twinsies at 7 months

Oh my these twinsies have gotten so much fun in the past month! I always say that but the older they get they just wake up and interact more and more and more. I love it.

I love this, Bryson is always playing with his feet.

 These boys love Maxson.

They are scooting and moving! You put them down and within 5 minutes they are in a totally different area. Quinn is getting on his hands and knees and planking, he mostly just scoots backwards sometimes forward, he's also a pro at turning in circles on his tummy. (as of 1 week later he full on push-upping forward/army crawling!) Bryson is moving a bunch too but I can't figure out how he moves as much, he kind of just slowly scoots backwards and in circles, he's a little more content with just hanging out on his back and watching. I'm thinking they'll both be crawling by 8 months but we will see.

They are loving toys and putting everything in their mouth. They love toys that make noise like shakers and rattles, and even more love non baby toys like Maxson's cars and blocks ha. Another favorite is the foam letters you put on the walls in the bath tub

They are awesome eaters. I've been trying to be more consistent with offering them solids and they chow down each time I do, it just takes so much time that I often forget or am too busy to! I try to feed them solids twice a day and they eat anywhere from 1-2 containers. Bryson opens his mouth so well for each bite and holds it there for a long time until you put it in, and he always leans over to a side). Quinn is our vocal moaning eater because you can't feed him fast enough but he just slurps it up. Same bottle feeding/nursing amounts. I nurse them and then give them 4 oz formula after every feeding.

Bryson

 Quinn

 BQ (doesn't Quinn's head look full on photoshopped on?! Crazy weird I tell ya)

Sleeping is up and down. During most the last month they've been essentially awesome at taking 3 naps a day making 1-2 of them long ones. In the past week it's seemed like they've all been 45 minute naps though and it's driving me NUTS! But as I write this they are suddenly taking a 2 hour nap for no reason, I don't get it. Last month they always slept from about 7-7/8 with one wake up around 4-6. This last week though I was getting tired of constantly getting up with them and came to sleep downstairs while they fussed it out a little bit. It wasn't even that long but I just get so fed up with them crying in my room when I want to be sleeping! Casey of course slept through it in our room. They fussed for probably no longer than 15-20 min each and went back to sleep, it's been great. (Again a week later they still wake up at 5 or so eat once and start their day somewhere between 6:30-7, though every few nights Bryson will sleep through that last feeding!)

They still don't wake each other up at night when crying which I think is amazing. Naps I think they often do. They go to sleep squeezing onto their designated BYU animals (yep, just like Max, we're brainwashing them to love BYU by instilling it in their cribs, literally) Bryson's is a bear and Quinn's is a dog.

Bryson loves his feet and is constantly grabbing onto them and eating them.

Quinn seems to be more of the social butterfly, easily smiling and laughing at anyone and everyone.

Both boys are always trying to take one another's toys and rolling over on each other and hitting and grabbing at each there and making one another cry, it's cute twin stuff.

We're still practicing helping them sit up a lot. They've got the gorilla sitting down and can do real sitting for a short period of time and then fall over. With two it's harder to find time to work with them since often the other is crying when you're doing it!

They're beginning to want to be held  A TON and crying a lot when I'm not holding them. It's hard and tiring. I put them in baby carriers when I can and walk around the house with them.

I think they're also beginning to understand the concept of when I pick up one crying baby it means it's not them and they start getting even more sad, it's adorable.

PS- look at the growth of these boys! I can't believe how much smaller they are than that little bear in the first picture and now they're just so huge you can barely see the bear with them on that rocking chair!

PPS- this is 1001st post! Can you believe that?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!? More on that soon!

Cereal: it's what's for dinner

On a comfortable evening last week we sat outside discussing what to have for dinner. As the idea of cereal was brought up we all just said ok and went with it. When we called over Max from the playground to tell him we were having cereal for breakfast his eyes got HUGE and excited not believing I said we'd be having cereal for dinner. He unbelieving questioned back "eee-re-ul?"and after my confirmation started running to the house happily yelling "cereal!" I felt like the best mom ever. Casey got the marshmallow matey's as a midnight snack for us the previous week but happily suited our 2 year old's excitement for dinner that night. Little to no dishes, happy kids, not stressed mom, a good looking husband to look across at, it was a good evening. Cereal was a great choice that evening. 

And to top off the fun event filled evening (read cereal for dinner), he and Casey ended up reading their night time books on the dresser to switch up things a bit, those silly boys.

Progression of the twin bump.

 Amazing news, I finished our 2014 family photo album! Wahoo! It's been 2 months shy of being done for almost 4 months now so it was high time I got my bum in gear. I made a comparison of my pregnancy pictures in it that I thought would be fun to share here too. Being this huge feels like yesterday even though it was 7(!) months ago, ha. It is something I will never forget. So do enjoy my giganticness and feel free to compare your pregnant self to me and feel way good about yourself ;)

That last month was so hard to find clothing to fit over my stomach. Casey's shirts didn't really fit me anymore except for like 2, and even then I would have liked more room in them. I am so proud of what my body did and still amazed how God created it to do such amazing things. The trust He has in us women!

Click here for the same comparison pictures when I was pregnant with Maxson

And another fun series we did. Slowly but surely my toes seem to disappear! That belly was HUGE!

Max a talkin

A radom gathering of Maxson talking/dancing moments from March and April. No exciting background music. Probably boring for everyone except the parents and grandparents ;)
2015-3and4Mar-Apr Max talking from Kimber Cutler on Vimeo.

The beginning to an end of an era

I'm not meaning to write this as a death post, but it's going to appear to be just like one probably.

