up on the offer. I love this gate. It's pressure mounted so that means that I don't have to worry about ruining the walls with holes and such since we live in an apartment. It also does a great job of keeping Anna in one room. Though now she tears up the living room area on a regular basis. I also found that it keeps my mom out... seriously she can't get over the gate and she's only a couple of inches shorter than me and I can just make it over the gate ok. The cats have already perfected their way over the gate. It was funny to watch them try to figure it out the first time but now they know that they need to do a jump to make it.

In other news, the packing is going ok. I'm starting to doubt if I have enough boxes. Lee's book collection (have you seen how many books the boy owns) is huge. My books (ok I used smaller boxes) took up 3 or 4 boxes alone and I know he has way more books than I do. I'm doing my best to get some packing done each day if I can. I think we are shooting for a move date of March 1st so our landlord can get in here and do the necessary work needed to make our current apartment nice for the next tenants.

Lily Lily Lily get your Lily Update here

Yes i am a mother... using old schoolhouse rock songs to get people's attention.

Anyway I wanted to do a quick update on Lily since I only talked about Anna below. Lily is doing great... she is slower to moving on her own and I swear spends her days watching Anna and taking notes as to how to do things eventually. I asked my mom and apparently I was slower to get going also. But once I did... I did it all at once. We have a 9 month checkup scheduled for next week so I'll be sure to ask the Ped about this when we see him. Hopefully she'll catch up to Anna soon enough.

Lily is doing great... she is so cuddly and loves to snuggle with whoever has her.. She has a bad case of seperation anxiety and usually can't bear to see me go out the door without her. Lots of mommy guilt on that one. She has the greatest little smile though... I love seeing it and making her laugh so I can see it often.

The Boxes have arrived

It's real... we are moving... how do I know??? The boxes have arrived... a friend of mine that I go out and knit with moved last weekend and gave me her boxes for packing. For now they are in the hallway outside our apartment but soon enough I'll be working my way through them and bringing them inside. I've already packed 4 boxes.. 3 in the kitchen and 1 with some of my books in the bedroom. There is sooo much to do.. I may need to bring the girls to my mom's for a few days (one day at a time) and spend time alone here packing and cleaning. I think it's the only way that I'll be done in time for the move. Not that we have a date yet or anything. I have a feeling though that it will be the weekend of March 1st and if not then we'll be moving on March 8th.

Little Miss Troublemaker

So Anna has truly found her mobility and along with that has become very curious. I actually just had to rescue her 4 times in the last 30 minutes... 1) the bathroom, 2) the cats' water bowl and food, 3) the hallway cabinet and 4) the vacuum bags that Lee had put behind the vacuum. I seriously need to baby proof but it seems illogical since we are moving pretty soon. I guess that I'll just need to 1) keep the bathroom door closed, 2) make sure she can't get to the water bowl and food too quickly, 3) put a rubber band on the knobs of the cabinets (she can still open it but not as far and it springs back rather quickly) and 4) move the vacuum bags to the hall closet.

Clarity

It's been a weird week or two here and I'm still not going into the details since the net can be way more public than i like at times. But I'm happy to say that I am finally seeing things clearly for the first time in a small while. I'm feeling tons better in so many ways. Lee and I clearly love each other and are much more committed to our relationship than we have been in a long while (just my opinion though). I feel like I've also grown and matured more lately because of the situation I was in the past few weeks. I'm enjoying my babies more than I have in the past.. they are at such a fun and great age now. We can do so many new and fun things together now.

On Sunday I was at our church and the sermon felt like it was written just for me this week. The topic was on Forgiveness and Responsibility, two things that had been lacking as of late in my life so the words really spoke to me and made me think about things further than I have. But now things are much more clear in my mind and I've now done my best to reach out to the person that I possibly hurt emotionally last week. I hope that they realize that I am sincere and that the situation hopefully won't repeat itself again.