5 Months and 6 Months Combined!

Hello!!  Well, I had a good streak there for a bit, but have since been a total failure with the blog. The girls will be 6 months old tomorrow.  I have a hard time even saying that!!  Are you in the state of shock that I am? They are such beautiful and wonderful babies at this point that I just want to freeze time for a little while.  Anybody know how I can do that?  They are definitely still babies, but they have changed so much and are really becoming so much fun.   I started writing up this post about a month ago, when they were 5 months old, but never finished it and now am just going to combine it with the 6 month update.  I figured this time around I would give updates for each of them individually, as they are really starting show their colors in different ways. All the pics in this round are from April/May.  I will their 6 month pics at the end of this post or in a different post.  Here we go!


                                    
CHARLIE:
Charlie is really doing great.  I just have to say, she looks a little like Katharine Hepburn in the sun hat she has on to the left. Anyway,  when the girls started sleeping through the night a few months ago and we dropped the overnight feed, Charlie practically stopped growing. Per the pediatrician, we started rice cereal in her bottles and she started growing again.  She is now over 12 lbs pounds.  Still very petite, but getting bigger every day!  She has made a lot of physical advancements to catch up with her sisters in the last few months.  Tummy time is a lot more enjoyable for her because she can hold her head up really well.  She is rolling over now too!  In fact, she is probably the best at moving around.  She is definitely going to be the most mobile of the three because she is just as strong as Reese and Maizie, but is much trimmer and thus her chub rolls don't get in the way. :)  She LOVES to lie on her side and sleeps that way most nights.  It's always entertaining to walk into the nursery in the morning and see where Charlie has landed herself.  She is often on her side, 180 degrees turned from where she started.


Charlie is definitely a morning person, like her mom.  When she gets up in the morning, she is all smiles and is the happiest little girl.  She loves to stretch and kick out her feet.  Her favorite part of the morning is lying underneath the monkey mobile listening to the music while her sisters get their diapers changed.  Charlie is probably the most alert of the three girls.  She has her eyes wide open all day, taking in everything she sees.  She follows us around the room, notices Wakefield and Merrill, is very interactive with all her toys and like the other two, has taken to putting everything in her mouth.  She often gets frustrated when she can't get her mouth around something, like her favorite orb. Man, that girl has some lungs and isn't afraid to use them when she is mad about something.  She loves being in the exersaucer too.  Her arms are still a little short to reach all the toys, but she loves looking at all of them and siting up like a big girl.  Our physical therapist says she is only weeks from sitting up on her own. She's got a solid core... her mom's a little jealous. ;)  Charlie's favorite thing these days is the Sassy seat (Jumperoo).  She would sit and bounce in that for hours if I let her.


As for feeding, Charlie is doing much better.  She is still very much a spit-upper, but with the added rice cereal she is keeping much more down.  Unfortunately because of her sensitive tummy, we really can't do much with her for an hour or so after she has eaten because if you move her around too much she will just bring up half of what she ate.  Not good for growth or for laundry.  The good thing is that she doesn't seem disturbed by the spitting up and isn't painful like some reflux babies.  The only part she hates is getting burped over the course of her bottle. She hates that and is not afraid to be vocal about it. The big news is that we just started feeding real food this past week!!  We started with rice cereal, but quickly moved on to sweet potatoes when all three girls got totally bound up.  They LOVE eating food. Charlie is the slowest to get it, but she is doing well.  We move onto carrots next!!  I love to make their food.

Other little things about Charlie... She loves to talk. She definitely talks the most out of the three and loves to have conversations in her own little language.  Nathan and I both chat with her a lot and she is watching our mouths closely.  I bet she is the first to talk, but we will have to see.  She does NOT love to nap, which is weird because she was always our best napper.  She has no problem going down for the morning nap, which lasts from about 8-10a, but her afternoon nap she fights.  She will scream her head off if you try to put her up there before she is ready (which she may think is never), but if we are persistent she will finally fall asleep and sleep for hours!  I think she is just so excited about being awake that she doesn't want to miss anything.  Hopefully that will get better because man, she has some lungs on her!  Lastly, we are pleased to say that it appears Charlie's eyes will definitely be staying blue. They are bright and gorgeous and along with that mass of hair on her head and those long dark eyelashes, Nathan is going to be busy shooing off all the boys. :)


REESE:

Miss Reese is still our best grower and holds on to the #1 position for size.  I think she is weighing in around 16 lbs these days.  Although I think Maizie has taken over the role of the best eater, Reese is a close second.  She is eating about 7.5 oz, four times a day... plus one meal of the veggie of the day (currently sweet potatoes).  She adapted quite well to eating from a spoon, as we thought she might.  We are still working on the timing of the new added meal, as their naps are still pretty long, which limits how much time we can reserve for eating. haha.


