Merry Christmas to me!

Our furniture finally arrived this week and I must say that I am feeling a little better about the munchkin exploring in the living room. I still have to watch her like a hawk, but she can no longer reconfigure our sound system or toss about five DVDs on the floor before I can get to her. Thank you again to our families who so graciously gave us gift cards for Christmas to buy this furniture - we love it! We also spent last weekend installing a new baby gate, putting locks on several of the cabinets, and re-organizing the pantry so that all things dangerous are out of reach. Regardless of the time we spend making things "safe", this kid finds a way to get into something! Oh, the life of a Mom with a crawling baby (I wouldn't trade it for anything!) By the way, Tink is having some "Pack N Play" time so that I can have a moment of peace. If you have a little one and haven't read Baby Wise Book Two, I highly recommend it! Gotta go, my time is almost up and I'm sure there's something more productive I should be doing. . .

Nine Months

What a fun month this has been! We were reminded this month how truly blessed we are by such great family and friends. We traveled quite a bit and Tink got to spend more time with her cousins - she even met some of them for the first time! It was such a fun and special time for our family.

We visited the doctor today, and she weighed in at 16.5lbs and is 26.5in long. Her growth slowed down a little because she's so active, so Dr. Gomez encouraged me to add a third "solid food" feeding to her day - this kid is going to eat all day long! She really loves finger foods, so I'm sure she won't complain :) She LOVES peas, rice, tortillas, cheerios, and anything else I feel brave enough to let her try. I have discovered that she has my terrible gag reflex, which is interesting when trying new foods. . .

Her new favorite past time is pulling up on anything she can reach - keeping me VERY busy trying to keep things out of her reach! We're counting the minutes until our new furniture arrives - we ordered a new TV stand and media tower (with doors) and they can't get here soon enough. Her independence and strong-willed personality grow every day, along with being able to charm her Daddy with giggles and dancing (yeah, he's in trouble).

I posted most of our pictures in the slide show above, but here are just a few more:

Enjoying a break from Christmas shopping with a MumMum

This is the look I give my Daddy when I want something (like this Curious George, for example)

Let's see, what can I get into. . .

cousin fun

Happy New Year!

Can we stay up until midnight?

Nine months old

About to dive off the couch. . .

Twas the week after Christmas. . .

and I'm still trying to get caught up on everything. . . We had a wonderful Christmas full of time with family! R and I were very excited about Tink's first Christmas and she seemed to love it as much as we do :) Of course, she was completely interested in wrapping paper and exploring all of the new places we visited - she's getting harder and harder to keep up with! There were way too many pictures to choose from, so here are some highlights (don't forget to mute the playlist at the bottom of the page before you start the video) If you're on Facebook, these are the same pictures I posted this morning :)

On the Move

I've been taking a lot of video lately because it seems like Tinkerbell is changing faster than I can keep up! She has transitioned from rolling around on the floor to army crawling and rocking on her hands and knees to crawling and even pulling to stand in just the last month!

I noticed a few things while watching that I thought would be fun to note - first, and most important, I love how she cracks herself up! I hope that as she grows older, she is more like her Dad than me in this way and can always laugh at herself. Second, she has some crazy abs! Of course I would too if every time I lay on the floor I held both my head and feet up in the air(maybe I should follow her lead on this one). . . Please also note that we're constantly enticing her with the remote - this is because she is no longer motivated by toys or things that she is allowed to have - only things that are "not for babies" (as I am now constantly saying to her!)

