Meredith’s Favorite Things Months 3 & 4

June 6, 2016 by

Meredith's

    1. Since Meredith doesn’t have a mirror-image twin to stare at, her sisters’ old baby mirror will have to do!IMG_0136 2Amelia and Samantha used to spend hours staring at each other!IMG_3928 2

2. Samantha and Amelia love to make up stories to go along with Meredith’s simple picture book. IMG_4894

3. Ditto with these black and white animal prints. S and A get pretty creative making up fairy tales involving animals, princesses and Legoland when they show these to Meredith.

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4. Meredith laughs at these little finger puppets as well as her monkey puppet.

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5. Dangle toys are always a hit, whether playing at home, or on the go in her stroller. Meredith’s particular favorite the past month has been Minnie. IMG_0132

6. We still carry Meredith around in the Solly wrap, but she’s finally getting big enough for the Ergo. Even though her head control is pretty good, we still face her in. She would much prefer to be facing out!

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Honorable mention favorite things:

Watching her sisters eat, particularly if it’s a muffin.

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Bath time, going on walks, and playing “airplane.”

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Sucking her thumb and peekaboo.

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Looking at these owls and the pictures of her sisters in their room.

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Least favorite things: Getting impatient to eat, naps, when her sisters take a nap or aren’t around to entertain her, and Bandit’s startling bark.

It’s a busy world for the busy baby!

Lots of love,

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Meredith’s Favorite Things Month Two

April 5, 2016 by

Meredith's (2)

During Meredith’s 2nd month, she had a few days of some pretty gnarly diaper rash. I switched to Water Wipes and that did the trick! Meredith’s bum says thank you!

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Meredith was much more awake, alert and BUSY this month. The twins have been eyeing her baby toys with lots of interest and were excited to finally be able to “play” with her.

She loves her wooden Haba activity gym and I love it because it’s simple and clean, unlike the over-stimulating, electronic baby jungle gym the twins used. We still have the old monstrosity we used with the twins, but Meredith understandably prefers the simple one. The height is adjustable too, which makes it easy to change things up for her when she’s on the Boppy. IMG_4547

Her favorite danglers are the cute wooden Haba ones and her high contrast Manhattan Toy mobile. Her arms and legs still make jerky movements, but this month, she started intentionally swatting her dangly toys. IMG_0174

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Clothes-wise, Meredith has been sporting the twins’ old clothes (double of everything is nice when she spits up on something!) and she’s lucky that she’s been getting so many cute hand-me-downs from her baby friend, Maple. Her favorite new items are the super soft Aden + Anais onesies and her cozy Baby Gap footed sleepers. IMG_4368

The last item is more for me, but now that we’ve been getting out and about to the park more, we’ve fallen in love with our Jujube diaper backpack. Why I ever had an over-the-shoulder diaper bag with the twins, I will never know. Backpacks are so much easier!

It’s clear from revisiting the twins’ favorite things that Meredith has her own unique baby style. How times have changed!

Lots of love,

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Meredith’s Favorite Things: Month 1

April 4, 2016 by

Meredith's

 

It was interesting looking back at the twins’ favorite things as newborns and seeing what was the same and what had changed. Now that we’re doing this for the second time around, I’ve tried to be relatively minimalist with the baby gear after experimenting with the twins, although there a few new items Meredith just loves.

The twins still adore their ragged and torn Aden + Anais blankies from when they were babies and Meredith loves being swaddled in her new ones as well. I wish they made adult-sized ones!

The twins in their swaddlers:

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Meredith’s updated version:

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During Month 1, Meredith loved curling up on the My Brest Friend pillow while feeding. I had the gigantic twin version of this pillow back in the day and this smaller one seemed so much easier to handle.

One new item Meredith loves that we didn’t have for the twins is the Halo Sleepsack/Swaddle. We used sleepsacks for the twins when they were a bit older, but during the first three months, they were swaddled in their muslin blankies. The Halo sack is much easier to swaddle with when it’s 2 a.m. and I’m not fully conscious, not to mention the fact that Jake is the master swaddler and not me. Meredith is happy in her sack at night.

