6 Months

Our Family on Christmas

The picture we sent out in our Christmas Cards

The girls with their Christmas Stockings

Their first fire on Christmas night

Opening their presents from Santa!

Their first taste of food! (Emily on left, Catherine on right)

Our family

Daddy's Girls

How is it possible that I'm writing this already? Are my girls REALLY half a year old?! Seriously???!!!!! I cannot believe they are 6 months already, it blows my mind! Every day with the girls is more and more fun. They are getting so inquisitive and love to learn new things. Let's see - there are lots of new things this month. I hope I remember everything.

The biggest news is that they are now eating big girl food! I make all their food myself. We started around 5.5 months with homemade rice cereal made out of organic whole grain brown rice. They HATED it. Catherine kept spitting it out and Emily just gagged and made horrible faces. I don't know, I thought it was good! haha! So we tried that every day for about a week. Catherine started to enjoy it a little more but Emily was just not having it. Ok. So then we decided to try avocado for a few days. Again, Catherine seemed ok with it but Emily made faces like i was feeding her a lemon and would scream after about 5 minutes into feeding it to her. SO then I decided to try sweet potato. THAT was a winner! Both girls LOVED it and started to open their mouth for it. We did sweet potato for about a week until I ran out. Then we tried banana and oh my gosh they were going CRAZY for it! They just kept their smiling mouths open unless they were "chewing"! And finally, our latest food is butternut squash and again they are in love with it! Both girls are finishing their portions and smiling all through feeding time and opening their mouths and diving into the spoon, haha! Right now I am just feeding once a day but I'm going to start doing twice a day soon. I was worried about doing it myself (right now I feed when Brian gets home from work to help) but now that they eat so well I'll have no problems feeding them in the mornings myself. I think we'll do fruit in the morning and veggies in late afternoon.

Another big event that happened this month is that we celebrated our FIRST Christmas! Wow, how amazing to experience Christmas through your children's eyes. Even though they obviously didn't "get" the concept of Christmas, it was so fun celebrating Christmas with my two sweet angels and my amazing husband. We had a wonderful holiday filled with family. We spent Christmas eve (Polish Wigilia) with my parents and enjoyed a traditional Polish feast! They got spoiled by their grandparents and got lots of toys, some clothes and savings bonds. Christmas morning we all woke up and opened presents! Santa brought the girls a Sophie the Giraffe, an O-Ball, a tea-set and some blocks! Mommy and Daddy put money into their savings accounts as well! Then we went to church in the morning, where they behaved so wonderfully. A little fussy half way through but then they fell asleep within minutes. After that we packed up and drove out to Brian's parent's house where we celebrated Christmas with them! They, of course, spoiled them as well with toys, books, stuffed animals and money for their bank accounts. We had a delicious dinner and had a great time celebrating with them. The girls did wonderfully and had a lot of fun!

Let's see what else - they are still sleeping amazing well through the night. I mean, they don't wake up at night for ANYTHING - not a paci, a cuddle, bottle, nothing. Every night they sleep perfectly. We are SOOOOO lucky. I'm still pumping milk for them and plan to continue another 6 months! I'm glad we made it this far though - it was my "little" goal!

Catherine had to start going to physical therapy a few weeks ago because she has a flat spot on the back of her head. The physical therapist thinks it's because of how she was positioned in my belly (head down) and Emily was pushing down on her, so her head was against my pelvis for months. Anyways, the physical therapist says she has a mild case and she definitely won't need a helmet (yay!) We have to work on WAY more tummy time. I wasn't doing it nearly enough because neither of them liked it, but the therapist gave me lots of tips for helping them enjoy it more....aka I have to be down there with them the whole time! But that's ok, I'd do anything for them! But they are both making a lot of progress and the therapist is very impressed! They can now roll back to belly which is new this month! They can also sit unassisted for about 30 seconds or so...but I have to be there watching them the whole time - they aren't very steady when they sit yet.

Well I think that's it for this month! Sorry for the novel - congrats if you read this whole thing!