Every month, I think, wow, I can't believe they're another month old.  Today, Alex and Julie are 8 months old!  This morning they were both pretty miserable because they are teething.  Alex has 3 teeth, 2 on the bottom and 1 on the top, and another top tooth is about to pop through.  Julie has 2 teeth, both on the bottom.  Both Alex and Julie are sitting up like champs and can lean over to grab the toys they want to play with.  Alex is becoming much better at rolling over in both directions.  Julie can roll over to her stomach easily, but has trouble rolling back.  Julie tries to crawl, but so far, she only manages to go backwards. 

 

Alex and Julie are also getting really big.  Julie weighed in at around 19.5 pounds and Alex was around 20 pounds today.  Alex is so tall we had to retire the infant car seats for their convertible car seats.

 

We started solids about 3 weeks ago.  They have tried avocado, banana, pears and sweet potatoes.  Julie seems to like pears best and Alex seems to like sweet potatoes best.  They are just starting to get the hang of it (eating that is).  Every week brings new skills or improvements on current skills and it is all very exciting!

 

Yesterday, we were supposed to go out to dinner with Deb and Tony.  After the last nap, Julie woke up really fussy.  I could see the two bottom teeth ready to pop out.  So, we ended up getting carry-out because she was pretty miserable and we didn't know how she would be in the restaurant.  Sure enough, we have a tooth today!  I'm sure the next one will pop through in a couple of days.

 

I don't think she was too thrilled that we wanted to take a picture of her tooth.  Every time we would open her mouth, she'd stick her tongue out, so we finally had to just hold her tongue back while Marc took a quick picture.

I'm doing a bit of catch up today and uploaded a variety of pictures. 

 

Stomach Sleeping: Alex has been rolling to his side for a while and we find him sleeping on his side all the time.  This past week, he started rolling just a little further, but his arm was in the way for a complete roll over.  Yesterday morning, he slept in until 9am and was sleeping peacefully on his stomach.  Julie, on the other hand, will wake up and cry or at least whine if she rolls over onto her stomach in the middle of the night.  I guess she doesn't like it as much as Alex does.

 

St. Paddy's Day: I asked Laure to dress the babies in green for St. Paddy's Day.  Julie and Alex's wardrobe is nearly all blue and pink, but Laure found some cute green outfits for them.  Don't they look super happy in the pictures?  I'm not sure what Marc was doing, but it sure was entertaining!

 

Solid Foods; I finally got a few pictures of them eating solids posted.

We were advised to wait until Julie and Alex were 7 months old to start solids.  Usually, people start at 6 months, but they were born a month early, so we wanted to make sure their digestive systems had time to fully develop.  Last week, we started with Avocado.  It's supposed to be a good first food... you can easily mash it up with a fork and the taste is relatively bland.  Well, the first day didn't work out too well.  Julie threw up half the contents of her stomach and Alex threw up a little bit.  We kept trying once a day, and Alex would eat a little bit.  Julie didn't like the avocado at all.  So, we gave her a break for a few days.  It was more frustrating to feed them then I thought it would be.

 

This past weekend, we decided to try banana.  This was all pureed up and ready to go.  Ahh, banana was a much better food!  Julie and Alex both seem to like it - Julie more than Alex even.  So, they are getting a few bites of pureed banana each day this week.  They haven't quite figured out the mechanics of eating - they'll open their mouths, but they're not sure what to do with the spoon when it's in their mouth.  I put it in upside down so they can lick the banana off of it.  We do have some video of the unsuccessful attempt the first day and a better attempt the second day and some pictures.  We'll try to post those soon.

Alex has his first tooth!

 

Friday night, Alex was up at 4 am and very unhappy.  He wouldn't go back to sleep, so we had a very long night with him.  Finally, on Saturday he slept... and slept, and slept.  We had no idea what was going on and were a bit worried that he was sick.  But, on Sunday, Marc discovered a tooth!  Mystery solved.

Julie and Alex are now 7 months old.  They sit up better and better each day, although they still tumble over some.  We did find that they can sit in the little toy Laure gave them for Christmas without support at their back.  If they have something to hang on to, they do really well.  You can see Julie doing this in the video that Marc took.  The rest of the pictures are just them playing with different toys and enjoying life.