9 months!

Happy 9 months, Tessa and Annie!

Annie (left) and Tessa (right)

It's been nine months since the twins were born, and I just now figured out how to get a good picture with both babies smiling. I use my feet to tickle them! I know, gross, right? Well, my feet might be cleaner than my hands, given that I change 10-12 diapers a day with my hands. Anyway, as you can see in this unedited picture, I have both babies sitting against the bottom of our stairs, and they each have one of my feet tickling them.

Then, thanks to the magic of photo trimming, we have a somewhat decent picture of both babies to document their survival of nine months in this crazy house!

Tessa (left) and Annie (right)

At nine months, things are changing daily around here. Annie got her first tooth at 8.5 months, and Tessa's first is coming soon, so we have a lot of teething, which explains why a lot of our pictures look like this now:

Annie (left) and Tessa (right)

Annie is also pulling herself up on the coffee table, chairs, baskets, and anything within her reach, including the stairs - eek!! And, she's pulling herself up to a sitting postition from laying down, so she's often already sitting up when we come in to get her after a nap. Tessa's not too far behind on these milestones. She's just so much more mellow than Annie, although both of them are very mellow and easy babies right now.

Annie showing off

As for those stairs, we have some fancy schmancy plexiglass at the top of our stairs to prevent babies from falling through our retro stair rails, and that cheap solution has served us well since Megan was old enough to crawl. Here, the babies are foiled by that and our baby gates:

We're looking forward to celebrating their first Christmas! We only got them one stocking stuffer each, considering we have a house full of toys that are new to them. Most notably, this month, they began playing with the little piano we got Megan for her first Christmas. Who needs Santa when you have older sisters and their toys?

Tessa is in the heart sleeper

Even with all of those toys, though, they seem to like to climb on Mommy and Daddy (and each other!) more than anything. Here they are on me (with Annie in back):

I'm not sure about their weights since their 9 month check-up is after Christmas, but I'm sure Tessa is still holding steady as the chunkier one, by at least a pound. They're eating a lot of table food now, including a lot of what Megan and Bridget eat, like chicken nuggets, waffles and all kinds of chopped up veggies and fruits. In fact, they usually eat more than Bridget! Of course, they're also eating a ton of baby food, and we probably spend $150/month on jarred baby food. This is just the beginning of things being a little more expensive for twins.

I'm glad to say that we don't spend a dime on formula. We may have gone through 3 or 4 cans since their birth, but those were all scored from the pediatrician, and used mostly as a base for their rice cereal. I'm still almost exclusively breastfeeding if you don't count the occasional bottle when I'm not around. We all know I have no life, so they may get formula once a week when I make an exciting trip to the grocery store :)

When we first learned we were expecting twins, I thought it would be impossible to nurse both babies. I pictured us stumbling around the kitchen twice a night making bottles for six months, or possibly having a little bottle warmer in our room. (Definitely not the worst thing in the world to formula feed, but such a different experience than we had with Megan and Bridget!) As it turns out, the babies were good nursers from the start, so we were very lucky. We still had a fair amount of stumbling around in the middle of the night, but it was mostly Matt fetching babies and bringing them to me. And, if I was lucky, it was one at a time, so I could still lay down and sleep while they nursed. Now, they've been sleeping through the night in their own room for two months, so no more night feedings!!! I'm really proud that we've all lasted this long with the breastfeeding, and we've saved a lot of money, too!

I can't believe we're turning the corner to the one-year mark -- don't grow up, babies!!