And the winner is...

Elli!!  She is officially our worst sleeper.  What a title, right?  Alivia slept though the night at 3 months.  Adalyn at 7 1/2 months.  And here we sit at over 7 1/2 months and she hasn't done it yet.  In fact, she's not even close.  She was an awful sleeper in utero.  Pretty much twenty four hours a day, she was making some type of movement.  It got to the point where I wondered if she kicked and punched in her sleep!!  It seriously never stopped.

However, I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.  You see, she was actually a fairly good sleeper for the first 3 months.  She would often pull off a good five hour stretch at times (she generally can't even do a three hour stretch anymore).  It all changed when she started noticing the world around her more.  She became too curious.  And that right there is our problem.  She's too stinking nosey to eat during the day!!  When she's home, she's too busy watching her big sisters.  And when she's at daycare, I don't know exactly what the problem is, but it's not unheard of for her to only take 4oz (average is 6-8oz) the entire ten hours I'm away from her!  So then she has to tank up at night to make up for not eating much during the day.

The other problem is that the poor girl has had a cold for at least 3 months, but I think it might now be closer to 4 months.  She has such a hard time breathing when she's laying down and when she coughs, she startles herself awake.  Despite being sick all the time and not getting nearly enough sleep for a baby her age, she sure is a happy little girl!  It's almost scary to think about how happy this child would be if she was healthy and getting 10 hours of sleep at night!!

Our Easter

Here are a few pictures from Easter.  I can't even begin to describe how bummed I am that we still don't have a really good family picture.  We have a few decent ones, but none that I absolutely adore.  Anyway, Elli was the only one who really cooperated.  Those gosh darn 2 1/2 year olds...they really have minds of of their own and if they're not going to cooperate, they're not going to cooperate!!

Even with a cold she didn't mind posing!

Think we could get them to sit next to each other? Of course not!

What a ham.

This was the easiest picture all day.

And maybe this one too.

Well, at least we can see that Elli's bald spot is growing in nicely!!

This is about as good as it gets.

Oh, and if you're wondering why Livi got short-changed and doesn't have an individual picture of herself to include...she was the least cooperative out of all of them.  She sure is a strong-willed little girl at times!!

Okay, here.  Here are a couple I scrounged up of all 3 together wearing their dresses.  It wasn't Easter, but they were trying them on.  And grandma and grandpa J helped Nate get a few quick pictures!!

Counting

I'm so proud of Livi.  Her speech has taken off in the past few months!  She used to just defer to Addi and let her do all the talking for both of them, but she's definitely realized now that she has an opinion too!  In fact, just a few months ago, she wouldn't even make an attempt to repeat anything we said...and now she's a little parrot! 

Anyway, she's recently developed an interest in counting.  She will count blocks, flashcards, objects in books, etc.  I've heard her count as high as thirteen so far.  She knows other numbers as well, I just haven't ever heard them in numerical order.  But what absolutely blew us away the other day is that she can also count in Spanish!  Over the weekend, Aunt Chelsea was babysitting all three while Nate and I went out for a couple hours.  When we returned, she asked us if we knew that Livi could count in Spanish...."uhhh, no?"  Well sure enough, she counted up to six for us!  And just a couple days ago, she actually counted up to eight.  So she can get up to 13 in English and 8 in Spanish.  I'm pretty impressed.

She has really blossomed with her speech.  And I am so very proud of her.  Just a few months ago, I was concerned because she was only saying maybe 15-20 words total. And Dr K kept reassuring us that twins tend to talk later.  But of course I worried anyway!  And now here we are, she can clearly say words such as "delicious" and "octopus."  Needless to say, I'm not concerned anymore!!

Spring is slowly approaching

Mother Nature keeps teasing us.  Just last weekend we had all three girls outside in the backyard - the big girls were in shorts and t-shirts and Elli was wearing a onesie.  And now this weekend, it's been snowing!!  However, Elli sure enjoyed her first experience in the grass.  I remember the big girls being less than thrilled about the prickly green stuff on their bare legs.  But Elli is proving again and again that she's quite different from her sisters!!  Her eating habits, her size, her preferences...she's definitely not like them!

My Dancing Queen

Here's a video flashback.  I was looking through some old videos and this one made me smile.  It was in Feb 2010, so the girls were 16 months old.  Livi was our little dancer, but Addi never really took to it.  I love how she's so proud  of herself and claps before the song is even over!!

Quick medical update

Addi's ear tube surgery was a success!!  One of the hardest parts about the day was not letting her eat anything after midnight or drink anything after 4am.  I was hoping that she wouldn't wake up too early in the morning otherwise she would've been begging for breakfast or for a snack, which would've forced me to put her in the car and drive around town until we could check in!

Anyway, we checked in at 7:45am.  We met with a couple nurses, the anesthesiologist and the doc.  She was finally taken back to surgery at 9:12am and I was able to see her again at 9:27am!! Talk about quick!  She was very, very sad coming out of anesthesia.  But that's pretty common...it's a pretty disorienting experience.  The doc said the procedure was flawless.  He sucked a lot of very thick fluid out from behind her eardrums, so she's on some antibiotic drops for the next couple of days to make sure that the thick fluid doesn't clog the brand new tubes.  We'll have her post-op visit in 2 weeks.  Hope it's all good news!!

And then yesterday, both of the girls had their 2 1/2 year check up.  I learned my lesson from their 2 year appointment and I took them at separate times!!  Six months ago, it was an awful experience.  If one cried, the other cried.  And Elli was along (she was just a wee little 1 month old then), so she cried too.  Ummm, mom and dad ran out of arms to hold crying children!!  The nurse had to jump in to rescue Elli.  But yeah, I took the girls at different times to avoid them feeding in to each other and it also provided some good one on one time with mom!!

Both of the girls are 37 inches tall (90th percentile).  Addi weighed 28lbs 10oz (50th percentile) and Livi weighed 29lbs 9oz (60th percentile).  I find that to be rather interesting for a couple of reasons.  One, Livi feels much heavier when you pick her up.  I would've guessed there would be about a 3 pound difference.  Though I have that thought at every single appointment and she's never even been 1 1/2 pounds bigger!!  The biggest difference between them was actually at their 2 year check and it was only 1#4oz.  Aaaanyway, I expected Livi to weigh much more than Addi, but she didn't.  She never does.  Apparently 15 ounces can be deceiving.  Which is the other thing that's kind of interesting...15 ounces is what separated them at birth!  Awww.

Per Dr K, they're "perfect."  Which became the new word of the day as I was leaving the clinic with both of them.  We walked hand in hand as they each proclaimed "perfect!" all the way to the car.  Which is also rather interesting since they weren't together for this appointment, yet they both picked up on that word and decided to announce it over and over and over!  I guess they really ARE twins!!

Just pictures

I'm feeling lazy, so here are some pictures of the big girls taken just the other morning.  I need to do some more picture taking.  With the sickness that ran through the house, there was a full two weeks where I didn't take a single picture!!

I wonder what she's thinking.

All done with breakfast.

Addi looks scared.  And Livi is simply not interested.

As per usual, they didn't want to cooperate.

Oh heck, I couldn't leave out Elli.  Here are a couple recent pictures of her as well.

 So many toys to choose from!

Such a happy girl.