Playing in the car

Alexis and Amelia love to play in the car. They LOVE it. But they do NOT want me to play. Any time I try to come sit in the front with me they try to shove me out and shut the door. I'm not too offended because at least they love each other and don't fight.

They love to play in all types of cars, big and small.

Sleeping in their stroller

We used to put the girls to sleep in the stroller each night. Amelia apparently has strong preferences about her sleep position. Always likes to have one arm by her head:

Climbing

Alexis and Amelia both love to climb. They also seem to be... abnormally strong. They climb up onto everything. Into everything. No box or bin is safe. They even both love to climb into the big box of megablocks, which I just can't seem to understand. It CAN'T be comfortable sitting on those pointy blocks, but they don't seem to mind. Now that they are both walking (yay!), the climbing is out of control - they climb onto everything! Check it out:

Climbing into things:

[Climbing into bins even when the bins are already occupied]

Climbing on top of things:

Video proof in case you were wondering how they climb up on that table (trying to capture her saying "ball," captured the perfect climb instead):

Climbing onto diaper box, rather unsuccessfully:

Clapping

Alexis and Amelia love to clap. They like to clap when people do things they like, when they see people they love, and when they do something they are proud of (like walking!).  Obviously, it's adorable.  They also like to clap objects together. The louder the sound, the better (the best sound is the sound of mom's iPhone hitting the tile floor).

When Nanna (grandma) brought them a new wooden puzzle with little handles on each piece Alexis and Amelia were in HEAVEN. Handles for better clapping! We went to visit Aunt Lisa's new house, and had quite the orchestra going on:

Here's Amelia showing off her clapping skills a few months ago:

Mid-clap:

Last night (err, this morning) at 4:50am, Alexis decided to impress me with her clapping skills. After nursing and tricking me into thinking she was asleep, I gently started moving her and she instantly opened her eyes, smiled, and started clapping. Super adorable, but really not a good sign that she'll ever go back to sleep. Sigh. It's a good thing they are so darn cute!

Teeth

Guess who has teeth? Alexis and Amelia!

They have had teeth for a little while now, but they definitely came late -- probably around 11 months.  Alexis has two teeth on the bottom, and one coming in on the top. Amelia has one on the bottom and one on the top. She's such a little hillbilly!

There are definitely more coming... This whole "teething" thing is no joke.

Check out these chompers:

Amelia says "no no no!"

Amelia loves to shake her head.  She started about 2.5 months ago, and we thought it was just a phase (maybe it still is?). At the time, we thought maybe she was just shaking her head to make herself dizzy. And maybe she was. But now, she understands when we say "no no no!" and starts shaking her head on command. It's pretty damn adorable:

One

It's official. Alexis and Amelia are one. They are one, and they are healthy and thriving.  The past month or so had a lot of anniversaries of really unpleasant events. The first day I was admitted to the hospital. The day they transferred me to Stanford (which to this day remains the worst day of my life by a substantial margin). The day the contractions wouldn't go away. And finally, the day they arrived.  I wish I could say that was the happiest day of my life, but it was not. It was one of the worst, beat only by the preceding 3 weeks in the hospital. But since that day, every day has gotten better and better.

Today, the girls are happy and healthy. They crawl, babble, and do everything they are supposed to do.  In fact, at their 12 month appointment, despite being sick for the past 3 weeks (or 5-6 weeks as Boris claims), their pediatrician said that they are on track with a normal healthy 12 month old... UNADJUSTED! They are still on the small side for a 12 month old, but they are giant for 9 month olds! And their heads are giant, even for a 12 month old... 85th percentile unadjusted. Smart babies.

Over the past few months I've been hearing a lot of awful stories about the twins who didn't do so well. Lots of losses, of one or both twins.  Some delivered before viability, others stillborn at nearly full-term.  Which makes me think back to our own traumatic experience and think, maybe this wasn't so bad? Maybe the Stanford doctors were right after all -- maybe it was better to deliver tiny, weak babies at 27 weeks and let them grow into the strong healthy babies they are today.

For those who haven't seen it already, here's my recap of Amelia and Alexis's first year:

We had a super fun birthday party, which I will post about as soon as we get photos!

Officially crawling

As you may remember, Alexis has been "crawling" for quite some time. If you can call it crawling. It was an army crawl that consisted of dragging her whole body across the floor with one arm underneath her, but she made it work and was pretty effective at getting where she wanted to go.  Amelia, on the other hand, was perfectly content just watching. As Alexis crawled around in circles, Amelia just sat and patiently waited, in typical Amelia fashion.  She's not an early adopter. She wants to check things out, make sure someone else has figured out how to do it, and then she'll give it a try once it definitely seems like a good idea.