To say that Meredith loves baths is an understatement. It’s the best part of her day! We don’t use this infant bathtub that we used with the twins, and instead, we just hold her in our regular bathtub. She floats blissfully on her back, probably imagining she’s back in the womb. Heaven!

Maybe that’s why Amelia hated her baths so much… should have put her in the regular bath tub.

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Besides her bath, Meredith’s favorite time of the day is anytime she’s being carried in her Solly Wrap. I didn’t do much baby wearing with the twins because I’d always feel guilty that I wasn’t carrying the other twin (twin guilt is a real psychological phenomenon that’s been studied!), so I wouldn’t carry either of them in a wrap or carrier at all last time.

Being able to carry Meredith and use my hands to wrangle twins has been a lifesaver. We still have the Moby wrap that I use also, but the Solly’s fabric is much more light and silky. Meredith and I both claim it as our favorite thing!

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And finally, our beloved Relax Melodies app is being put to use double time now, since I also still use it for the twins during nap time. White noise is magic.

Other favorites of Meredith’s this month included being held, carried, and cuddled, eating voraciously, and going on walks outside. She couldn’t get enough of the fresh air and great outdoors– she is an adventurer, this one.

Lots of love,

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10 Month Favorites and Stats

January 25, 2014 by

Here are the girls’ 10 Month Favorite Things, plus their 10 Month Stats!

1. BabyJogger Summit X3 Double Jogging Stroller. Need I say more? I think enough of my previous posts have been dedicated to my love for this stroller, so I won’t go into too much detail. It’s probably not the girls’ favorite thing ever since they generally don’t like being confined at all, but I think they are way more comfortable in it than in our little double umbrella stroller. The suspension on this thing is amazing, I love the feature that locks the front wheel in case I’m going over any rough trails or rocks, and I love the foot break and hand break features as well. It glides over any kind of terrain and is super light-weight. By far my favorite baby product of all time.

2. Mega Blocks Lego Table–This was a gift from Ana and her family and she knew exactly what the girls would love! They will spend twenty minutes (an eternity in baby time) taking the legos off this thing and putting them back on. It’s also the perfect height at which the girls can pull themselves up, which is one of their favorite things to do right now.

3. Homemade Jungle Gym. Jake spent a lot of time perfecting this jungle gym for the girls’ Christmas present. He initially looked around online for some baby monkey bars, and when he couldn’t find any, decided to make his own.  It’s simple, but effective and fun. The girls love pulling themselves to stand and trying to grab whatever toys we dangle from the bars. When Jake gets home from work, his favorite activity is to help the girls swing and “do gymnastics” on the monkey bars. Everyone who stops by our house always asks where they can get one…maybe Jake should start a side business!

4. Personalized Board Books: Jake made me one of these a few months ago entitled “Why We Love Momma” so for Christmas, I made one called “Why We Love Daddy.” The website where you upload the photos and text is super easy to use and it’s fun having the girls read board books with pictures of our family and a story to match.

5. Baby Lit Books– This is another one of those things that might be one of my favorites instead of one of the girls. This company takes the classics and makes them into adorable, baby-friendly board books. Grandma bought the girls A Christmas Carol, Jabberwocky and Alice in Wonderland for Christmas and they are definitely my favorite books to read the girls. Next on our list is to get the Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Anna Karenina board books!

6. Summer Infant Tiny Diner Place Mats– These placemats were a lifesaver with all the traveling and going out to restaurants we did this month. We could just throw them in the diaper bag, whip out at a restaurant and voila, the girls could eat on the table without me freaking out about sanitizing every surface. I’m sure other people saw us with the placemats and thought, “Yep, first time parents,” but I still think these are amazing! The only pain having to put the dirty placemat  back in the diaper bag to be washed at home, until we discovered some disposable baby placemats at Wal Mart that solve this problem.

Ten Month Stats: 

Samantha: 25.5 pounds, 31.5 inches tall (above the 95th percentile, as per usual)!

