it's like wrestling a greased pig

I think that sums up our life at the moment!

The boys are 11 months old today.  And I swear that within the last 48 hours we have gone from having infants in the house to having toddlers in the house.

They boys move non-stop 24 hours a day.  Yes.  I know they are not walking quite yet but from the moment you lift them out of the crib in the morning until you put them back in the crib they are crawling and climbing all over the place.  I guess sometimes it doesn't even stop in the crib.  They absolutely love to jump up and down in the crib and babble back and forth with each other.  I love walking in the bedroom in the morning and see them standing up in the crib "talking" to each other.  It is also cute to watch one brother babbling non-stop in the morning in an attempt to wake-up the other sleeping brother.  But this non-stop movement has made for some very difficult diaper changes.  Oh how I long for a newborn baby in the diaper department.  We have got to figure out some trick to making diaper changes a bit easier.  And for that matter we have to figure out a way to get clothes on the boys without wrestling with one another.  I now know why most toddlers in the summer walk around in just a diaper.  The parents are exhausted by the time the diaper gets put on.  Any tips??  We lay the boys down and immediately they turn and twist so fast.  Have you ever watched a crocodile get captured?  The crocodile twists and turns like crazy to break away from the wrangler.  This is what the boys do.  I'm about to resort to pinning them down with my leg.  You cannot reason with an 11 month old.  They do not understand me.  

What do they love?  Life.

The boys really tend to be happy most of the time unless we have some teeth trying to pop through.  And really new teeth only seem to bother Alex.  We now think the fussy period was simply a result of Alex getting new teeth.  Because it seemed to stop as soon as the top teeth popped through.  It actually looks like Alex is working on tooth # 5 at the moment and Jakob still only has 2 teeth on the bottom.  It has been great to have the playroom.  We can safely put the boys in the room and work on other odds and ends around the house without worrying about a catastrophe.  Of course there are still plenty of bumps and bruises as the boys continue to learn to crawl and stand-up.  Both boys are proficient at crawling and can crawl from one side of the room to the other in 5 seconds flat.  Neither use an army crawl any longer.  They both pull themselves up on everything and anyone.  This includes each other.  We have a window in the playroom that looks out to our back yard. The boys are still too short to see out the window.  The other day Kara was outside with the dogs and when she glanced up at the window she could see Alex watching them outside.  Huh?  Of course this prompted her curiosity and when she got back inside she realized Alex was standing up on one of his toys.  Such a smart little guy.  And speaking of smart little guys ... Jakob figured out how to open up the baby gate that separates the playroom from the kitchen.  He can lift up on the handle and swing open the gate in only seconds.  So now we have to remember to put on the child lock when we open and close the gate.  How long before he figures out the child lock?  Jakob can also walk (and actually semi-run) with no problems using one of the walking toys.  Alex can take a few steps too but still thinks that you push the toy across the room by jumping / dancing behind it.  I think he will be mobile with the toy in just a few days.

The boys love books.  We actually are lacking in owning books the boys can play with unsupervised at the moment.  Because just as much as they love to turn the pages of a book they still love to chew on them and it only takes seconds for a book to get destroyed.  We really need to get some more books for them.  It is cute to watch them read together.  They will sit over by their pile of books and just turn the pages and "talk" to one another.  Alex loves for you to read out loud.  Right now Alex loves the book "Noodle Loves to Drive".  The kid goes crazy for that book.  We of course have it memorized because it has been read a bazillion times.  And I swear Alex knows if we stray from the words in the book.  He just gives you this look.

The boys are in a combination of clothing sizes.  The boys fit into 9 month sleepers and 6-12 month sleepers.  We tried the boys in 12-18 month pajamas last night but the pants were all but falling off.  So we had to put Alex back in a 9 month sleeper.  Why do 9 month sleepers have buttons?  We cannot do buttons anymore.  I mean if we can't even manage to hold a baby still long enough to put on a diaper how can we expect to be able to button 20 buttons on a sleeper?!?  We were able to put Jakob in 12 month Carter pajamas.  He looked like such a big boy ...

Otherwise, during the day, the boys still wear a combination of 9 month clothes and 6-12 month clothes.  We did pull out all of our 12 month and 12-18 month clothes as they are getting closer to not fitting into a lot of the 9 month clothes.  The outfits we got them for their 1st Birthday are from Old Navy and they are 12-18 month.  Why do I have a feeling we are going to holding up Alex's shorts that day with a safety pin?  That boy is skinny!!!  (and just like his namesake he has no butt to hold up his pants)

Food.  They boys love to eat.  But can get very picky about food from time to time.  We are slowly trying to introduce more finger foods but it is difficult as these boys love their purees.  They still get 4 6oz bottles each day.  A couple of weeks ago both boys went through a growth spurt and were eating closer to 32 oz per day but that only lasted for a few days.  We are still working on sippy cups with the boys.  Jakob will drink from a sippy cup but he is not a huge fan.  Alex does not understand a sippy cup at all and has zero interest at the moment.  I am officially down to pumping 2x per day!!!  I now pump at 6am and 7:30pm.  And it is great.  I am simply waiting for my body to drop supply before I drop to 1 pump per day and then eventually stop altogether.  My body was the one that told me it was time to drop from 3 pumps per day to 2 pumps per day so imagine it will probably be about 2 weeks before I notice a drop in my supply again.  Let me tell you ... my body is confused at the moment!  So I will be glad to be officially done and let my body get back to normal.  The boys are still only getting one bottle of formula per day but I imagine withing the next couple of weeks they will be up to 2 bottles of formula per day.  Still the fact that at 11 months old they most formula either boy drinks in a day is 6 oz makes me very proud.

As a side note.  I'm not a big shopper.  And definitely not a girly girl by any stretch of the imagination.  However, since I have become a mom, I find myself leaning more towards "girly" attire and let me just say I absolutely hate my wardrobe at the moment.  I feel comfortable in nothing.  All my clothes hang off of me because they were bought prior to having kids.  Plus my entire body shape changed after I gave birth to two little boys.  So I am very excited to stop pumping and figure out my true size so I can go on a shopping spree.  It is the only thing I have asked for from Kara.  I want a day of shopping.  And it is weird that this excites me.  But it does.  I think Kara will need to hide the credit cards.

We are in the trenches of planning the boys 1st birthday party.  We hope to keep it as a fairly low-key celebration.  We are simply having our closest friends and family over for good food and fun.  Kara is thrilled to be making all of the food and I am doing a few things to make the day extra special for the boys.  There is not theme.  We are just doing the colors of blue and green.  We decided against the traditional smash cakes and Kara is making about 40 cupcakes and each boy will get a cupcake to eat.  They have blue and green cloth diapers so we will strip them down for that part.  I also plan to get them a special bib to wear for the occasion.  We found cute little outfits for them to wear that day.  Casual of course because our family does not do formal.  I will be displaying their month by month pictures.  We also got them the Dr. Suess Happy Birthday books that we will be asking our friends and family members to use to write them a little message.  We know this will probably be their only "big" birthday party as future celebrations will probably be limited to only grandparents.  It's just because Kara and I are not big party people.  We grew-up with small birthday celebrations and we loved it that way.  But still we are very excited to be celebrating their big day in just a few weeks.  We will be sure to take a lot of pictures!!      

Mary