A Trio of Cuties

Here are some videos and pictures of my trio of cuties from this past week...

Julia laughing at Caroline while also being entranced by the remote control. Margaret chimes in from the background...

Margaret splashing in the tub...

Margaret and Julia in the activity gym...

Caroline riding Rody at a friend's birthday party.

Jumping on the trampoline with friend Claire.

Post party: Mommy's exhausted, Caroline is just getting warmed up.

Julia and Margaret sharing a book.

Whatcha lookin' at??

Margaret loves the swing.

Julia isn't so sure at first.

Warming up to it.

Relaxing with a snack after the swing. (M/J)

Tremendous Tuesday!

Lots of major stuff going on in the Hepper household lately! Here's a list of all the tremendous things happening with our handful of Heppers:

1. In about 7 months, I will have approximately 3 CHILD-FREE hours (that don't require a babysitter to achieve) to myself every Wednesday. Next September, Caroline will be in the 4 day program at First Presbyterian Preschool and the twinsies will be in the 1 day program. We got the little girls' acceptance letters last week and you'd better believe I wrote their deposit checks before the mailman even left our front porch.
Now don't get me wrong. I love my trio of ladies and am thrilled to be able to raise our kids full time. AND we seriously have the world's best babysitter who is always on hand to help me when I need a break, but there's something about having all the kids at preschool at once that makes me giddy with delight. I've already started a list of things I will do during my free time.  "Soak in the tub while drinking champagne and eating chocolate" and "take a 3 hour nap" are numbers 1 and 2. Grocery shopping, cleaning the house, and laundry will never, ever be on my Wednesday morning to do list.

2. Both Margaret and Julia are on the move! It's (always) so interesting to have twins, but especially right now because the girls are approaching mobility in totally different ways. Margaret is army crawling...scooting. She uses her hands and legs to pivot and scoot in the direction she wants to go. Julia is a taking a rock and lunge approach. She gets up on her knees, rocks back and forth with an adorable look of determination on her face (it's SO cute to see), and then lunges forward to move a total of approximately one inch.  While I'm very excited to watch the girls approach the crawling milestone, I'm well aware that my life is about to change in a big baby-gated kind of way.

3. Julia is FINALLY sleeping through the night! Let the record show that she was over 7 months old before accomplishing this feat. What it came down to in the end was a little bit of work from both J and Mommy. Julia started the ball rolling by cutting back her ridiculous amount of night waking to only once a night. At that point I decided it was time to give that 2am wake up call the boot too and began sleep training. Thankfully, her resistance was minimal and by the 4th night, she was sleeping straight through. Hip hip hooray for a decent night's sleep!

4. Caroline is almost potty trained!! We've been working on it for several weeks now. She is very excited about wearing a big girl underpants like some of her friends and classmates. She wore her big girl underpants to school yesterday with great success! We still have a little ways to go before I would say we're 100%, but we're off to a great start and we're so proud of our sweet Caroline!

Whew! That's it! I don't think I could handle anything else at this point.

Check out these photos from an impromptu rainy day photo session we had yesterday...

Julia/Margaret

Julia getting ready to rock and lunge. Tongue out = having a good time, just like big sister Caroline.

Margaret 

Julia

Margaret

Julia/Margaret

 Caroline giving Margaret a ride in the doorway jumper...pretty sure Margaret is having a blast!

Big sister C lined up with her babies.

Caroline's First Haircut!

 Despite being over 2 and a half years old and except for a small rat tail removal this past summer by Aunt Allison, Caroline has never had a haircut...nor really needed one...until today. After too many mornings of Caroline waking up looking like this and leaving me at a loss as to what to do with her hair, it became clear that it might be time for at least a little trim and shape-up.

Major bed head!

Caroline was a little nervous about what getting a "real" hair cut would be like. I explained that she would sit in a fun chair and that a nice lady would put a cape on her and then cut her hair with scissors. Looking scared, Caroline asked, "And it just sting a widdle bit, Mommy??" Poor thing! The child thought going to get her hair cut was going to be painful!  I used the kitchen scissors to trim a small piece of her hair and show her that getting her haircut would not hurt at all, and Caroline seemed instantly relieved and ready to get her first trim.

The whole event was over in less than in 15 minutes. Caroline sat quietly throughout, looking nervous, but not upset. She was thrilled to pick a lollipop when Ms. Nicholette was done and even more excited to head out the door and off to Chick-fil-A for a celebratory lunch. First haircut = success!!

Ready to go for her first hair cut!

Looking a little nervous in the chair.

Not happy....but not upset either.

All done, back home, and zoned out with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!



And of course, here are some pics of the twins!

Julia/Margaret

Oooohh...remote control!

At least 15 minutes of joint obsession.

AND....check out who is just beginning to think about crawling!

Go Julia!

