good intentions: Happy half-birthday!

6 months ago I was a lot more physically uncomfortable than I am now, sat on our deck on a squishy beanbag chair, sipping a glass of red as the sun (YES! the sun!!) goes down, hearing the soft thwack of tennis balls from the club down the road. Our two littlest girls had made their entrance to the world, and I had just had a shower and been wheeled upstairs with them to our single room on the maternity ward, where I was to experience my first night as a mother of twins.

We've been having technical difficulties with lefthandedmonkey.com, in that Apple have decommissioned the Mobile Me platform we were using to publish on. So until we can get our arses in gear and export all the content and thousands of photos we'd got on that site to a new one, my trusty old blog will have to do to mark the half birthday of Martha and Tamsyn.

Progress over the last few months, then. Since last posting, they have come on amazingly, though in some areas not as fast as their big sister Gemma. Martha has been rolling for about a month now - mostly from back to tummy, where she'll pop her little head up and look around for applause, give a cheeky smile and then stay like that until she does a face plant and starts getting distressed. A recent development is the pushing of the legs and scrabbling of the arms - possibly a pre-cursor to crawling? Tamsyn is a lazy bugger and swings her legs around a bit, arches her back a little, but ultimately is content to lie around on her back unless one of us moves her to tummy. Then she'll tolerate it for a while before getting annoyed. She absolutely adores the Jumperoo though!

At 4.5-5 months we had a bit of sleep regression - they were only waking up once a night for a feed but then regressed to twice or even three times. Not great. Since weaning though they have gone back to once a night, thank goodness, and it can be pretty late on, hooray! Daytime naps are down to 2 or 3 - once after breakfast (either in the car or at home); maybe one other one before lunch; and one after lunch. After 4pm they will rarely nap unless a 20min one in the car when I pick Gemma up from nursery. They are still going down really well at night, almost always asleep by 7.30pm.

Solids have gone down pretty well - after a week or so of tongue thrusting and face-screwing, Tamsyn has become a baby-hoover and will scoff pretty much anything on a spoon. She's also doing pretty well at sipping water from a cup. Martha has had a few blips, but technique is coming on, she eats fairly well (though not as much as her sister) and can also sip from a cup. They're on fruit, veg, porridge etc though the introduction of a weetabix the other day went down *very* well (Tamsyn was panting eagerly between each mouthful) and they can also tolerate fromage frais, yogurt etc. A big relief as Gemma was dairy intolerant until 12 months which involved a lot of faffing about with soy products.

A few weeks ago Martha was poorly, a very high temperature for 3 days that wasn't being brought down by Calpol, GP couldn't find any obvious cause, and after the temperature went away we had reflux for a few days - so she has built back up to solids again gradually. However she seems to enjoy it and I'll be introducing a bit of protein soon and maybe some finger foods. They will both gum on a bit of broccoli or melon held in their mouths but seem to have no idea what to do when you give them a bit of food to hold. Gemma was 6 months when I started weaning her though so a bit older than the twins, so I'm taking it all a bit more slowly.

Both have a large variety of sounds now. Tamsyn has recently started waking in the night to have a chat. All very sweet, and I don't need to get out of bed, but she is bloomin' LOUD on the monitor... Size-wise Martha is still petite, Tamsyn comparatively a bruiser, although still only as big as Gemma was at the same age. They wear a mix of 3-6m and 6-9m clothes. Until weaning they were tracking their centiles on breastfeeding alone, something I am really pleased about. I think Tamsyn may have surged ahead recently though given the amount of food she's ingesting... They are now in the pushchair bit of the buggy which they seem to enjoy, and they don't even look too tiny in it. I am no longer a celebrity in Wantage for the car-seat/buggy contraption I was wheeling about, just a normal double buggy now!

Swimming has been a bit mixed. Martha has mostly enjoyed it, whereas Tamsyn screamed all the way through most of the classes until the very last one of term where she had an about turn and was as chilled as you like. We're booked into the next term so fingers crossed.

I'm still breastfeeding them both, and they haven't had a bottle for a long time now. Initial attempts to get water down them at mealtimes in a bottle have failed miserably so it looks like it is just me and my boobs for milk supply for now - but I do want to get them to take a bottle again soonish so I have the option to have a half day off at some point. It's coming to something when mowing the lawn on a Sunday afternoon is classed as 'me-time' eh...?

What else. Well, they are both GORGEOUS :)