9 months and a new year!

What a year! The highest highs and the lowest lows and everything in between. Lots of lessons learned in 2010 and 2011 is going to be about enjoying our happy healthy family, great careers and a new home! Too many people I know or know of are having a hard time starting a family, have unhealthy children or worse. We have definitely seen some tough times this year but every day is a blessing.

Alex and Nate are 9 months old today!

Here's what we're doing at 9 months:

Everything but crawling. Their adjusted age for the fact that they were born early is 7 months so we are waiting for them to start to crawl in their own time. They want to sooooo bad and we work on tummy time for an hour a day. They're getting close!

We can sit up on our own now and can balance ourselves really well. We can balance standing up too now. We can grab anything and everything and we love doing a karate chop with our arms now. Nathan LOVES sticking his tongue out at everyone and he cracks up if you stick your tongue out to him. Alex wants to bounce all the time, when he's falling asleep, being changed, standing, etc. We have been having fun with all of our new Christmas toys. Tank has been our favorite toy. Alex likes to watch him from a far with a smile on his face and Nate wants to scream at him all the time. Tank has been great with the boys and they haven't even started dropping food for him yet. Alex accidentally karate chopped Tank's face last week and Tank didn't get mad, he just walked away. Good boy. Alex may end up being a great baseball pitcher, he took out his paci and threw it at the wall and was thrilled to see it bounce back and another time he threw it in mommy's face. Such precision!

We have continued to be good sleepers. We take a morning nap for about an hour and either an afternoon nap or a nap around 5-6pm. Bedtime is between 8:30 and 9pm. and they will sleep to about 7-7:30am. with just a few paci drops.

I can't remember when they first started blowing raspberries but they really have made it an art form, soaking their shirts on occasion.

We now eat 4 times a day- formula and baby food. We have tried apples, bananas, apricots, blueberries, mangoes, pineapple, pears, peaches, raspberries, plum, peas, carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, squash, spinach, rice, turkey, ham, chicken and beef. This is a week's worth of baby food. Seriously. 8 jars a day and 2 big formula cans a week! We are wearing mostly 12 months clothes and a few 9 month onsies that still fit.

Their personalities are showing more. Alex lights up when random people want to look at them and will smile and get excited and Nate will stare at me saying what do THEY want? Nate is loving being spoiled and babied right now. The biggest problem is that one always gets to go first and the other has to wait. They just now have started to realize when they are left behind while their brother is changed, picked up, put down for a nap. I switch off but they don't really appreciate this effort.

9 month doctor check up next week!