A Winter Visit

Well it seems like winter finally arrived here in Richmond last Friday...boooo! While I did not welcome the cold temperatures, I was happy to welcome Marmee and Grampy into town for a winter weekend visit.
We had great low key weekend of granddaughter adoration, many delicious meals out (if you're a Richmonder and haven't been to Portico, definitely check it out!), and a little bit of football watching.

Grampy and Caroline play on the princess keyboard.

Grampy visits with Julia...

...and Marmee visits with Margaret.

Princess Caroline dances with Ladybug Girl.

Margaret and Julia check out their new taggies books.

Caroline and Marmee examine a very special rock/piece of asphalt that Caroline found.

In other news, Julia finally decided that she would in fact like to sit up on her own like her younger sister Margaret...better late than never!

Big Girl Bed Success!

Remember when I said that Santa was bring Caroline a big girl bed for Christmas and that I was sure it was going to cause even more sleep issues than we already had going in our house? I was sure the big girl bed was going to be a disaster.Well thankfully, it turns out I was dead wrong! It was only the first two nights that Caroline was wary of sleeping in her bed and decided that the crib was a better choice. After that, she changed her tune and it has been big girl bed all the way!

Every night Caroline bunkers down with her blankets, "lubbies", and as many princess dolls as she can jam under her polka dotted covers and settles in for a long winter's sleep that lasts until 7am or so. She has woken up once or twice in the middle of the night but it doesn't seem to be related to the big girl bed.
For example, a few days ago in the wee hours of the morning she woke up screaming, "I want pears!!" Paul went in and assured her that as soon as breakfast time rolled around, we'd be happy to serve her some pears but she would have to wait until then. Satisfied, she nestled back in and went straight back to sleep. Silly girl!

Here are a few pictures of Caroline's new bed and room. The only thing left to do is to add some wall art and we will be finished!

Big girl bed complete with bedding and tulle bed skirt.

Isabel insisted on making an appearance in this blog post.

Sweet Caroline snoozing away during nap time.

A picture of Margaret and Julia looking cute as usual!

6 Month Well Visit

I am just pleased as punch! Earlier today the twins had their 6 month well visit with Dr. Nelson (even though the girls are a day away from turn 7 months old) and they did an amazing job showing off all their latest skills and wowing Dr. Nelson with their weight gain. Here are Julia and Margaret's latest stats:

Julia:
Weight: 14 pounds and 10 ounces (10-25th percentile)
Length: 26 1/8 inches (50th percentile)

Margaret:
Weight:14 pounds and 5 ounces (10th percentile)
Length: 24 7/8 inches (10th percentile)

All those numbers mean that both girls gained about a pound and a half in one month and are starting to close the gap between themselves and their peers. Julia is a whole two inches longer than Margaret so I guess that makes her our little string bean since the girls are only 5 ounces apart in weight :)

Check out these adorable (almost) seven month olds....

Margaret/Julia

Julia/Margaret

Julia

Margaret

And their equally cute big sister...

Adventures in Eating

I'm pretty sure I wrote a post about Caroline's foray into the world of solid food with the exact same title, but feeding the twins solid food really is an adventure so this post will have the same name.

For starters, since the first bit of rice cereal passed the girls' lips less than a month ago, I swear we've blown through about 10 boxes of cereal and 50 jars of baby food. These girls can eat! Especially Margaret, who seems to have the metabolism of a jack rabbit and/or a hollow leg where she stores mass quantities of food. With the exception of peas, I have yet to find a food that the twins dislike - fruits, veggies, yogurt - these little ladies eat it all.

We're up to three full meals a day and the girls expect to be fed on time, every time. At the start of each meal time, Julia and Margaret sit in their high chairs and clamor like baby birds waiting frantically for the mama bird to arrive with their food. I try not to waste any time passing the spoon back and forth between their mouths because if they are especially hungry, there will be tears in the few seconds it takes for one girl to take a bite while the other one waits. 

And you'd better believe all this eating is messy. Margaret has a habit of sticking her fingers in her mouth after almost every bite and then smearing her food all over her face. Julia, who tends to be a distracted eater, gets food on her hands and then wipes it all over anything she can get her hands on: the high chair, Margaret, or her clothing. It's no wonder that dinner time is my favorite meal of the day because I can dunk the girls directly in the tub after it's over!

You would think that all this eating would lead to the girls packing on the ounces faster than ever. So far, I'm not seeing any huge gains, but we'll be going to the doctor tomorrow for an official weigh in to see just how far we've come. Fingers crossed that each girl breaks into a new percentile :)

Caroline is a great helper at meal times. 

Julia with a cereal mustache and goatee. 

Snackin' on a cracker (J/M)

Julia gets tired of waiting and takes matters into her own hands...

Loving our new high chairs!

Happy eater Margaret