10 Months!

Here we go again.... Its been a long and exhausting month. I've been back to work a little over a month now, and its HARD. I love my new job, but leaving my baby boys every morning hasn't gotten much easier. I miss them more than I ever thought I could, and spending just a few hours a day with them has been really tough. The idea of work-life balance seems less like "balance" and more like a "trade-off". I'm still finding my stride, but for now this is the best I can do. My days are super long, and some days blend right in with the next depending on how demanding the babies are when we get home. I am constantly amazed at how well I am able to function on little to no sleep!

The boys have adjusted nicely to the new routine, and while Mondays are harder on them, they have been really good boys. They are both crawling, pulling themselves up on furniture, and the big guy is standing pretty much on his own. We think he will be walking very very soon!

They babble all day long, and the little guy is clapping up a storm. He even found this crazy scream that scares his brother, makes him cry and then he claps for him. Its cute and mean at the same time!

They have been eating solids for about the last 3 months, though we got off to a really slow start. The first 2 months was mainly rice cereal and oatmeal, but this last month we have really made some progress. So far they have had: green beans, sweet potato, regular potato, green squash, yellow squash, carrots, asparagus, apples, bananas, peaches, blueberries, pears, avocado, and chicken. This week they will add mango, peas, pasta and ground meat. They are eating solids three times a day in addition to their milk, and they love food! We bought this baby food making machine and it works great! I usually make their food for the week on Sunday evening and store it in these trays especially for baby food that look like ice trays but have lids and a labeling surface that you can write on with dry-erase markers. They are really easy to stack in either the fridge or freezer and make meal planning so much easier. Yes... I MAKE THEIR FOOD! Again, if you know me in real life, you are probably wondering what the hell happened to the "old" non-cooking, non-domesticated me. Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine my self as a baby-wearing, breastfeeding, home-made-babyfood-making mama of TWINS! Crazy right? Its amazing what being a mom can do to a girl. ;)

We are starting to introduce finger foods, and so far so good. So far they have only had sweet potato "puffs" that we bought at the store, and they are doing well with them. I am going to start moving away from mushing everything to allowing them small pieces to self-feed. We'll see how that goes! I think this is where the dogs will come in for clean-up duty.

As for their milk, they take about 5 ounces each, every three hours throughout the day and are still exclusively on breast milk! I think at this point I am fairly confident that I will make my one year goal, and probably can go longer if I can manage the pumping at work. My milk supply dipped a little when I first started back at work, but has slowly increased now that I have found my routine.

In other news this month also marks the return of aunt flow. Yup, the bitch is back! I got a nice 10 months and though I was hoping she wouldn't show her face until I was done breastfeeding, I'll take what I can get.

So I think that about wraps it up! In two short months I will be celebrating the one year anniversary of the birth of our twin boys, and my becoming a Mama. While we are still in survival mode, everyday it gets easier. I'm still utterly in love with these two little people we have created and still in disbelief that they are here. I have loved every second of being a Mama, so much so that we have already started talking about baby number THREE. I won't go into details now, but we are definitely in agreement that we will be trying for our third by the time the boys are about to start pre-school. Stay tuned...

p.s. As soon as we get our hard drive back I will be updating our pictures. The boys have certainly changed since Christmas!