Julie and Alex turned 5 months old on Monday.  Alex's most recent thing is his squealing and big, huge smiles.  You can see his smiles in the pictures posted.  Julie will also give us big, huge smiles, but not as often as Alex.  She is all about kicking, and she has really good head control and neck strength.  They are both getting a lot better at holding things and subsequently putting them in their mouths.  I find it completely fascinating to see how differently they are developing.  Both are given the same opportunities, and they both show their different personalities.  It's great fun having twins!

 

Sleep update: Alex is still sleeping through the night and continues to be our favorite son for it.  Julie had been getting up twice during the night, nearly every 3 hours.  I don't know that she really needs to eat that much, but we feed her and put her back to bed.  The good news is, the last two nights, she has not gotten up between 2 am and 6:45 am.  Marc's been feeding her around 1 am, and then she wakes around 6:30 or 6:45, instead of 3 or 4 am like she had been doing.  So, we're making some small improvements there, and I'm getting to sleep more.

 

Feeding update: As you may recall, or you can read below, we were having a lot of trouble with Alex spitting up a ton.  I tried putting him on a probiotic that really helped one of our friend's baby (baby next to Julie in the PEPS picture).  Unfortunately, I think it made Alex's stomach feel bad because he was really irritated after I gave it to him and would stay up for around 6 hours straight - and he wasn't a happy baby during that time.  I tried for a week and then stopped giving it to him.  It was worth a shot.  Anyway, we're back to square one on that front.  The good news is that Alex is not spitting up near as much as he was and I think he's now gaining weight again at the proper speed.  He's still spitting up and we go through a couple of outfits a day, but not as bad as before.  We were also able to up the amount he's eating since he's holding down his food better and that makes him a lot happier.  It was so terrible that we would take the bottle away when he was done eating and he would cry.  That doesn't happen now with the new amount.  Julie still keeps her food down well.  Her newest thing is playing with the bottle in her mouth instead of eating.  So, she takes twice as long to eat as Alex does.  At least it all stays in for the effort.  I can't really tell the difference in their weights when picking them up now, so it will be interesting to find out how much they weigh.  I plan to ask the nurse to weigh them when we go in for their vaccination at 5 months.  (For those of you wondering about that statement, since shots are given at 2, 4, and 6 months, I decided to have their shots split up so they wouldn't get as many vaccinations at any one visit.  They do have to go in twice as much though during this first year due to this choice.  Check out the Vaccine Book if you're wondering why we decided to do this.)

This year was Julie and Alex's first Christmas.  We were very excited for them and they had no idea what was going on. 

 

The Christmas "season" started the Thursday before Christmas when Redmond was hit with a huge snow storm.  I had gone back to work on Tuesday, so two days in the office, then two days working from home because of the snow.  Now, you have to understand that Redmond totally shuts down when any amount of snow hits because the city (and all the other cities around) are completely unprepared for any snow.  By Friday, we had around 7 inches of snow and roads were terrible.  Starting Sunday, it snowed nearly every day for the next week.  I don't know how much snow we ended up with, but it was more than we've ever seen in Redmond, and we had our first white Christmas since moving out here.

 

My parents came for the week to visit with us.  Luckily, they arrived on Saturday, which was one of the few days it did not snow, so their flight made it in ok and they were able to get to our house.  We gave them our Explorer to drive for the week and it was lucky we did since it was nearly impossible to drive without 4WD.  They made it over to our house every day and saw Alex and Julie (and us of course).  They enjoyed feeding them and playing with them all day long.

 

On Christmas day, we decided to do two Christmas present openings.  In the morning it was all about Alex and Julie.  Marc and I opened their presents... they got lots of socks - Trumpette socks, since they are the best - which was wonderful because we didn't have any that fit Alex any more.  They got lots of toys, cool towels, christmas ornaments, CD's, and the list goes on.  They held some of their toys as we opened the gifts, but I'm not sure they ever understood what was going on.  Both of them fell asleep while we were opening gifts.  Next year...... 

 

Later in the day, we had a big Christmas dinner with all the family that's in the area.  Following that, we opened all the gifts for the rest of the family.  I'm glad we broke it up into two sessions, because there was a lot of stuff!  A few of the gifts didn't arrive due to the weather, but overall, it was a lot of fun.  We then taught Tony and Chris how to play Progressive Rummy, a card game played often in the Schnipke household.  The day was really great, and we had a very Merry Christmas.

 

The day after Christmas, Deb, Joanne and I went shopping.  I really wanted to find amazing deals on kids' toys so I could stock up for the first birthday and Christmas next year.  I was totally disappointed.  There were very few sales and the toys on sale weren't good.  I didn't buy any toys at all.  The best I did was to get a new hat for both Julie and Alex from gymboree, which are super adorable.  I also found a good deal on some new snowpants for me, but no deals on new snow boots.  It was good to get out of the house, but a disappointing shopping day overall.  We went back a bit early because it had rained and snowed in Redmond during the day and lots of people were getting stuck on our street. 

