8 months!

We made it to 8 months! 

Harper and Hannah are 8 months old and the parents are surviving!

It was questionable at times, ha!  Sleep deprived times that is...

Wow...

We've been tired.  We've been so tired.  We've cried and laughed.  We've been freaked out and filled with joy.  We've been scared and confused...

We've be in awe at milestones and two little personalities that are so different...

This is hard.  This is wonderful.

I'm still nursing Haper, Hannah still loves her bottle.  I still wonder how it happened that only one nurses...then I remember we had no choice in switching Hannah to the bottle.

We have one tooth in and all the other ones to go...we have one who likes baby food one who hates it.  We have one who will eat things like pieces of banana and avacado and one who won't...

We have piles of laundry that never really seem to make it back into the drawers before being washed and worn again...we have the task of trying not to be too hard on ourselves about this never ending, um...problem!

We question if we're doing things right or wrong.  We wonder what type of parents we will be.  We wonder if we're messing them up because we're just too darn tired to add another non-milk feeding...we wonder if we're doing something wrong because Harper still gets up at night.  We rejoice because Hannah sleeps all night!


We marvel at getting to know them.  We laugh when they fight over a toy, we chuckle with they play together, our hearts melt when they laugh with each other...

We have a feisty one and a content one.  

We have one in physical therapy and one who goes with her sister to physical therapy and is so good as she looks on.

We have a mama who is trying to teach them how to crawl all the while wondering if that is something taught or they just figure it out...I'm also trying to teach them to say "mama"!

We've recently learned that Hannah loves it when Daddy beat boxes and if he throws a rap it it's even better...

Her laughter, and Harper's too, fills our hearts with joy, what a gift!

Just last week we learned that they don't really like eating in camp dining halls...being in the dining hall was fine, trying to eat...not so much.   

We know we have one baby who doesn't mind traveling and new places and we have one who takes days to adjust to new places. 

We try not to dwell on the moments we missed with a camera and be content with just living the moments...

We wonder what the next few months will be like, we wonder how to wean babies from both nursing and the bottle... 

We wonder as we wander through this journey of parenthood!  The ups, the downs.  The ins, the outs.  What a ride!

I'm already planning their first birthday party, yep!

Round 2 of Helmet therapy...

July 2nd Hannah outgrew her helmet.  The helmet guys said she was looking really good...

Improved greatly but not completely...

So, here we go again.  Her head specialist was out of town that week, we were out of town the week after that (at camp!) so we had to wait til the 15th to find out if she needed another helmet or not.

Going in to the appointment Joel and I were pretty sure she would need one...

What a decision to make...the helmet guys told us it would be up to us as her parents and the doctor.

Um, do we leave her head the shape it is and in a few years have her hate us for it or do we pay for another round of treatment...?

Well, in the end it really wasn't up to us...the doctor said if it was ok with us he would like to continue treatment.  He said at 8 months old we still have time to help her more...

Then, get this...he said that Harper also has slight bossing on her left side...Hannah's is on her right side.  He said Harper's isn't a problem and doesn't need treated but he said both of these problems are because of how they grew inside of me.

Wednesday the 24th she gets fitted for her new helmet...goodbye purple butterflies (the design on the outside of the last one), hello sweet hearts...

The dreaded thing is that now we have to get her used to it all over again....

Time for me to get lots of helmet free snuggles in before next Wednesday...

Here we go again.

Ramblings

I have so many thoughts running through my head...

Do I blog about how we are doing?

Do I blog about babies?

Do I blog about infertility brain?

Do I blog about baby schedules, or lack thereof?  

Do I blog about...well, I did it again...

Yesterday while driving the girls and I to Havre for a barbecue I wrote a blog post in my head.  And now?  Well, I've completely forgotten it!  Ha!

I've felt overwhelmed lately...like really overwhelmed.  I don't have time to clean my house and take care of my sweet twinsies at the same time!  I should post pictures of what our living room looked like yesterday, but I won't!  Let's just say hurricane baby happened, in a major way!!

The past week has been the perfect storm of traveling home from Alaska, adjusting back to Montana time (2 hour difference), and 6 month vaccines...

Oh and I haven't even told you about the 6 month vaccines...Harper was accidentally given a double dose of one of them...my heart stopped when they told me this happened.  I walked in shock for the next two hours...but we were assured she would be just fine...

But still, for the past week we've been dealing with mild vaccine reaction...a Harper who isn't sleeping well, fevers, fussiness...

And a mommy who feels like a complete failure because my babies are not on a set nap schedule...nope.  And I'm probably crazy because they aren't.  But you know what?  I have no clue how to establish that!  Currently they are both napping at the same time...hooray!  Hooray!

They both take morning and afternoon naps (just sometimes at different times), they both go to bed at pretty much the same time...but I live by knowing when they need a nap, I can always tell, and giving them one at that time rather than a set time.  I tell myself that eventually, by the time they are 1, they will be taking naps at the same time, ha!