Speaking of sleeping, the girls are still doing well with sleeping. Reese seems to be the earliest riser of the three.  I think she likes to have time with Mommy in bed between 5-6a.  I know I'm setting myself up for disaster by bringing her into bed with me, but it's only an hour or so and I just can't help myself. :)  

Reese has become a little bit more serious than we had originally thought she would be.  She still has her silly side and of the three of them, makes the funniest noises and faces.  She also has the biggest laugh once she really gets going.  We have found, however, that she has a very sensitive side.  It seems like Reese doesn't adapt as well as the other two girls to new places and faces.  For the most part she is ok, but a few times in the last month, when she is in a new place with new people, she has had some pretty serious melt-downs... like the type that every parent dreads... the inconsolable screaming. I think it's about being tired, hungry, and in a new place. The combination is disastrous.  The good thing is that we now know what the stressors are and can hopefully avoid the majority of melt downs in the future. I plan on speaking to our pediatrician about it to be sure there isn't something else going on.


Reese loves her toys. She is definitely the best at the exersaucer, interacting with all the toys and making herself laugh.  She likes the jumperoo too.  We have two of them and the girls like to face each other and bounce the day away.  She is awesome at tummy time and really enjoys it.  She is rolling from front to back on both sides and this week for the first time she rolled from her back to her front!! She only did it once, but it was totally unassisted.  I think the girls are going to explode in the ambulatory stage of development in the next month.  


Reese came down with a cold this past week, which was a first for us. She handled it really well, even though for a day or two she could hardly breath through her nose. She was still a happy go lucky girl.  Our little Banana (yes, this is a term of endearment...long story) is a tough cookie!

MAIZIE:  Miss Maizie is really trying to catch Reese on the scale, but so far has not been able to make up the 6 or so ounces.  At a quick glance, she actually looks bigger than Reese, but the truth is that she is shorter than her twin sister so she appears chubbier. Maizie loves to eat.  There is never a bottle with extra formula in it when Maizie is around and she LOOOOOOVES sweet potatoes.  She is definitely the best spoon fed eater, always attentive and opening her mouth wide for tasty food.  

Maizie has a great smile and these days it seems pretty rare that she doesn't have it spread across her face.  It doesn't take much to get her to smile, which is so nice.  We love the happy babies! :)  One of my favorite things about Maizie is how snuggly she is.  All the girls like to snuggle, but Maizie has a special way of burying her head in my neck, especially in the morning.  She is a slow riser. When I take Charlie out of her crib, she is up, stretched out, laughing and ready for the day. Maizie takes a little longer to wake up and will bury her head in my neck to say she isn't quite ready to face the world.  She is often the last to get up in the morning.  

As for toys, Maizie likes all the same things her sisters do.  She is really starting to interact more with the exersaucer and her other toys.  One of her new favorite things is to sit in the feeding table (pictured below) and play her piano.  One of her other new things is voice exploration.  I will often walk into the room to hear Maizie chatting with herself.  She likes to make noise while shoving things in her mouth too.  These days, the most common thing in her mouth is her paci, and not the way you would assume.  She likes to pull her paci out of her mouth and then try eating it like a cookie.  Cookie Monster is one of her new pet names.  Tummy time is fun for Maizie and she is really good at it. She is rolling as well and like Reese, has flipped from back to front!

On a medical note, the nevus on the top of Maizie's head (the hairless spot) hasn't really changed much which is good.  We had gone to see a dermatologist who said that she would have it removed when she was 10 yrs old.  We had dinner with a family friend recently who happens to be a plastic surgeon and he said that he recommends taking it off sooner.  Our pediatrician had thought that as well, so more than likely, we will have that removed in about a year.  In the meantime, we will just keep an eye on it.


So, that's about it. Hopefully I will get back in the swing of things again here.  It's a total pain in the butt to try and chat about 2 months worth of information in one post. Too overwhelming.


Hope this wasn't too boring!!  We have our 6 month wellness appointment on Thursday, so I will try to update with new weight/height stats at that time.  Love to all of you!!


Nellie