Also, just a few notes for other parents who shoot video of their kids with lessons I am learning:
1) Don't talk too much while filming (really, as little as possible) - you will inevitibly sound stupid to yourself and wish you could somehow mute your voice and still hear your child doing whatever you were trying to video.
2) Clean (or at least straighten) the room you're in before you start to record. Who wants a pile of laundry immortalized along with your child's memories?
3) If you have dogs, put them outside/crate them before recording. They are ALWAYS in the way and somehow seem to show their backsides in the video - not the most attractive, especially if you're on the floor. (Sorry boys, not your turn to be the star of the show)

So, here's the video. It's about six minutes long, and probably only really entertaining to the grandparents, but I had fun making it :)

Update on the twins

The boys had head sonograms this week - here is an update from Kimi:

The Doctor (Dr. Benzick, the pediatrician who received the results from the radiologist) says that the boys’ brain bleeds haven’t gotten better, but they are not worse. I’d like to say that that is good news, but that is not how I feel right now. I feel like it is horrible, sad, disappointing news. I guess mostly disappointing. On to the details:
S: His Grade I Interventricular hemmorage on the left side has a slight increase in size, but the doctor was sure to say that this is consistent with a resolving hemmorage.
T: His Grade I Interventricular hemmorage on the left side is resolving and stable in size. Note: the status of “resolving” is good news, since as of the last sono, T’s bleed was not given that status.
Neither of the boys’ cysts is blocking the production of spinal fluid to the brain. Dr. Benzick does not expect there to be any long term developmental problems due to the existence of these bleeds. We will go back for another head ultrasound on Dec 30 or Dec 31.
Does that make sense to anybody out there? That is all the info I got from my phone conversation with the doctor. I think I just go into shock upon the early part of the discussion when I hear that they boys are still not better, so I don’t ask questions or process the conversation better. We go to Dr. Benzick for a 2 month checkup on Dec 16, so Rob will get to ask more questions then.
In other news, while we were at the hospital today for the ultrasounds, we went to the lactation room and weighed the boys ourselves on their Medela scale. T weighs 7 lbs 5 oz and S weighs 6 lbs 5 oz. Eight days ago at their checkups they weighed 6lbs 10 oz and 5 lbs 10 oz respectively. This means that they have each gained more than the “required” ounce a day. Eleven ounces in 8 days to be precise. Good job mommy, daddy, Grandma, and boys for the group effort in keeping them fed!
Please pray that these next three weeks will bring total healing to the boys’ brains. I really want to get a clean report after the next sonogram.

Eight Months

Tinkerbell's eight month "birthday" was on Thanksgiving, but it's been a little crazy around here since then! She is growing and changing so quickly, and I can't imagine what the next few months will bring. She grows more independent every day and can be quite the drama queen when things don't go her way- no idea where she gets that! She is still army crawling, but is now pulling up to stand while holding on to something. She is really interested in toys and can be entertained by something for a longer period of time. She is also transitioning to formula twice a day because I can't keep up with her. Though her cousin cut two teeth over Thanksgiving, she's still toothless, which is fine with me :) She won't have another appointment with the doctor until January, so I'm not sure of her height and weight (she's still comfortably wearing 3-6m clothes, so we haven't had any major "growth spurts"). We are looking forward to her first Christmas and should have lots of fun pictures to share!

Not exactly the pose I was hoping for. . .

Oh well, guess we'll just go with it :)

Helping with the laundry
(by dumping the clothes on the floor, of course!)

My favorite snack - MumMums!

Standing up by myself!

Hey! What are you doing up here?

Sticking her feet out
(This is how I found her after a nap one day)

Trying out Mommy's piano (this is mine from when I was little!)

Giving Thanks

We had a wonderful week with family in Oklahoma! We started by celebrating R's Grandpa's birthday on Wednesday night, and getting together with the Linders crew is never boring! Tink hasn't spent a lot of time with her Daddy's family, so they had fun playing and getting to know each other. We celebrated Thanksgiving with more family on Thursday and Tink did her best to keep up with the big kids :) We headed further north on Friday for Thanksgiving with my family (can you say FULL?) and enjoyed time with my parents and grandparents. We are so thankful for our families and for time spent with them - it never seems long enough and we came home looking forward to Christmas!

cousins

Happy birthday, Grandpa!

Going for a ride

Thanksgiving Dinner (#3!)

Cheering for the Sooners with Papa