 

On Sunday, we went and saw the Lucy exhibit at the Pacific Science Center.  We learned a lot about Ethiopia and then saw Lucy's bones.  It was pretty amazing.  I also learned that they had found more bones that were much, much older than Lucy, which I had not heard about.  The archeologists usually don't name bones with a common name, but I think that's the only reason Lucy is so famous and everyone remembers those particular bones.  It's definitely worth the trip to see it, but take the Prime Card so you get in for 1/2 price!

 

Deb and Tony also got engaged over the weekend, so a big congratulations to them!

 

That just about sums up the week.  We'll need to get a new shovel and some sleds for the next snow storm.  Everything got sold out quickly during this snowstorm!

I literally spent all day trying to figure out how to put a video module on this space.  I just wanted a playlist where people could choose different videos and view each one.  I tried all the different gadgets... the skydrive gadget showed all my pictures in folders but not the videos I had uploaded, the soapbox gadget said it couldn't find my videos even though the soapbox site could easily list my videos, the windows media player gadget wouldn't work either.  Finally, I thought I had it when I found the generic Video gadget that lets you show videos from YouTube or other video providers.  After working out where the embed codes were, I could only work out how to show one video, even though it said multiple could be shown.  Frustrating!  I finally found a blog post that mentioned embedding videos into blogs posts.  Whew!  Not exactly what I was aiming for, but the closest thing I could find.  Now, if anyone knows the code to embed multiple videos into one Video gadget, please let me know.  Now, that I've vented my frustration for the day, here are the videos I wanted to share!

 

At the eMoms sale in October, I found a Jumperoo for Julie and Alex.  We had to wait until they had good head control before introducing it to them.  We got it out last week, a few days before Christmas.  At first, they would just sit in it and play with toys we handed them.  They didn't play with the toys attached to the Jumperoo or the Exersaucer, which we introduced at the same time.  Today, I put Julie in the Jumperoo and she seemed to finally get what she was supposed to do.  She was moving around in the Jumperoo and had the biggest smiles.  I captured a couple of quick videos.  The first video is better for content, but the lights were off, so pretty grainy.  I turned the lights on and tried to get a second video, but she didn't move around as much.

 

Later, I put Alex in the Jumperoo and he was better at moving, but not quite like Julie.  He was more interested in sitting and squealing and smiling which is his new favorite thing to do.  The squealing is a new sound for him in the last couple of days, and he loves, loves, loves to do it. 

 

 

 

On Monday, Alex rolled over for the first time.  Laure had told me that he was really close to doing it in the morning, so I put him on his stomach.  About a minute later, he made it over all by himself.  He promptly started crying afterwards, so we didn't try again at that time.  He hasn't done it a second time yet, but I'm sure it's coming.

 

The other new thing that Alex and Julie did this week was eat in their high chairs!  I built the high chairs last weekend and have been putting Alex and Julie in them.  It's great because they can be wheeled around the downstairs easily.  They are tiny in them though!  I tried to feed them both in their high chairs and Alex just screamed and screamed and wouldn't eat until I held him.  Julie did just fine.  Laure tried the next day, and both ate in their high chairs.  And, they even held their own bottles.  These are definitely behaviors I want to encourage, since it's a lot nicer to feed both babies at the same time.

 

Julie had a new favorite toy.  Tim Briggs had given us a kick toy and she would just go crazy kicking it.  Every time she kicked it, it would make some funny noises and then play a new song.  She loved it!  Unfortunately, it broke!  It no longer plays any sound.

It's hard to believe, but Alex and Julie are 4 months old now.  We took them into the doctor today and he's very pleased at their progress.  He stated that he's very happy that they have no remnants of being preemies, which is great.  Their development is on track; their growth is on track.  Alex is starting to sleep through the night which ends up in a pattern of really short naps during the day, which is normal.  The night sleep consolidates first, with fractured day sleep and then his naps should consolidate.  Julie still needs an extra feeding at night, so I'm up with her at 2 or 3 am every night and that may continue for another month or two, which is normal.  The doctor kidded me that of course I want them to be the same, but they are different kids and I need to be patient with Julie's sleep pattern.  All in all, it was really great to hear that they are doing super well.  Of course, the visit ended up with vaccinations, one of which they like - the rotavirus oral vaccine, one of which they don't like - the prevnar shot in the leg.  We'll be back again next month for an immunization only visit to get the Pentacel vaccine.

 

Stats:

Julie:

Weight: 13 lb. 1 oz. (50th percentile)

Height: 23 1/4 in. (10th percentile)

 

Alex (long and lean):

Weight: 13 lb. 13 oz. (25th percentile - boy scale different than girl scale)

Height: 24 3/4 in. (50th percentile)

 

"Outstanding" and "gorgeous" were how the doctor described them.

 

I think there are two reasons Alex's growth slowed a little compared to Julie's. 1) Julie gets an extra feeding at night.  2) Alex spits up a ton, so it's a wonder that he grew at all this month.  The doctor also said that spitting up usually peaks around 3 months adjusted age, so that should taper off in the next few weeks.  I wasn't worried about all the outfit changes we have to do, I was more worried that he'd be hungry all the time and not be growing.  But, he still eats on the same schedule and his growth is ok, so that was a relief.