Tobie here…

New baby update: I received the results of my gestational diabetes test. It was normal which is a huge relief. A much bigger relief is that my fetal fibronectin test from today was negative. Yippee! This means that I should go to 28.5 weeks at least. Yes! I asked my OB doc today when I would be able to deliver at the hospital near our house and the answer was after 28 weeks. So I should be good. I have been having a pressure sensation in the evenings too that has been worrying me. Not contractions, thank god. Apparently I’m overdoing it during the day and it’s taking a toll on my body in the evening. Since I can’t slow down or change my activities, my OB recommended wearing a maternity belt all day to help alleviate some of the weight/pressure. Luckily I still have my odd looking belly/back/boob contraption from the trips in a closet somewhere. Another OB story: my OB doc wants to stop doing fetal fibronectin tests. She suggested that we only do them if I’m having contractions or feeling funny. I’m not so sure about this. I feel great that she doesn’t feel the tests are needed anymore, but the tests give me such reassurance that it’s nice. I think it’s up to me, if I insist on them she will do them, but she doesn’t see the need after 28.5 weeks.

Paige update: Big girl is doing fantastic! I’m going to make it official. She is crawling. It’s not a pretty crawl, but she is definitely on her belly reaching, stretching, grunting, wriggling, ultimately combat crawling. She can go up on her knees on all fours, but she doesn’t think to move forward. I think it’s just a matter of days before she gets it. Which would bring her right on target for her adjusted age of 9 months. She’s also trying to go from lying down to sitting up by using her ab muscles. Our PT wants her to roll to her side and use her hands to push herself into a sit position, but Paige prefers to do a stomach crunch to sit. Lastly, her stranger anxiety has hit record highs. I want to pretend like I’m not flattered, but I can’t. I think it’s so stinkin’ cute how much she loves her mommy. Almost half as much as I love her.

Cole update: Eric made it seem like our eating issues with Cole have been resolved. Not even close. He is doing much better with the bottle, but he refuses to touch most finger foods and I’m lucky if I get 1 of 5 feedings by spoon in his mouth. The bib seems to be an issue lately too. He was ripping off the bibs that velcro on the side seconds after I put them on him. So I bought the cloth bibs that go over the head. He now knows how to take those off as well. And for a kid that doesn’t eat, he sure gets his clothes saturated with food. Weird. He also has been waking up at weird times of the night this last week. He stands holding the railing of his crib and will wail until he gets picked up. Most of the time his eyes are closed and there’s no apparent reason for his crying. We just hold him for a minute or two then put him back in his crib and he’s fine. Nightmares of the NICU resurfacing??

Eric update: Just thought I’d include him since he feels left out a lot. He is doing good. Hilarious, sarcastic, opinionated, but geez, so lovable.

There have been some interesting developments since our last conversation about Cole’s eating. We had made two significant changes around that time. We switched bottles to the Dr. Brown’s Natural. This bottle is supposed to reduce the air bubbles. We are also using the #3 fast flow nipple versus the slow flow nipple he was on. It took a lot of patience and determination, but he finally started to accept this nipple. Around the same time we also started him on Prevacid versus the Zantac he was previously on. So how’s his eating you ask? It’s on the verge of scary good. He’s now polishing off 6 ounce bottles versus 2-3 ounce bottles that had become the norm in our house. He’s still putting up some resistance to feeding, but it’s getting better. He’s also making a little headway on the baby food front. We’re putting more and more food in front of him and let him eat what he wants. He’s very independent (read: stubborn). When we have tried to feed him with a spoon he’s also a little more accepting of it. You know what this means? We’re making progress.

Paige is also doing incredible with all the new foods we’ve introduced. We have yet to find a food she doesn’t like. In fact she would rather have people food versus the baby food as she’ll keep her mouth closed if she thinks there is a drop of baby food on the spoon. I guess I’m going to have to start cooking for 3 instead of 2. And guess who got up on all fours? Yep, she’s hopefully only weeks away from starting to crawl. I don’t know if this technique is in any book, but we’ve been trying to encourage Paige to stand and crawl by putting out Puffs. We’ll stand her up against the couch and put a handful of puffs on the cushion. She’ll stand unassisted as she feeds herself. Very nice! When she’s on the floor, well lay out a trail of puffs. Sure enough she’ll roll or scoot until she has devoured them all. If she has an eating disorder later on in life, I think we’ll be able to trace the roots of it.
Future Boss: Paige I need those TPS Reports.
Paige: Where are my puffs? Paige need puffs to work.

Just some random fun! Enjoy.

Even though the babies are over 1 year old now, we have never taken them to the park. Not once, ever! We are having crazy weather here in AZ. One day it’s 30 degrees, the next day it’s 70 degrees. Today we jumped on the good weather bandwagon and we were park bound! We have an awesome kid friendly park right near our house. Fun was had by all.

Paige loved the swings. She was just chilling the entire time!
Cole wasn’t crazy about the swings at first. He came around though!