Well, last week she decided it was time to crawl. So she just got up on her knees and started crawling around. Like it was nothing. Like she's been doing it for years. It's hard to catch it on camera because as soon as I pull out my phone she gets super distracted, but I managed to use the phone to my advantage and catch at least a little bit of her mobility.

And again, to show off how far she can crawl, I just held out my iPhone and kept moving it away from her, like the asshole I am:

I've also tried to have the girls race, now that they are both crawling. So far I haven't had much success. Like the dachshund races at Picnic Day, the contestants tend to lose focus and don't really care about claiming the prize. Oh well, they're still cute.

Swings

We live right on a greenbelt, about 1000 feet from a small park with swings. We always thought the park was great so that we could bring Mikayla there when she visited, but obviously the girls were too little to enjoy it. Last weekend our friend Paula and her daughter Lisa came by to visit, and Lisa brought her cute little boy who apparently loves swings. We went to the swings and since we were there, figured we would put one of the girls in the swing and see if they liked it. They loved it. Both of them, immediately. I can't believe we didn't try it earlier. Look at these little faces! So happy!

Amelia's tongue

Amelia has recently developed a habit of sticking her tongue out. All. The. Time.

You can't quite appreciate what it's like from a single video though. So here's a video:

She's like a little panting puppy. I don't know why she does it, but it's pretty darn cute. Looking back at some old photos, I realized she has always stuck out her tongue more than her sister, I just never really noticed it. See photo evidence below.

From birth:

Costco

Who knew that Costco is the best place to bring babies? Well, it is. Since we started bringing the girls to costco a few months ago, it has been one of our favorite place to go on weekends. Sometimes we go even when we don't need to buy anything (inevitably we end up spending at least $300). The girls just love it. So much to see! It's almost like being outside, except it's nice and warm.

The girls love their baby bjorn carriers (MUST be outward facing!), so Boris and I typically each where a baby and take turns pushing the cart. They are so happy. This week, we decided to try out the shopping cart, since they have two seats! It wasn't quite as fun for the girls, but they still liked it a lot.  The downside? Two cute girls side by side in a shopping cart is apparently too much for most people to handle. We created more than a few traffic jams, as people stopped to stare and tell us how cute they are. Even when we are standing side-by-side with matching babies in carriers, we don't get that kind of attention. Normally only the baby lovers stop to comment. But apparently having them sit in the cart together is just too much.

I mean... they are pretty darn cute. I guess I can't blame anyone?

First Food

Giving the girls their first "solid" (mush) food was a milestone I was really excited about. For a few reasons. First, it's fun! It means they are growing up! Second, it's hard to produce enough milk for two babies. I've managed to do it, but it means pumping in the middle of the night, pumping for about 40 minutes at a time, etc. I don't like it! I've always made just enough, but never with much to spare. In fact, while I once had a huge chest freezer full of milk, that extra supply has been slowly dwindling away and I was in danger of running out entirely for a while.  Giving the girls some non-milk calories was a great way to take some pressure of my supply.

When we first gave the girls food (rice cereal mixed with breast milk), they were... confused. They sort of licked the spoon, and then all of the food dribbled onto their bib. It was really cute, but not very effective as a calorie-delivery system. They both started to get the hang of it though. Alexis was a pro within a few weeks even though we only fed them solids about once a day. She wasn't super interested in it though. Amelia, on the other hand, would spit everything out almost immediately but WANTED MORE RIGHT NOW OMG. She loved it. She still does. The girl loooooves food.

Here they when they were first getting the hang of the "eating" thing. Keeping them upright in their bumbo chairs was the biggest challenge.

Here's Mikayla trying to help out:

And now we're on to trying to feed them "real" solids. Ie, stuff that hasn't been blended into oblivion. They like banana pieces, but still haven't figured out how to pick them up and put them into their mouth. Which is weird, since they stick EVERYTHING ELSE into their mouths immediately. Apparently food belongs on the floor. As soon as I put food on their tray for them to grab, they both pick it up and drop it straight on the floor, then look for more. And then they open their mouth wide for me to feed it to them. I guess they are just spoiled. Why do it yourself if someone else will feed you?

Little Amelia loves food so much. As soon as we start feeding her, she opens her mouth as wide as she possibly can to get more. It's like she's trying to tell us "look I'm all done! Nothing left! Need some more please!"

They love food so much it's hard to wait sometimes! Impatient babies: