Happy Adjusted Birthday!

I started this post on August 20th - my original due date - and the girls official "two year" birthday. I thought it would be appropriate to do a little developmental update.

Weight
When I started this August 20, there was good news and bad news. Today - the news is much better. Natalie had completely stalled on her weight gain. She hovered at 21#14-15 oz for for weeks. She just would not gain weight. Finally, this past week she finally jumped the 22 lb mark. Yesterday, she weighed in at 22# 4.5 oz. She's enough over 22 lbs that I'm hopeful she will maintain it and not drop below it again.

Abby has been gaining well the past few weeks and this has really pulled ahead of Natalie. She is now 22#13oz. She also has the cutest little pokey belly:-)

At these weights, the girls are just on the growth charts now - at 3%. Yea 3%!!!! They are about 33-34 inches tall which makes them about 8% on the height charts. To me, they seem pretty good in height. When I see them with other kids, they don't look that short.

And, in related news...
Food
*sigh* On the bright side, the girls are drinking their milk really well. They finish a lot of their bottles now. It's kind-of amazing. I really thought I would never see the day when they would drink 7-8 oz on a regular basis (something many 9 mth olds do easily). They probably get 26-30 ounces a day. That's a bit more than recommended for "normal" kids - 20-24 ounces of lowfat milk. My girls' milk is alost 30 calories an ounce. However, if you do the math, at 26 ounces, that is still only 780 calories a day. They need at least 1000 calories to maintain. Our ped wants them to get 1200. So, they need 400 more calories a day from food.

This is where we run into problems. It doesn't seem to me that they get that much. For instance: today, they ate the following:
Breakfast: a bite or two of sausage; maybe a bite of egg; grapes - food rejected: the rest of the sausage and eggs and buttered toast
Lunch: a bite or two of whole wheat pasta with basil pesto sauce; 1/2-3/4 of a chicken nugget (Abby - I think Natalie threw hers on the floor) - rejected: most of the pasta and the nuggets - Natalie would chew her food, then spit it on the floor - until they dumped all their pasta on the table.
Dinner: two or three small pieces of grilled chicken; another bite of pasta, one or two green beans (Natalie again would chew the beans and spit them out. Abby did the same with her chicken.) Rejected: all of the above. Our only success: 6-8 bites of frozen chocolate milkshake from McDonalds.

So, other than the milkshake, do you think they had 400 calories?

Our other food dilemma is their mealtime behavior. Spitting food out, dropping it on the floor, pouring out their food on the table. With any other child, I would remove the food the second they start playing with it. But, how to you take food away from a kid you are trying to conjole into eating it? If anyone has any ideas, feel free to comment.

Now on to happier subjects...
Verbal
Natalie and Abby have made tremendous progress. I think they have somewhere between 50 and 60 words - with Abby having a few more than Natalie. They are using several two word phrases mostly with "more" - "more...water, soup, etc." and "more please". They also use a lot of possessives. "Abby's ...shoes, Elmo,..." "NaNa's shoes,...", "Mommy's shoes" (clearly shoes are a favorite). Abby has a few more advanced phrases, "This is ....Mommy's shoes, Abby's Elmo, NaNa's Elmo". She also uses some directional words, "in, out, off" Natalie has just started using them as well, though not as often as Abby. They both are very good with "up" and "down", especially as in, "mommy up, up, up, up, up".

They can name a number of body parts: eye, nose, ear, teeth, elbow, knee, arm, head, back, mouth and can point to just about every other part: shoulder, forehead, chin, cheek, bottom, vagina, feet, toes, hand, belly, bellybutton, hair, tongue, leg. Are there any other parts left?!

According to my little chart, they are actually on target now for 24 months. Their speech therapist says that at 24 months they should have 50-250 words. So, the good news is if they were tested now, they wouldn't qualify. They are catching up and doing great!

Comprehension wise, of course, they understand almost everything. They follow directions very well (when they want to). Failure to follow through is definately a lack of desire vs. lack of comprehension.

Cognitive, Fine Motor and Gross Motor
These seem to overlap a lot on my chart, so they will here as well.

They are doing very well with stairs - up and down. We encourage them to hold on with only one hand (helps truck support). They are still generally doing one foot at a time (put one foot down, put other foot down - start over) vs one foot on each step. I'm actually very okay with this. It seems much safer to me!

Both girls, and especially Natalie, are little monkeys. They will climb on anything - and try to turn anything into something to climb. They now both climb up the outside on their cribs, but thankfully, not OUT of the cribs yet. Natalie likes to "hang". She grabs hold of something, then pulls her feet up in a pike position. It's really quite a feat. Try it sometime. She is quite strong (for someone so little) and has pretty good ab muscles.

