11 Months Old

Even though they will be 12 months next week, this post reflects their activities at 11 months.

Month 11 was the month of mobility and exploring lots of finger foods.  They are a bit like puppies, crawling all over the place, chewing on everything, and making lots of noise.  Sometimes they travel as a pack around the house seeking the same ball or other toy and on other occasions they are on their own traveling in opposite directions.

During month 11:

• The gates were installed at both sides of the main living area and if they are not latched completely they can get them open and escape
• We switched to bigger car seats
• Ruslan continues to blow kisses and still sucks his left thumb and holds his right ear
• Wyatt makes clicking noises and ear-splitting yells
• Both pull themselves up to stand and cruise along the furniture and walls
• Wyatt is especially interested in electrical outlets so we are extra careful to watch out for them when we are somewhere that they might not be covered
• Ruslan's reflux finally started to end to the point where we no longer have to keep him in a bib all day for spit-up.  We started the process of switching him from the reflux formula to the same brand that Wyatt eats.
• They both love chasing balls
• Ruslan started clapping and blowing razzberries
• We bought their first pair of shoes, but we still keep them barefoot most of the time
• We worked with Wyatt to get him to put himself back to sleep when he was continuing to wake-up at 2:00 am many nights - now everyone sleeps all night
• New finger foods: egg yolk (scramble and hard boiled), blueberry waffles, toast, green beans and peas

We are starting to get to the point where they entertain each other and I can start to see the advantage of having a built in playmate as they grow-up.

Cookies...Sort of

We start each meal with some sort of finger food - rice cakes and puffs have been the standard for several weeks.  Recently we added "biter bars" which are bascially hard cookies.  They both like them and have a different approach for eating them.

Ruslan takes little nibbles while Wyatt coats the cookie in drool until it dissolves...very messy.  Wyatt really loves these, Ruslan would just as well eat a rice cake.

6 Months Old

6 months old and becoming more fun each day.  They seem to be learning a new "trick" every week. 

Ruslan figured out how to blow bubbles and of course his favorite time to do that is while eating; he loves the sound of his voice (will all of my children have this trait); his feet have become his favorite toy; and he is showing some signs that he might be the first to crawl.

Wyatt is finally growing some hair; it looks like a tooth is going to be arriving soon; he is getting very stable sitting up, loves to be as upright as possible and is close to being able to stand holding onto something - he is almost chest high on Juliana already...guessing he will be at the top of the height chart.

It's amazing how different they are in temperment, overall traits, and varying development.

They are both such calm babies - almost every day one of the teachers or childcare workers and even the other moms stop to tell me how much they love our babies and how sweet and good they are.  They greet everyone with a smile and generally only cry when they are very hungry or very tired.   Even two very good babies require a lot of attention and work, I can't imagine if they were fussy all the time.  I live an exhausted life on most days, but when I drag myself into their room in the morning and they catch the first glimpse of me over their cribs, both babies wave their arms and kick in great excitement, smile and shriek with joy that mommy has come to rescue them...and I feel a little less tired at that moment and smile back at my happy boys...I am blessed with wonderful children.

Some of the details of their lives at 6 months (need to record these details so whenever I do get to work on their first year scrapbooks, I will have the information to include).

Baths are 2 times a week and they are still in the baby tub in the kitchen sink.  I have such a good system down for the kitchen bath, but I think we will need to move to the duck tub in the big bathtub very soon.

Eating - So far the boys have enjoyed the following foods - rice cereal (only for the first week), oatmeal baby cereal, peaches, pears, sweet potatoes, green beans.  And surprisingly green beans seem to be the favorite food so far.  After a few weeks of one meal at dinner each day, they started having cereal with fruit for breakfast as well.

Sleep - They still aren't napping well at daycare.  Most evenings they come home, eat dinner and fall asleep.  At around 8:00, we get them changed for bed (if they aren't already in their sleepers) and then Wyatt gets a bottle, Ruslan nurses and into their cribs they go.  We are still feeding them before we go to bed for the night to get them through until 6:30 most nights - they don't generally wake up for those feedings...just drink in their sleep.  On the weekends, they take nice naps (Ruslan will nap 2-1/2 - 3 hours at a time) and they are so much happier and are awake to play in the evening.

Making Baby Food

One of the gifts I received at the baby shower when I was pregnant with Juliana, was a small food mill designed for making baby food.  When I opened it, I laughed and said - apparently I am going to have time to make baby food.

Once Juliana was born and we neared the time for solid food, I started to look into making her food and realized that it wasn't that difficult.  So for her first few months, she had the standard boxed baby cereal and I made her fruits and veggies.  Foods that I made in those early eating months included: acorn squash, applesauce, pears, sweet potatoes, apricots, peaches, plums, carrots, mangos, papayas.  And then the basic mush and feed - bananas and avocados.

