11 months

October 7th, 2008 · No Comments

So this is WAYYYYYY past their actual 11 month birthday but I just haven’t forced myself to get back into posting. If I try and post when the babes are awake A: I feel guilty I am not spending that time playing and working with them and B: Loen crawls all over me and drools on the keys. Ok are you going to buy those excuses?? Anyways on to the…..UPDATES

Loen: At their 11 month check up she weighed 14 pounds 13.5 ounces and was 26 inches long. When I wrote before she was a slobbering mess I had no idea of what was to come. How that child doesn’t dehydrate is beyond me. We soak through numerous bibs and shirts daily. Not to mention all the toys and burp cloths that are dripping wet thanks to Lo. It must be all that teething. She has her bottom two and is cutting her fangs. No words yet but there is lots of baby blabbering going on in our house especially when they are supposed to be down for their nap. Loen went from attempting to crawl to mastering the crawl and pulling up on furniture within a week. I wasn’t quite ready for that learning curve. She also has no concept of danger. I was letting her crawl on the bed and had my hand wrapped around her ankle. I wanted to see what she would do when she came to the edge. She stopped, looked over then attempted to crawl off the edge. Thank goodness I was holding her. She has all these tiny little bruises on her noggin because she is constantly trying to pull up on things then falling. Perhaps I should buy her the thudgaurd. Tadd noticed if she falls trying to get to a toy she will cry but if she falls trying to get to: cell phone, power cords, computer (any forbidden item), she will look at you, act like nothing is wrong and continue her quest for dangerous items. Another favorite item on the forbidden list is my insulin pump. It is like she remembers it is attached to me and will look for it. I have felt tugging behind me only to find Loen pulling on the catheter line. It doesn’t hurt to have the tubing pulled out (it is insert via needle into fat) but it is a pain to have reinsert it.

Derby: Weighs in at 14 pounds 9 ounces and is 25 inches long. They have to be over 15 pounds now. Derby has 2 bottom teeth and is just cutting a fang (perhaps they should ask for their 2 front teeth for Christmas). We still only do the front to back roll. Derby now sees a Occupational Therapist (OT) and a Physical Therapist (PT) to help him work on movement. At first he thought it was fun smiling and laughing but then they started working on his muscles and having him move in unfamiliar ways. Somebody was pretty ticked off, it was sad and funny all at the same time. He is getting increasingly frustrated with not being able to move. He will try and throw himself backwards to move but alas this is one of those frowned upon moves. He has the strength he just doesn’t want to move the proper way. It will be interesting to see where we are in a month after weekly sessions with the therapists. Another down side of spending a lot of time on your back is a flat head. Derby is able to move enough to get himself into a comfortable position so placing rolls behind him so he will sleep on his side no longer works. He does this little butt scoot so he is on his back and he puts his hands behind his head. We took the twins to a orthopedic office for a laser evaluation of their head shape. They said Loen has a classic preemie shaped head but nothing to worry about. Derby’s measurements were just within the range where they would recommend a helmet. His pediatrician and the neonatologist said not to worry about it but Tadd feels if we can do anything to make their life a little better we should do it. We are still discussing what we want to do but I keep thinking how sad Derby would look with glasses and a helmet.

Mr. Flat Head

Derbs is my little chunker

Food: I spoke with the pediatrician regarding Derby clamping his mouth shut when I tried to feed him, he said to give them a couple of weeks without any solid food then try again. I bought some jars of organic baby food since a friend told me her son preferred the texture over homemade. We had a few successful bites of peas and pears (lunch is brought to you by the letter P). The Occupational Therapist was asking me questions regarding Derby’s eating style to which I answered ‘no’, then I was thinking Loen does a lot of those things. So I mentioned how Loen eats and how we have had little luck with solids. Oral issues are very common with preemies, she said if I bring Loen in with me the next time she would go over some ideas with me. So that sounds promising, I doubt we will be ready to eat cake at our first birthday but it is a start. But at the moment we are still breastfed babies (via bottle with added formula for calories). How’s the breast milk you ask (and yes I have had the Ben & Jerry’s PETA story emailed to me a few times). Well we are finally tapping into the frozen. Not that I don’t produce enough fresh but I decided to just pump 3 times a day. It has been almost a year and I am starting to loath the breast pump. Not to mention the frozen is only good for up to a year in a deep freeze. Depending on how much milk I get out when I pump I add between .5 to 1.5 ounces of frozen to the fresh milk to make 5 ounces. Derby, my little milk connoisseur, refuses to drink all frozen. I feel like I am sneaking it in. In the beginning he would stick his tongue out because he could just taste the faintest hint of frozen milk in his bottle but he is getting used to it, he still prefers all fresh. Too bad, so sad little man we need room for frozen pizza in the freezer!

Use it before it expires!

After Derby got his glasses I kept thinking he looked like a cartoon character but I couldn’t think of the name. Once again the letter P kept coming to mind but I was drawing a blank as to the character. I thought “Pemberton” (not a cartoon) then someone mentioned Pointdexter, nope that wasn’t it. Then as I started to write this blog it came to me, Peabody! I was close as Mr. Peabody was the dog and the boy was Sherman. Or maybe he looks like Chicken Little or the little kid from “Jerry McQuire”. Anybody out there have any ideas?