But for now, we are surviving!  They turned 7 months old on Monday and we are surviving!  All four of us!  And both sleeping right now! 

That's enough for today.

Tomorrow will bring, well, heck, it could bring all sorts of things...spit up and baby food and tears (by both mommy and babies) and snuggles and giggles, and maybe even crawling...who knows!

And on Friday Grandma and Grandpa Skindlov arrive for a few days of rescue and help and baby snuggles!

Sippy cups!

Harper & Hannah had their 6 month check-ups on Wednesday!

We get to start them on sippy cups!

Um, how did that happen?

They sit in high chairs, they eat baby food, they roll all around the living room, Harper can sit up and now sippy cups with water...

It's pretty cute!  They mostly just like to play with the cups.  And I'm not sure Hannah has gotten any water out of hers yet, but Harper has a couple of times, with a little assistance...

It's adorable! 

Harper now weighs 15lbs and 1 0z, Hannah 14lbs and 1 oz.  They are remaining steady at the one pound difference...

They both received pretty good reports...

Hannah, our little smiley, happy, fighter...has to have her head re-measured in a month because it seems it grew a tad too much in the past couple of months...

Our little sweets are growing so fast...their needs are always changing, their parents are always tired...but oh the joy they bring!  Maybe not at 3 am but hey Hannah continues to sleep through the night.  Every night.  For months now!  It's the little things!

As if...

As if we needed one more thing...

Yesterday at an 8am physical therapy appointment we were given a torticolis collar for Hannah.

A what?  A torture device?  Yep.

Not really.  I made that up!  But it looks like one and it feels like one to my  mommy heart.   It's awful.  If you see her in the next few weeks, you will see just how awful it is. 

It's made up of surgical tubing and fastens with velcro, it has two plastic pieces that prop her neck up...In the medical sense it is not really awful, and I know it is a necessity and will help her so much...

When we put it on she screams, mommy cries, daddy says we can just wait, mommy agrees...

Ok, that's in our weakness...today, she wlll wear it.  My only saving grace is that when her therapist put it on yesterday and held her with it she did great, she relaxed into it and no tears...when it came off and it was my time to put it on, my first time, doing something I had no idea how to do, to my baby, it was terrible...she cried and I thought to myself how awful it was...

After a couple tries, I got it on correctly but then I was able to take it off...

She can't wear it in the carseat or while sleeping...but other than that she should have it on...

Our therapist warned us not to take it off every time she cries...she'll learn fast that tears mean we act!  Our therapist is so kind and knows how hard it is for us...she also knows how much it will help her, every minute, every hour that she can have it on counts.

So today is a new day.  Today we try, through all the tears, to get her to wear it for a few hours. 

The big red wagon

We took the leap from a 5 passenger subaru that we loved to a 7 passenger mini van that we also love...

We were sad to say goodbye to the subaru though. 

But it had to be.  It had to be. 

We travel a lot.  I mean, a lot.  We go to visit family and friends in Idaho and Washington, we take the girls to Doctor appointments in Great Falls 77 miles away often, we go to Havre, Bozeman, Missoula, Billings...we go a lot of places.

Which means we spend a lot of time in our car.  And every time we packed up the subaru or I climbed into the back of it to tend to the girls, my anxiety rose, higher and higher.  It wasn't worth it. 

So, we searched high and low for a used, new to us, mini van...

And we found one!  A 2008 chrysler town and country from Dave Smith in Kellogg. 

And it's red!  Our friend nick named it the big red wagon. 

The big red wagon (pic taken in Pierce, ID)

hannah the helmet girl...

That's her super hero name! (thanks for the idea Lindsay!).

She's had it for one week and 2 days...

She's our helmet girl...our physical therapy girl...our acid reflux girl...

Poor girl...she's a fighter though.

She sleeps in the helmet, plays in it, eats in it, laughs in it and cries in it...

She cries a lot in it.  She no longer likes her car seat, we think it's because of the helmet.  She used to cry mainly when she was hungry or tired...now she cries more...

And it breaks this momma's heart.  Joel is much stronger with all of this...he'll put it back on her when I don't think I can. 

The helmet is light purple and covered in butterflies, it's really cute.  It squeezes her little cheeks and makes her sweaty and stinky...she wears it 23 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We are allowed to take it off during the day to clean it and let it air out, both the helmet and her head.  I really like that part, because even if it's only for 15 minutes I love her smile when it comes off...

For the most part she does great with it...she is so strong and resilient...I'm so proud of her!

The helmet therapy is because she has plagiocephaly...she also has torticollis of the neck...she started physical therapy for that yesterday...and it exhausted us all...

It turns out her neck problem, which she has had since birth, is worse than we thought...it turns out that some of the movements she has been doing, that we thought were cute and just how Hannah did things, need to be corrected...

We have a long road ahead of us, but I am oh so thankful for the doctors, physical therapist, and certified orthontist who can help her.  We're on the right track!  She's going to get all better...even though she sometimes screams when I stretch her at home! 

A helmet, a bunny and a sweet little girl!