Amelia: 23.2 pounds, 30.5 inches tall (also around the 90th percentile)!

Firsts and Milestones:

Third road trip to Utah

First time sledding and playing in the snow

First Christmas

First New Year’s

First time on the baby swings

First time playing in the sand at the beach

Started babbling and interacting more

Started waving hello and goodbye more

First time up at Park City

First time being baby sat by Grandma and Grandpa while we saw a movie

Cruised around on the furniture all day long

Hated: Baths, diaper changes, being put in car seat, being spoon-fed

Amelia:

Started clapping her hands

Started making more funny noises

Started walking with the walker toy

Ear infection while in Utah 🙁

Started standing up in the bath tub and refusing to sit down!

Crawled everywhere with a sock in her hand or mouth

Favorite foods: Cuties, bread, cheese, lasagna, butternut squash, Cheerios

Samantha:

Started making more funny noises/popping her mouth open and closed

Started walking with the walker

Started standing up in the bath tub and refused to sit down!

Loved to crawl everywhere with a measuring spoon or cup in her hand

Loved to steal toys and pacifiers from Amelia!

Favorite foods: Cuties, bread, cheese, lasagna, butternut squash, sweet potato/apple combo

Feeding: Both girls started consolidating their bottle feedings this month. Instead of snacking on 3-4 ounces every few hours, the girls had a pretty regular schedule of drinking a 6-8 ounce bottle every 4 hours during the day. Since I dropped pumping to two times a day, they only got about 20% breast milk and 80% formula.

The girls continued to try new foods this month and, for the most part, hated being spoon-fed. For breakfast, they ate oatmeal and prunes/applesauce/peaches and some cut up banana and cutie oranges. Sometimes they had some scrambled egg yolk and pieces of toast as well.

For lunch, the girls had some kind of pureed veggie or fruit (if they allowed me to spoon-feed them, which was rare), as well as steamed and cut up sweet potato, pears, apples, carrots, butternut squash, or smashed blueberries/raspberries. Their absolute favorite food was cheese, but I’m fairly certain they have a lactose sensitivity like Jake because they would get really gassy and sometimes fussy at night whenever they had cheese or yogurt. I stopped feeding them dairy all together for a while, but our ped said to reintroduce the dairy a little at a time.

For dinner, the girls had steamed or pureed veggies as well as some pureed or cut up chicken, turkey or beef. Their favorite foods were noodles, lasagna and anything the grown-ups were eating!

Sleeping: We finally got the girls off of the three-nap schedule over Christmas break, so they started taking two naps of 1-1.5 hours each, one at 10 a.m. and the other around 2:30 p.m. For naps, I discovered that putting them in their boppies on the floor worked a lot better than having them nap in their cribs and it’s helped them nap longer as well. I get stuff done around the living room where I can supervise them and they sleep the whole time since they can’t hear me with the white noise on.

At nighttime, Samantha decided to wake up at random times, while Amelia usually slept through the night, unless awoken by her sister. For the most part, Samantha woke up once a night (sometimes twice) and would go right back to sleep once we popped the pacifier in, but sometimes, she would cry until she was held and then fell back to sleep. She definitely has some ingrained sleep habits we are trying to break, but it has been tough! Bed time was 7 p.m. and wake-up time was 6:30-7 a.m., except when we were on vacation in Utah, in which case the girls slept in until 8 a.m.!

Diapers: Size 4

Clothing: Samantha wore anywhere from 18 month to 2T while Amelia wore 12-18 month clothing.

Teeth: Still two teeth each!

Fave songs/games:

Lots of Christmas carols this month, especially ones in French– Noel Nouvelet, Il Est Né le Divin Enfant, Un Flambeau Jeannette Isabella

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Flying Trapeze

Do You Know the muffin man

Pat a cake

This little piggy

Fave books:

Peekaboo Christmas

Mr. Brown Can Moo

Moo Boo La La La

Peek a Who

The girls had so many firsts and milestones that they experienced this month and all of it was fun to watch!

Lots of love,

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Filed Under: Milestones, Monthly Favorites, Year One
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