I bought a kit that included a "cookbook" and covered ice cube trays for freezing the food.  Cookbook may be stretching it - the book give basic instructions and ideas for combinations.  I made notes in the book about when I first made a certain food and what Juliana liked and disliked.  Her favorite food as marked in the book was yogurt mixed with peaches.

I don't think I will be making much of the food for the boys.  In some cases it isn't cost-effective and some foods are more time consuming than others.  I will be making some of the easy stuff and that includes items I can buy frozen to start since those items are already prepped (frozen sliced peaches, peas, green beans).

This week I made sweet potatoes and it was as quick and easy as I remembered.  I spent $2.08 for the 3 sweet potatoes and made 32 oz of thick puree (about twice as thick as the Gerber first foods variety).  I prefer to make the food thicker to freeze and then add water after it is defrosted so I can serve it with less water as they get used to each new food.

Here are the simple steps:
1 - Peel sweet potatoes and chop into equal size chunks

2 - Add 2 TBs water, cover and microwave 10 minutes, let stand 5 mins.
3 - Dump into food processor, add 1/4 water and puree
4 - Spoon puree into ice cube trays

5 - Freeze overnight, transfer cubes from trays to freezer bag, and return to freezer

6 - Defost 1oz cubes as needed

Both babies love them!

A Few of My Favorite Things by Ruslan

#1 - My thumb - it is with me everywhere I go. I prefer my left thumb, but if Mommy has trapped that thumb in my shirt sleeve while trying to change my clothes, then I will use the right thumb. To get my thumb in my mouth, I press the palm of my hand against my face and slide my thumb along my mouth until it is there. Even if I am awake when Mommy puts me in my crib at night, I just suck on my thumb and get very sleepy. Sometimes I notice Wyatt sucking on his fingers, but not too often.

#2 - Rolling - I learned to roll over later than my baby brother, but now that I know how, I love to roll across the entire room. Mommy puts me on the left side of Wyatt so that I don't roll on him, like my thumb I prefer rolling to the left. Mommy always seems surprised when she leaves us on the floor to play and comes back a few minutes later and I have rolled as far as I can - it's a fun game. Some nights I have to cry for Mommy and Daddy to come help me. I love rolling so much that I do it in my crib at night and sometimes my left arm gets stuck and I can't get my thumb in my mouth. Daddy puts me on my back so I can get my thumb again and then I can fall back asleep.

#3 - Oatmeal Cereal - For the longest time all I got to eat was milk and now I get food from a spoon. The rice cereal was ok, I made a horrible face when Mommy tried to feed peaches to me, and now I have been eating oatmeal cereral - it is very yummy. I open my mouth wide every time I see the spoon and try not to let any come back out on my chin. Mommy says I need to wear my new bib to keep my shirt clean and I do like the bright colored pictures on it; but the bib causes a big problem - it traps my hands. When I try to get my thumb to my mouth I just end up pressing my bib against my face and then I can't see, I smoosh food on my nose and I still can't get my thumb. Fortunately I eat quickly and after Mommy washes my face and I can get out of my chair and roll.

First Bowl of Cereal

After sleeping all night for weeks, over the past few weeks both boys had started to wake up almost every night.  I checked one of the "is your baby ready for solid food" quizes...and the answer was yes for all 10 questions.  So Tuesday evening they each had their first bowl of cereal.

Instead of full size highchairs, we purchased these compact chair-top versions.  They still recline and will work much better for us and our available space.  The boys were very excited when we put them in the seats - they were happy to kick and look around and be amused by Juliana.

Scott insisted that they both get their first bite of food at the exact same moment, thankfully we had another adult on hand so I could take pictures.

Juliana did get in on the fun as well.  After feeding Ruslan 2 bites she was bored and wandered off to play.

Both of them did such a good job, kept most of the food in their mouths and seemed to get the hang of pushing the food to the back of their mouths quickly.  Ruslan was fussy when we got home today, but as soon as I put him in his chair he sat back and smiled.  I don't think that anyone is surprised that Ruslan is excited for more food.  In between bites of food Wyatt was making little noises, asking for more.

When they were done eating Ruslan was happy to sit in his chair and kick and Wyatt was very chatty. (ignore my silly, mommy voice)  Apparently blogger and facebook are not playing nice tonight - click here to view the video until it appears in this post.



10 minutes later, they were both passed out, sound asleep - happy, tired babies.