They both love to jump. Natalie has been jumping and getting both feet off the ground for a while. Abby just started getting off the ground last week. They can walk backwards, run (all the time), and have started jumping off the bed into my arms. They can also walk on a balance beam type object (such as the parking beams, a 4x4, or the 4-6 inch beams that often surround play areas). Sometimes they need help with a more narrow one, but if it's about 6 inches, they can do it themselves. Spinning is also a favorite activity. It's pretty funny to watch. Usually they put one arm up, bent at the elbow. I guess it's for balance. They look like waiters spinning around with imaginary trays.

The only main thing we are working towards in jumping off the bottom step. I guess hopping on one foot is also next.

Fine motor wise - they can build towers of 6 or more blocks (Natalie is better at this - or willing to sit still long enough to do it). They will even use two different kinds of blocks: big block, big block, small block, small block, big block. They turn pages in books, scribble, and have started enjoying stickers, although sometimes they have a hard time getting them off their fingers. They are showing some variation in their scribbling: circular, horizontal and vertical, but I can't tell if it's purposeful or luck from spastic and quick scribbles. We have worked on puzzles and they have several they are good at. They are very good at matching one object to another: in puzzles - finding the spot where the cat goes based on the picture, or in a book, - finding a duck on one side of the page that matches the duck on the other. We also play a "Word Bingo" game. They have large cards with 9 pictures. I hold up a little card, and if they have the picture, they get the card to cover it up. (As they get older, we will play and obviously, whoever fills in their card, wins.) They match the pictures easily, although aren't always willing to leave the card on top of the picture.

I think they have fairly good fine, fine motor skills. One of their favorite activities is to take popcorn kernels (unpopped) and put them in a small-mouthed bottle. They also like putting coins in a piggy bank. There are some areas they need work. They don't use their hands together to solve some tasks. For instance, with stickers, if the sticker gets stuck on a finger on their right hand, they don't use their left hand to take it off. They also don't hold down paper with one hand to color with the other.

Self Help
Natalie and Abigail are very independent. They love to to things for themselves like steps, eating, throwing away their diapers. That is the cutest thing, by the way. They take their diapers and throw them over the gate by the trash can. They love it. They6 come back and ask, "more?".

They have also become very helpful. They love to throw things away and are getting better at putting away their toys, both when asked and even when they aren't asked. They are very helpful when it comes to diaper time. They will fetch diapers, wipes and diaper cream. A few times Abby has tried to help me vacuum the floor with my little sweeper machine. Natalie likes to help Ben open the mail. They both like to help clean up spills with a towel and will "clean" the slide, floor, or whatever, when handed a wipe. They also like to try to wipe their own faces and hands. In the bath, they are very cute. They wash each other's backs and hair.

Natalie and Abby are also doing very well in the clothes department. They are quite adept at taking OFF their clothes, much to our dismay. I often find them after naps or in the morning missing pants or pajamas. Thank goodness for onesies! They work hard at putting on their pants and are sometimes mostly successful. They manage to get shirts around their necks, but arm holes are still baffling. Shoes, however, are another story. A few days ago, Natalie put on both of her shoes all by herself. They were sandals with velcro straps. She undid the straps to get them on and then closed the straps once they were on. She even had them on the right feet, but I think that was more luck than anything else.

Abby also loves her shoes, and they often run around with one shoe on. They both do very well with the "croc" shoes which they can slip on and off easily.

and finally, Social/Emotional
One of the great things about twins is that they entertain each other. Natalie and Abby are very good independent players. They both play with each other, and will engage in their own separate activities. They are very, very busy. Natalie seems to have a longer attention span than Abby for most things and will sit and work on a task for "a while". I'm honestly not sure what "a while" is for a two year old, but it seems like a good amount of time to me. Some of the sites I checked say 15 minutes, and Natalie will definately do that. The only thing I have seen that really hold Abby's attention is a book. She loves books. She has added the verb "read" to her vocab and uses it frequently. With great enthusiasm and demand. Actually sometimes, it's a little whiny. So, we are working very hard on only responding to her asking nicely and in a normal voice. She does get a little whiny and demanding at times. On the other hand, when she looks at you with pleading eyes and says and signs, "pease", it's just adorable and melts your heart.

Natalie and Abby do a lot of their best playing in their beds. They are SO funny. I can often hear them running back in forth in their, laughing and talking. They are fond of throwing all their crib items from one crib to the other. Usually, everything ends up in Natalie's bed, but today I found everything in Abby's bed.

Other favorite toys include their toy food, their babies, and balls. They also like pushing their stroller, or in Abby's case, picking it up and putting it on the ottoman and big chair. Chasing each other, peek-a-boo, and tormenting the cat are also fun. They also have a fisher price farm that they like to play with as well.


SO, if you are still reading, congratulations. I assure you we are not nearly as narcissistic as the length of this post would suggest. I really do know that most people could care less about all these little details. But, I honestly do this for us as much as for anyone else. It's a great way to help me remember all the stuff they do and I don't have to write it down in multiple places. It's also my hope that one day Natalie and Abby will read this and have a record of all the little things they did.

I actually have a few things to say about their personalities and individual favorites, but this is already ridiculously long and it's 1:20am.

Nite-nite:-)