Hellobee

Yet another month has come and gone in the Starfish household. The girls continue to grow and develop in ways big and small. I am enjoying this age so much; the girls are so interactive and proud to show off their new skills. Their different personalities are shining through, and they are interacting more and more with one another.

Physical

I’ve now been saying this for two monthly updates, but we are still waiting on crawling! Both girls like to shift their weight back and forth in the traditional crawling position, and both are quite efficient at army crawling and rolling to get objects out of their reach. But we’ve still observed no traditional crawling. I’ve got to say that this is really testing my mommy patience!

Recently both girls have figured out how to get in the sitting position from their bellies, and they also both really enjoy when we help them pull to a standing position. I’ve been told by our pediatrician that progress is what is most important and we’ve seen plenty of that, so I need to really work on keeping my concerns at bay.

Practicing some standing.

Perhaps the most fun physical development over the past month has been clapping and waving. Lilly predictably learned this skill first given her older age, and she looks so proud of herself when she claps and we all get so excited. Audrey started to clap right at her 8-month birthday, but she hasn’t quite mastered the skill yet. She keeps her left hand in a fist while banging her open right palm against the fist. Audrey is much more likely to clap for her sister and even clapped for Lilly this past week at the pediatrician when Lilly survived her shots and we all cheered for her. It was pretty adorable.

Lilly claps at music time.

My current concern (apart from the lack of traditional crawling) is that Audrey is not great at the pincer finger grasp. We are trying to work on this skill through motivation, in particular a daily snack of puffs, but she is far behind Lilly on this skill.

Social

I think it’s safe to say that we went through some sort of “regression” over the past month with both girls. These are the times that I’m so grateful that they are not traditional twins because these times can be so frustrating and they are easier to handle when they are spaced five weeks apart. Both girls became incredibly clingy, both exercised their voices (and screeches and squeals) more and more, and did I mention the clingy-ness? Sheesh.

  
Clingy Audrey won’t let our nanny go! |  Lilly and her lovey

To get through this period with Lilly, we relied a great deal on her lovey. I am so happy that our nanny pushed us on introducing the lovey with the girls months ago because when Lilly was in the midst of a terrible fit, she would immediately calm herself if we placed her white bunny in her arms. Magic!

Also on the social side of things, the level of interaction between the girls continues to grow. They like to touch each other’s faces a lot right now. Audrey frequently pats Lilly’s face and giggles. Meanwhile, Lilly frequently squeals and laughs at Audrey, and waves her arms wildly at whatever her sister is doing. On the negative side of things, Audrey has started to pull Lilly’s hair (not possible for Lilly to retaliate given Audrey’s lack of locks). They also are starting to take toys away from each other and I’m starting to understand why twin moms have so many duplicate toys.

The interaction between the girls grows every day.

The girls went on their first vacation over the past month to the Bahamas. We had a blast introducing the girls to the ocean and beach, and making our first family vacation memories. We also started swim class and we’re having a great time splashing around in the pool on Saturday mornings.

Fun in the Bahamas |  Saturday morning swim class with Audrey.

Chicago has been unseasonably warm for the past couple of weeks so the girls have had more outside time than expected. Outings with their nanny have included a special trip to a Chicago fire station where they got to sit in a real fire truck, their weekly music time, and adventures swinging and picnicking at a local park.

Fire station adventure

Sleep

The girls continue to sleep 12 hours straight at night. We are lucky that the girls love their sleep and I can think of only one nighttime waking over the past month. Lilly had lost her lovey at the bottom of her crib and was very upset about it. When I placed the bunny safely in her arms again, she promptly went right back to sleep with no assistance. Again, the white bunny unleashes its magic powers!

We recently dropped one of the girls’ daytime naps so they are currently taking two naps during the day for a total of 2-3 hours of daytime sleep.

Eating

We are working on ramping up the girls’ solid food intake. I have to admit that this is a bit of a challenge for me because I have never personally been a big foodie and I have zero interest in cooking. It just feels like a chore to brainstorm new and exciting things for the girls to try, and I have relied almost exclusively on our nanny to help them discover food. Over the past month, she has introduced spaghetti to their palates and even baked them special baby-safe cookies.

Spaghetti time!

We are watching a couple of things with the girls’ mouths. The first is some pretty intense grinding of the teeth. It started with Audrey (who was the first to sprout teeth) but now Lilly is the one driving us batty with her constant grinding. I am hopeful that she outgrows this, and fast because the sound is like nails on a chalkboard.

Audrey also is demonstrating a periodic habit of thrusting her tongue. Mr. Starfish and I are hyper-alert about this because Mr. Starfish had such a bad tongue thrusting habit in his childhood that he had to wear some sort of mouth spur to train himself to stop. The man shudders whenever he thinks about that time so I’m hopeful that Audrey will stop this habit on her own!

I’m looking forward to another month with Lilly and Audrey and starting to think already about plans for their first birthday party. Eeek, time indeed does fly!

So much fun on the swings