Dilemmas and Decisions: Breastfeeding, the Pump and Formula

When I was pregnant with Juliana, I had these dreams of the two of us rocking peacefully with her happily nursing. Instead those attempts were meant with screaming baby and crying mommy. So I would pump milk for her and bottle feed, this included waking up during the night to feed her a bottle and then pump milk for later…in the middle of the night. After a month we started supplementing with formula and by 3 months I quit pumping and she was on formula for the rest of her first year. I felt incredibly guilty about the whole experience; I had failed at one of the first things a Mommy can do for her child. Was it because I didn’t nurse her in the first hours of her life (after being awake for 40 hours and undergoing major surgery) and she had more than one bottle of formula during those days in the hospital? Whatever the reason it didn’t work out for us, and she has always been incredibly healthy – one ear infection in nearly 4 years.

When I found out I was pregnant last year, I thought a lot about this experience with Juliana and decided that this time could be different. I would make a second attempt to breastfeed but if it didn’t work out I wasn’t going to pump and bottle-feed this time, instead we would go straight to formula and not feel guilty.

Then the announcement – twins- oh my….I couldn’t successfully nurse one baby, there is no way I could possibly deal with two. Throughout the remainder of my pregnancy, people would ask if I was going to breastfeed (it’s amazing to me that something so personal becomes a matter-a-fact topic during pregnancy and the early baby months), and my response was always I will try. The nurses preparing my hospital charts at my 3rd trimester appointments – I am going to try; the nurses checking me in for surgery – I am going to try…the answer was never yes.

In the recovery room, the post-op nurse asked if I wanted to try breastfeeding them, ok let’s give it a try. They both nursed for a few minutes. However their blood sugar was low so they had formula as well in the recovery room and later that night. I had already decided that they would have formula in the nursery at night, this second time around I resisted the night rooming in. It’s really an interesting concept – major surgery, still hooked up to all sorts of tubes, affects of spinal still wearing off, taking pain medication, completely exhausted and can’t get out of bed…yeah, leave a defenseless tiny human with me for the night. This time around I took full advantage of the nursery at night so I could start to recover from the long pregnancy and surgery.

That first night they both had formula and by morning their blood sugar had stabilized and we went back to the breast. All was well the first full day, second night and the next day. That third night, just as I was falling asleep at ~11:00, the night nurse came in and announced that Wyatt had already lost more than 10% of his weight (most babies lose 6-10% of their weight following birth) and they were going to bring him to me throughout the night to nurse and then give him a bottle – that nurse made me feel like a bad mom who had sent her babies away for the night and wasn’t doing everything possible to keep them healthy.

And then we went home the next day. Ruslan continued to nurse well and Wyatt didn’t eat quite as energetically. They were up constantly at night during those first few weeks. Scott would give each of them a bottle during the first part of the night and then I would sleep in their room the rest of the night, feeding them every few hours. We went for weight checks every few days; we were told to give Wyatt more formula since he wasn’t gaining fast enough. I was exhausted. Ruslan gained his weight back quickly and was excused from weight checks, and as we approached one-month Wyatt passed as well.

Ruslan developed reflux and formula made it worse, so we quit the one nightly bottle at about one-month and he has been exclusively on breast milk since. That means I have had to get up with him each night – no letting Scott get up with Ruslan, although he still gave Wyatt a bottle. As the reflux was getting worse I started searching for answers – and eventually I cut dairy out of my diet. Within a week, the massive amounts of spit-up were reduced to a dribble. I’m not a milk drinker, but I sure do miss cheese and ice cream and an occasional bowl of cereal.

At 6-weeks Wyatt was still having several bottles a day and breastfeeding the remainder of the time. I was so tired and he ate so slowly while Ruslan was done in 10 minutes. I made the decision to switch Wyatt to formula. I didn’t feel guilty this time, I knew that he would be healthy and I could do better for both babies by making this change. I’m so glad that I was firm in my decision because most people could not understand why I would do this, as if I was mistreating Wyatt when instead I was making sure that he was getting enough food. At his 2-mo check-up his weight had improved and I felt even better about my decision. Everyone was happy to get to feed Wyatt and it gave me a break in the evenings.

Since the boys have been in daycare, Ruslan is now getting pumped breast milk in a bottle during the day and he doesn’t care…that little one is just happy to eat. And now the next decision, when to stop? I am going away for a week at the beginning of December so we have that as an end date – I think I feel better having a target date (and knowing when I can eat cheese again). So by mid-November I plan to stop breastfeeding Ruslan and he will be on formula for the last 5 months of his first year. Hopefully by that point the reflux will be gone so the formula won’t bother him. So this begins the final stretch of this part of motherhood.

Breast milk or formula, both are healthy options for babies and no one should make mothers feel guilty for making the decision that is right for them and their babies. I am happy that I was able to provide breast milk for all 3 of my babies for their first 6 weeks and that Ruslan has become the happy little nursing baby that I thought I would have all along. Do I feel guilty that I am stopping during the first year, maybe a little…but stopping before the teeth arrive sounds like another good reason…and I know that Ruslan will continue to thrive.