9 months

I always thought parents were exaggerating when they would exclaim that they could not believe how fast their children were growing up. Now I totally understand.  You give birth and then in the blink of an eye, your tiny babies are 9 months old. These girls are getting more fun by the day. They giggle at the silliest things we do and they have really started interacting with each other.  Most of the time it's a smack in the face, hair pulling or toy-stealing, but sometimes they just look at each other and share the sweetest of smiles.

Daddy just gave me some smoothie...now let me give you a kiss

sister love.  A smoothie smooch

In August we survived our first airplane ride and hotel stay.  The airplane was a breeze.  Both girls ate a bottle upon take off and then took a nap.  Luckily, the hotel we stay in has suites so we set up two pack n plays in the living room area for the girls to sleep in.  Ivey can sleep through anything so she slept very well.  We had to bring Brooklyn in our room a few nights to sleep in our bed.  We had never let them sleep in our bed because 1) we were scared to death to do so and 2) we didn't want them to get used to sleeping in our bed.  But it worked out as a short-term solution.

See our little sleeping marshmallows?

At home we put the girls into separate bedrooms.  It felt really wrong...they have always been in the same womb, NICU room, bedroom.  In fact I felt so uneasy the first night we split them up that I went sleepwalking (or running as J put it) off the end of our bed!  We have a sleigh bed frame and I actually broke it.  I guess I ran off the edge and fell right on the floor.  I had a mean bruise but luckily I didn't do anything really crazy.  Anyway, Ivey could sleep through the night and Brooklyn was having some issues.  We were able to get Brooklyn back on track, but now that they are separated I think we will keep it that way until they are old enough to choose to be together.

Both girls started sitting unassisted around 7 months.  No one is crawling yet, but Ivey has started trying to pull herself up on furniture.  I really believe Brooklyn will skip crawling all together because the girl just wants to walk.  They both take steps forward when we hold their hands.  Life with two 9 month olds is very busy.  We are lucky because they are on great schedules and sleep a total of approx 12 hours at night and take 2 naps during the day, but I am usually worn down at night.  I would have to say this phase is more tiring than the newborn stage, at least for me.   I had no issues at all waking in the middle of the night to feed them then, but now if there is one night-time wake up, it kills me!  But I would not trade them for anything in this world, they are just the sweetest little girls I could ever imagine.