5 Months Old (3 Months Adjusted)

I am so done with counting the babies’ age in weeks. It just gets too hard to do all the “adjusted” stuff with my limited math abilities. But yeah – here we are at 5 months old!

Amanda!

Jillian!

Things are going really great now. It turns out that A&J are excellent little night time sleepers. ML and I have stuck religiously to our bed time ritual and it seems to be paying off. By now, the girls are either sleeping fully through the night or waking once for a quick snack and then off to bed again until morning. This results in very happy babies – they don’t even cry for a bottle in the mornings. They just smile up at us from their cribs and kick their feet to say hello! Unfortunately, these happy mornings to come at a price, but it’s worth it. Our evenings lately have been loud and cranky and sometimes downright scary with the screaming, but it usually only lasts for a little while and as soon as we begin the bed time ritual things calm down. It’s tough to endure the fussy evenings after a long day of babytown, but getting that full night of sleep to recharge sure helps!

Our latest milestones are very fun. We have lots of smiles now and I think we’re starting to hear some laughs here and there. Both babies are becoming more vocal and making some gurgly cooing noises. They have decided that binkies are so last week and thumb-sucking is all the rage now. They have started to discover their hands and love to hold them right in front of their faces and watch their fingers as they clasp and unclasp their hands together. Sometimes this results in a few stray punches to their own face, but it doesn’t seem to phase them too much. Hmm.

Anyway. Toys are starting to become pretty interesting to them. We have a few stuffed animal friends that they like to “talk” to if you hold them near their faces. They also enjoy time in their new activity mat that has all kinds of fun dangly toys and a light up star at the top that plays music.

Both girls can hold their heads up really well and that makes carrying them around much easier. They seem far less fragile now. They haven’t been weighed in a while, but my guess is that Amanda is around 12 pounds and Jill is pushing 13 pounds. They are starting to fit into 3-6 month size clothes already! What a long way from preemie outfits!

A couple of weekends ago we made the daring decision to go as a family to BJs. This was HUUUGE for us. ML had been doing all of the grocery type errands since I was on bed rest back in November. Then we were on germ lockdown all winter to prevent the girls from contracting RSV. Technically, we did not have the OK from our doctor to start going out into public places with the babies yet, but we were so sick of a) not being able to shop together which we have always done in the past and b) not getting out of the house was becoming real depressing for me. So we went for it. Woo! We are total risk takers, I tell you.

In order for me to feel comfortable bringing the babies out into the world, we devised a plan wherein I would push the girls in the stroller and ML would push the shopping cart and to create a germ barrier we would not trade. I would point at items and he would place them in the cart. Only I would touch the babies if they needed something. We would use hand sanitizer frequently and liberally. We would avoid strangers by staying in constant motion and never stopping to make chit chat or even eye contact with folks who want to check out the babies. Aside from one minor flub where ML touched the carriage after touching the cart without sanitizing, for which I totally over-reacted and proceeded to wipe down the whole carriage,  I tell you, our plan was a great success! Yes, I was totally obsessive about germs. I was a complete nut-job lady who paused every 10 minutes to squirt Purell into her hands. But then two weeks later the world freaked out about Swine Flu and suddenly people are envious at my superior germ killing efforts!

This brave outing was the first of many excursions including a trip down to my sister’s place for Easter and another for a family birthday party. We also made it out for Mother’s Day to ML’s parents’ house. We’ve been to the mall and even the grocery store once. We are so unstoppable now!  We definitely attract a lot of attention but we’re also getting really good at avoiding gawkers and/or responding with canned answers to the lame twins questions. I have even *gasp* attempted some outings on my own with the babies. My gosh, it’s like we’re a normal family or something!