Just one month away from the milestone first birthday, here’s a round-up of R and G’s progress over the last month:

1. Food & drink. We’re almost a mush-free household. The girls’ eating has improved dramatically since they started getting teeth and they love anything they can have a good chew on. They now eat a ‘proper’ breakfast of weetabix or cornflakes with cows milk followed by toast with butter. Lunch tends to be something hot e.g. shepherds pie, lasagne, roast dinner or mash and veg followed by a yogurt (or three if you’re G). Tea usually consists of finger foods – sandwiches, pizzas, crumpets, crackers and cheese or similar followed by a fruit pot. Each meal is followed with water from their sippy cups. We keep a stock of the ONE jar food they will eat – actually a tinned concoction of beans, tomato and bacon, which we use when we’re out and about. They have also tried lots of ‘naughty’ foods in the last month: little slivers of Milkybar reduced R to a quivering mass of excitement and G loves milk chocolate. They have also tried crisps, but only a couple at a time. They have a 6oz bottle in the morning (7am) and evening before bedtime (6.30pm-ish) and I dropped the 3pm 4oz bottle three weeks ago. We’ve replaced it with water and a snack – rusk, rice cake or one of the Organix finger foods - as we did with the 11am bottle and they haven’t even noticed the change. In fact, R rarely drinks more than half (3oz) of the evening bottle. I was quite concerned about this but they are getting plenty of other dairy foods and I can’t exactly force it down them if they don’t want it.

2. Teeth. After a slow start, G is cutting her fifth tooth. Oddly, she decided to get her two ‘fangs’ before her top front teeth so rather appropriately for Halloween she looked like a little vampire! R only has two teeth but I think she is just about to cut a fang.

3. Weight. They are both around the 20lb mark, so we have moved them into their bigger car seats. We only installed them on Sunday so the girls are still getting used to being forward-facing and therefore able to see everything. G barely blinks as she gawps out of the window with her mouth open. She reminds me of a dog, tongue out, trying to get some fresh air whilst trapped in a hot car in summer, or Dougal from Father Ted! R has found the change a little harder to adjust to. The new seats are more upright than the baby seats so she’s been finding it difficult to snooze. Plus, they are strapped in so tightly that it’s hard for them to pull their socks off, which was R’s favourite game in the old seats. I’m really pleased that they have tripled their birthweight in less than a year.

4. Crawling. G was a couple of weeks behind R in crawling but she has now caught up and they race around at home and nursery, grabbing toys and whatever they can find on the floor. They like trying to get into the oddest places (the old fireplace, for example) and were absolutely fascinated by a pile of papers under the desk, which R would pull out, hand to G and she would wave them around! Dh thought he had foxed them by putting the papers into a box but they simply reach up, grab the papers near the top of the box and wave those around instead. We now have to have eyes everywhere to make sure they aren't getting into mischief!

5. Chatting. They both make Mama and Dada sounds now. They recognise dh and I when we show them photographs of us and point and laugh at the images. G sometimes says Da when she sees a photo of dh. They both say Yeah, in a direct imitation of the way I speak. G points at her tummy when we say ‘belly belly belly’ to her. They still babble and chatter away to each other. They also squeal like drunken girlies at each other when the mood takes them!

6. Toys. My sister ‘donated’ her old Duplo (she didn’t mind, she’s nearly 25) to the girls and they absolutely love it. Although they aren’t yet able to put blocks together, they are adept at pulling them apart, thus destroying dh’s ‘creations’!

7. There haven’t been any other huge developmental milestones this month, just little bits and pieces. G has caught up with R and can now sit herself up in her cot – and pulles herself into a kneeling position – and she can also do a one-handed wave.

8. Illness. Yep, the ‘I’ word reared its ugly head again this month. They both had a viral rash which resulted in another call from nursery, a trip to A & E and a fun afternoon trying to persuade R to wee in a tiny plastic pot to make sure she didn’t have a kidney problem. A couple of hours, an angry naked baby, a small wee sample and a wet lap for dh later, the results were thankfully fine.

9. Tantrums. I thought we had a few months to go before I had to talk about this but very occasionally R gets a bee in her bonnet about something and has a small, short-lived but rather vocal meltdown. For example, she absolutely lost it with her keyworker at nursery last week when she wouldn’t let her eat a biscuit she found on the floor. G has wobblers but is easily distracted out of them. R is utterly focused on her tantrum and you just have to let her get on with it and work it out of her system. Thankfully they are few and far between at the moment but I may mention this more over the next few months.

10. Sleepover. The girls’ were superbly well-behaved when we stayed overnight with our friends’ with the boy-twins and only woke earlier than usual because it coincided with the clocks changing.

11. Lunching. It’s been a busy month for us, going out to visit people and having people round for lunch. R and G still love meeting new people and haven’t really gone though the shyness or terror of strangers stage yet. They are very sociable little creatures, as long as they’ve been fed and are given lots of attention!
After all of the dram
atic developments last month, the last few weeks have been characterised by crawling, the growing of teeth and consolidation of all their new skills. They aren’t showing any signs of wanting to walk yet but they like standing up and G can do so for a couple of seconds unaided. They are much more like toddlers now than babies.

This time next month I’ll be writing my (potentially) cathartic one year post, reflecting back on our time so far with R and G. I have to confess, I get a little wobbly just thinking about it. Not because I want to go back to when they were tiny, more out of relief that we’ve survived largely intact....