So Big

The twins are getting so big.  I can't believe how quickly time has gone by.  This sounds so cliche but it really does seem like it was just yesterday when they came home from hospital.

Christopher is soooooo close to crawling.  He is getting up on his knees and rocking back and forth.  I know it will only be a matter of days or weeks before he gets it figured out.   I'm so proud of him.  Physically, the twins are 8 months old but because they were born 2 months early, they are supposed to "follow" the adjusted age of 6 months for development.  So far, he has done everything early.  He got his 2 bottom teeth 2 months ago, started sitting unassisted about 6 weeks ago and now he's almost crawling. 

Kendall is also doing really well.  She started sitting unassisted first and her extensive vocabulary now consists of Da Da, Ma Ma and a few Ba Ba's are sprinkled in.  She still hasn't rolled over but the doc told me not to worry - some kids just don't.  She thought Kendall would skip that whole step and go straight into crawling from the sitting position.  Since Kendall just went to the doctor, I have her weight and height but not Christopher's.  She weighed 19 lbs and is 28 inches tall.  She is charting in the 50-75% of the 8-month scale so she has officially caught up to kids her own age!  I know Christopher is a little smaller but not by much.

They started solids about 2 months ago and they are both pretty good eaters.  We were doing cereal mixed with fruit/veggies in the morning and then again in the evening but they both seemed like they were starving all of the time, so we've added in a third meal of plain fruit or veggies in the afternoon.  They both average about 25-30 ounces of formula per day on top of that.

Kendall continues to be a good sleeper and averages about 10 hours/night.  We had a rough 6 weeks with Christopher - he started waking up in the middle of the night again.  He would take a bottle and go right back to sleep so it was obvious he was hungry.  That was one of the reasons we added in that third meal during the day.  Since we did that,  he's been better.  He has woken up twice in the last 2 weeks but for the most part, he is sleeping through the night again.  We have a pretty strict night time routine and I think that helps.  Bottle at 5:00 pm.  Dinner (cereal w/ fruit or veggie) at 6:30 pm.  Bedtime bottle at 7:30 and in bed by 8:00 pm. 

I did have an obsessive first-time mom moment last week.  You might remember that Kendall developed a blood clot in her leg back in November during the meningitis scare.  I was keeping an eye on her right leg for awhile afterwards and then as time went by and she got healthy again, I just sort of stopped looking.

Last Saturday, she was in her exersaucer and I looked over and her right leg caught my eye.  To me, it was clearly bigger than her left.  Her right thigh was always a little bigger after the blood clot but this time, her whole leg looked fatter to me.  Not swollen.  Just chubbier.

It didn't seem to bother her at all and it wasn't discolored and the circulation seemed to be fine.  It was just chubbier.  I watched it for 2 days and it just wasn't sitting right with me so I made an appointment.  Of course, in the meantime, I consulted Dr. Google and managed to scare the ba-jeebus out of myself.

I came across something called hemihypertrophy which is a condition where one side of the body grows faster than the other side.  It can be the entire side of the body or isolated to one limb, like a leg.  It can also result in the affected limb being shorter or longer than the other, resulting in the need for orthopedic shoes or braces.  But, that wasn't even the worst part of it.  It also said that affected kids are at a higher risk of kidney cancer and it recommended ultrasounds every 3 months until the child's 5th birthday.  OMG, cancer?!

I had myself worked up into such a frenzy that I was sure she had it.  To make a long story short, the pediatrician dismissed my theory fairly quickly and thinks that she just has one leg chubbier than the other.   It's not obviously noticeable and if you were to look at her, you probably wouldn't even see it.  But, once you see it, it's all you see.  If that makes sense.  I did have them measure her thighs and there was a 2 cm difference.  We agreed to watch it.  The kids have their 9-month check up in a few weeks and I'll ask them to measure again to see if there's any change.

Obviously, I'm glad I took her.  Even though it turned out to be (what appears to be) nothing,  I will always err on the side of caution with these kids.  As any mother would.  Because of Kendall's history, I'm probably a little more protective of her.

Well, I think I've gotten you guys caught up now.  I am still reading all of you even if I haven't been that good at posting comments.