Hellobee

The Starfish baby girls have stayed very busy over the past month. At this point, I think it’s probably pretty safe to say that differences in their development are mostly attributable to the individual child rather than their 5-week age difference. I had wondered when that would happen, and many of my friends predicted 9 months given their experience with their own little ones. It turns out that those predictions weren’t too far off!

    
The Starfish girls love playing with each other these days.

Physical

We are still waiting for crawling in the Starfish household. Both Lilly and Audrey have come close a couple of times but neither has quite figured it out. They both seem quite eager to get moving and they will scoot forward or backward while sitting or will roll around to get to a toy or object that they want, but no traditional crawling activity has yet been observed. I thought last month that it would happen any day, so now I really think it will happen any moment!

Lilly and Audrey both seem close to crawling.

Our youngest daughter remains a large baby and at 7 months old, she frequently fits into 12-month clothing. Meanwhile, our oldest is exactly an average size and we alternate her between 6 and 9-month clothing. Why do I mention their clothing sizes? Because it means it is becoming more challenging to dress them alike because we are frequently gifted outfits in the exact same size! It’s a real and distressing problem for me, people! #twinproblems

Social

Our oldest continues to be very talkative and babbles all the time. Lilly also has hit an intense fussy stage in the past two weeks. She really hates to be left alone right now, which is particularly challenging for our nanny who is one-on-two with the girls and has to sometimes take a bathroom break or attend to Lilly’s sister. Lilly finds this extremely objectionable, to the point that our little peanut has now earned a nickname upgrade (or downgrade?) to “salty peanut.”

These days our little peanut is more likely to be fussy than happy.

Meanwhile, our youngest Audrey is very happy and smiley right now. She doesn’t babble nearly as much as her sister and this is a current concern of mine, but she laughs a lot. I did manage to get her to say her first word weeks ago, “Hi,” by mimicking me. Thank goodness I captured it on video because she has stayed very quiet since then.

Our silly Audrey is a quiet one.

After the year turned, Mr. Starfish and I have made an effort to spend one-on-one time with each girl. We most frequently do this by splitting them up for weekend chores. Mr. Starfish will take one girl with him for the weekly Costco and grocery store run; meanwhile, the other girl will stay home with me and we will do laundry and other household chores. This has been so much fun for all of us! It has also been fascinating because the girls seem so different on their own. For instance, Lilly is usually so loud and talkative compared to Audrey. But when Lilly is on her own, I actually find her to be very quiet and introspective. In comparison, Mr. Starfish told me that Audrey is a fun and extroverted goofball when she is on her own with him on their shopping trip.

Lilly helps with laundry; Audrey helps with grocery shopping.

For the holidays, the girls made their first trip to my hometown of St. Louis. They did great on the trip and their first Christmas was a resounding success. They got so much attention from my family and it was such a treat to introduce them to extended family members and to introduce them to some of our traditions.

On our way to St. Louis for Christmas!  |   The girls met some new family members, like my sister’s dog!

   
The Starfish family with our cookies and milk for Santa, and a carrot for Rudolph!

The girls welcome the new year together with curiosity!

Back home in Chicago, the girls’ social life was more muted this month due to the extreme cold. Still, their nanny kept them quite busy with sensory play. I laughed out loud one day when she posted pictures of the girls exploring Jell-O and getting their hands (and everything else!) dirty.

What a fun mess!

Sleep

There are no updates to report on sleep. Both girls are snoozing for 12 hours straight at night and are still taking three daytime naps. They typically get between 15-16 hours of sleep each day.

I’ve been very grateful that Lilly has continued to sleep so well despite her daytime fussiness.

Eating

We’ve been working on increasing the girls’ daily intake of solids as their pediatrician advised us to get to three meals a day by their 9-month checkup. Their favorite recent addition has been baby yogurt, which our nanny introduced to them and they love. She also continues to work with them on baby-led weaning and they have a great time with it.

For the most part, we feed the girls pouches or jars of stage 2 organic baby food. Over the past month, Mr. Starfish discovered that Aldi now has a line of organic pouches and always a fan of a good deal, he promptly sprinted over there and scooped up so many pouches that the cashier informed him that there were more in the back if he wanted them. While I love his enthusiasm for a good deal, I literally have packets of baby food falling on my head now whenever I open the girls’ food cabinet. The man went overboard big time… sigh.

We also have started to introduce a sippy cup to the girls with some diluted juice. After a great deal of research, we purchased these cups. Lilly and Audrey have a great time banging these cups around but are not yet efficient at drinking from them. Practice makes perfect, right?

So far 2017 has been an exciting and busy year for our family. We are looking forward to more fun to come!