11 Months Old- October 2011

At 11 months old Hannah and Owen try to get into everything.  They make their daily rounds to their favorite places in our house.  They still like crawling behind the couch and now play peek a boo with the curtains.  They have pulled up on the window ledges to play with the blinds.  If you ever drive by and think our blinds look ridiculous half pulled up you will know why.  They try so hard to get into the cabinets and pull and rattle the locked doors and drawers.   They are smart enough to know they open, but they can't figure out how to get them to open.  I'm really glad we chose to use the magnetic locks to keep the doors closed!  One of their favorite things to do right now is crawl under and through the kitchen and dining room chairs.  Usually they are very skilled and getting over the braces in the chairs, but they occasionally get stuck and start crying for help.  Both Hannah and Owen find pulling up to stand a piece of cake now.  It is funny to think back on how just several weeks ago it was such hard work for them to grab on and push/pull themselves up and now they really just hold on for balance.  They both have also become pretty quick at cruising around while holding onto furniture, toys, or their cribs.  Owen has even taken to pushing their crawl through gym and the kitchen chairs across the floor while he walks behind them.  I'm waiting everyday for those first steps and for them to stand alone. 

 Hannah loves to be pulled around the house on this beach towel.  It makes her laugh and laugh.  This was a rare event to capture Owen on it too because most of the time he rolls/crawls off as soon as you get started.  Hannah continues to be our thrill seeker!

 This is one of Hannah's favorite faces lately! 

It cracks me up.

 As you can see Owen continues to ham it up all the time.  It is not unusual to hear him laughing and carrying on all by himself in the kitchen, hallway, or in his room even though he has no audience.  We love his silly personality!

 Owen and Hannah got new toys-musical instruments from Nana.  They love them!

Our little drummer boy...

 Owen loves anything he can bang and he love to make as much noise as possible.

Hannah and Owen took their first bath together this month.  With Chris being out of town so much I've been doing most of the bathing by myself so I would put one in the tub and have one play on the bathroom floor or in their highchair in the bathroom while I bathed the one in the tub.  I don't trust myself to grab onto 2 wet and wiggly babies should they both decide to take a tumble at the same time.  But Chris has been coming home earlier and so we've had the chance to bathe them together.  It saves us time and it's fun to watch them play in the tub.  Hannah LOVES taking a bath and she cries when we take her out.  I think she could play in the water for hours.  She quietly sits and plays with her toys and splashes around.  Owen enjoys it too, but tries to stand, crawl, and move around and after about 10 minutes he is ready to get out and move onto to something else.

We started Hannah and Owen on regular milk this month.  I never knew how complicated it would seem to figure out how to feed a baby.  I feel like this is something that has stressed me out the most in the past year.  I have constantly been worried about whether they were eating enough or too much and now that we are weaning off bottles and formula and moving to table food I find myself struggling again to figure out what to feed them and how to switch from formula to milk.  Luckily they both took their first cup of milk with ease.  They didn't even act like they could tell a difference.  So right now they are getting milk with breakfast and dinner and they are still getting formula in their bottles, but I'm thinking of starting to cut back on the number of bottles they get each day.  Each night as we cuddle up and I feed them their bottle I'm a little sad that in the next few weeks that stage of their life will be over.  I'm trying to enjoy  every minute of them laying in my arms to drink their bottle that I can because I know they are numbered.  Hannah has become more interested in table food over the past few weeks.  She eats a lot of fruit now on her own and she enjoys pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches.  She isn't doing too well with feeding herself vegetables despite the fact that she loved all the jarred food vegetables we fed her.  I just keep putting it on her tray in hopes that she will eventually decided to eat it.  Owen continues to eat anything you put on his tray.  He loves grilled cheese, veggie pasta, and broccoli and cauliflower.  He has also started eating blueberry waffles for breakfast and cinnamon raisin bagels too.  Both love to eat graham crackers after their dinner.