Our beloved next door bff's/neighbors/kindred spirits moved away last week. It was pretty crappy. Haha, I laugh because it's so sad all I can do is laugh. Of course most of us here in Lincoln are transient students and we all know that the majority of our friends fit that category too. The Christophersons have just been sooooooo different. Jared reached out to Casey within a couple months of Casey's acceptance into Dental school (think back to Jan/Feb of 2012!). He answered so many of our questions and made us excited to move to Lincoln. It was like we were friends with their family before we even met each other. 

A Landscaping Conference/competition I had for school in the spring of 2012 was just a few hours from Lincoln so Casey drove out to me and we drove up to Lincoln stayed at their apartment (these kind souls we essentially didn't know at all) and they showed us a bunch of potential places to live around the area and brought us to our future ward with them (where everyone asked if Casey and Jared were brothers, no, but the year after Jared's brother did join us all, ha!) They were so unbelievably kind and it just felt like we were long lost friends meeting up. Their daughter, Julie, was around 18 months. I was so surprised at how fun it was to hang out with these total strangers. 

Fast forward to the summer of 2012. I'm pregnant, we're in New Jersey, no doctor, and I end up needing to fly to Lincoln for an OB appointment. Who drives an hour away to Omaha to pick me up, an hour back to Lincoln, drop off and pick me up from my appointment? Yep, Katie. That wonderful woman. Oh man how I am indebted to her forever for this and so many other reasons. I hung out her house, she was one of the first besides Casey to learn we were having a boy and was excited right along side me to see the pictures. She found joy in my joy and was I so immediately touched. She too was pregnant, less tun 4 weeks behind me and I remember it being SOOO fun to finally talk about pregnancy with someone! She made it all seem so real and fun and exciting. Oh yeah, and she had awful morning/daytime sickness with pregnancy and was still being oh so kind to me.

Fast forward a couple more months and we happened to move in right next door to them, I couldn't have been happier.

Over the next 3 years we spent, seriously, hundreds of hours together. We had Sunday dinners together for almost a whole year. We were always both pregnant together, then nursing together, chasing crawlers, walkers, and runners together. We had crying babies, naughty toddlers, and hilarious kids to laugh at. Misery loves company and boy did we ever talk about our motherhood misery (and triumphs!) together constantly, and talking about the bad with one another made it all kind of better. We'd knock on each other's doors for no other reason than to just hang out, constantly going back and forth between houses without any shoes. She was my first non family visitor in the NICU, We planned an insane amount of parties/get togethers in out backyard area together and would always help one another out with them. We sat outside watching kids play (and in my case yelling to come back), and talked about everything under the sun, you name it. We were constantly checking up on one another's activities, how this or that went, happy with each other in our highs and sad with each other in our lows.

We became those kind of friends that there's never an awkward silence together because it just wasn't. Each other's messy houses became not embarrassing to either of us because we just get it, it was like family, but even more than family (funny story, when Jared's brother moved in across the street after our first year here Casey was so worried we were being replaced by real family, ha. Luckily we were all great friends).

On the day they moved I kind of just emotionally detached myself from it all. I didn't want to be sad. It was kind of just a moving event that was happening I was just apart of it like everyone else. Not until I had to dang hug that girl goodbye was it truly awful. I was just oh so so so sad to have to say goodbye. Goodbye to what it's been like for 3 years. She'll never be next door again and that made me want to cry. Actually it did make me cry.

If there were such thing as sister wives, Katie would most certainly be my pick for a sister wife, ha.

I'm talking about my side of the story but Casey and Jared were bff's too. From dental school, video games (ugh), remote controls cars, politics, guns, and church. They were the perfect match of husbands for our perfect match of wives.

And then our kids. Well of course kids are always friends with everyone but these girls were such great playmates for Max. Julie was a great pseudo sister to Maxson. He love love loved following her around, wrestling, sharing toys, copying, he just loved her to the end. Always asking for "Jew-ee!" Grace and Max are less than 1 month apart in age and did everything together, crawling, walking, talking (ok Grace learned to talk like a year before Max but that's not the point, ha). They were such great playmates although disagreeing the same amount of time. Max's deep grunt/scream was the perfect opposite to Gracie's high pitched scream. Max loved her oh so much and would constantly go up to hug her while she would scream and push him away and then he would push her back and his hug quickly turned into a pushing fest with Grace running away crying,, it made us all laugh. And then little Allie, Max would always go up to give a tender hug and a kiss on her head, always. He just loved that baby girl with such a sweet heart. 

Like I said this was not meant to be a death post but in some ways it just is. Our beloved friends have moved on and it is sad. We will most undoubtedly see them for the rest of our years of life but it will never be the same, it will never be next door to each other. It was the absolute BEST and I couldn't have wished for better next door neighbors.

We love your stinking guts Christophersons!!!!!!!!!!!!! We hope you fail and have to come back to school for another year ;) 

Moving day was sad :( Even Gracie agreed

A delicious graduation

2 Super duper great friends in our ward graduated from Dental school last week and are/will be off to Wyoming to go be real practicing dentists! Crazy talk. We were finally in town for a graduation party bbq and it was so wonderful to be around so many friends. A family who graduated last year was even there t celebrate with us all which made it even better. Man we sure did win the jackpot when it comes to friends here in Nebrasksa!

Max looks awful in this picture but it's the only family one we got.

Casey is especially sad since these two guys are essentially his bff's. They're the graduating ones

ANNNNNND, remember this pregnant picture with friends we took at my baby shower last year?

Here we all are with our cute babies!!!!!! Fun, right?

Congratulations Christopherson and George families, we will miss you oh so dearly! Luckily we'll all live in the practically uninhabited state of Wyoming together someday so we'll for sure see each other even if we live hours away, chuckle chuckle.