More Pictures-Crawling,Racing Each Other,Visiting with Great Granny Martin

And they're off...racing each other! Emma and Henry have made it to the wonderful crawling stage of their development and are moving right along. They are both moving forward now and racing each other to get to various places or people. Henry was a bit more hesitant about the whole crawling and sitting up on his own at first, but now even more than before we can't get him to stop moving. He's always wiggling his toes or something-always moving. And he claps for himself when he sits up on his own-got that from mom and dad. We encouraged him to sit up by clapping for him and did the same to get him to crawl forward instead of backwards. Emma is covering all the territory she can get her hands and knees on. As long as it is a level floor she'll go from one room to the next. They have been scrambling for toys-racing each other to their favorites and them playing tug-of-war until someone gives up for whatever toy or stuffed animal is their favorite at the time. We've begun the process of teaching them to share and play gentley with each other and others. Both have discovered that they can touch each other-pull hair,ears,cheeks,clothes,etc. as well as mom and dad's. We have two very strong little people!
They have started eating homemade babyfood now. Granny Henriksen and Nana Martin helped out Mama on that one. I asked for lots of advice and am really glad we decided to go this route. The kids seem to like the idea and are eating well. We had our first official "go" on big people food on Thanksgiving. Henry and Emma both enjoyed ham, turkey, sweet potatoes, dressing/stuffing, butternut squash, and I'm sure some pie got snuck in somehow. Since then we've been cooking extra veggies and meat and just blending them up and adding a little spice to it and they gobble it down! In the pictures that I just posted you'll see our visit to the nursing home to visit with my grandmother- Granny Martin(the kids great grandmmother) and my aunt-Linda Dillingham who was visiting at the same time. We had a short visit-they were about to serve dinner there and the kids were pretty tired. We try to go over and visit as often as we can. Her nursing home is about 5 minutes away from our place. She loves seeing the kids and I think they like seeing her too.
Well that's about all for now. We've got our second and third appointment with Tracey our caseworker from the county on the 1st and the 5th. We are still in the process of evaluating the kids to see if they will need speech therapy and the next few visits are just another step in the process of determining that. And then the kids have their 9 month doctor's appointment on the 6th. Thankfully there will be no shots this visit! It's just a visit for "pleasure" as their pediatrician put it. We'll keep you posted. Take care.

Teeth,Teeth, and More Teeth!

Just a quick little note for all of our Henry and Emma fans-Henry has cut his second tooth! So now both kiddos have two teeth and more are quickly coming. It has made it a little hard to keep them happy. We try to keep them busy to keep their minds off their sore gummies. Mama and Dada have resorted to dancing, singing, making funny faces, making funny sounds, etc. to keep them preoccupied. And it seems to be working. It has caused us to do some adjusting when it comes to nap time. For the past week they have been chatting up a storm during both nap times. It's been hard at dinner time to keep them focused on eating because they are so tired, but we've managed. Hopefully what we've heard and read is true about cutting teeth. The first couple are the worst and then it's smooth sailing from there. Please, please,please let it be true! Most days they are happy as can be and then other days I think all three of us(Henry, Emma, and Mama) have ended up crying at the same time. Somehow we make it through with lots of hugs and kisses along the way. I never thought I could hug and kiss on two little people so much, but they are just so sweet! As for the crawling-well Miss Emma is moving around quite nicely. We haven't had to put up the gates yet, but I'm sure it won't be long. Mr.Henry is still moving backwards, but has tried crawling forwards a little more everyday and has been working on sitting himself back up instead of asking Mama or Dada for help. I am not including any pictures this time. We've been a bit busy lately. We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year so we've been busy getting things (cleaning, hanging more pictures, etc) done. And I haven't had much of a chance or even thought about taking any pictures of the kids. But I promise to have lots of pictures posted next time. Hopefully I'll be able to get a few shots of some pearly whites for everyone to see! More soon. Hope everyone has a lovely Thanksgiving!

Henry and Nana(Jenny's mom) hanging out in the nursery. We worked fast on this one and actually caught him smiling this time! 

Emma was having a crazy hair day when I shot this one. We tried to brush it down, but it just wanted to stick straight up that day. So for once she and Henry looked a lot alike hairwise that is! 

November News

Well it seems that Henry has caught up with Emma in the sprouting teeth department. Henry cut his first tooth on Tuesday, November 10th much to Mom and Dad's surprise! Poor little guy-he has been working on that one tooth for months now! So we are really having fun with the whole teething thing. Emma has cut her second tooth now. We've tried to get pictures of the famous first tooth, but she likes to hide it! The one thing she has discovered is that she can make all kinds of new sounds and we think she's trying to say more, but we still haven't figured out what! Henry is also trying to make new sounds too. He likes to copy Mom and Dad. And I think he's trying to ask for kisses now too. The other "new" thing for him to do is blow rasberries. Well it's not exactly a new thing-he did it before, but now he does it with food in his mouth!Fun, fun, fun for Mom-not! It's been frustrating trying to be patient and remember that he doesn't know any better. So depending on the damage we (Henry and Mommy) go through a couple of outfits everyday. I've started to drape myself with a towell when I feed them! They both get a kick out of seeing Mommy in a "bib". The other new development is that Emma is now crawling!She's getting better and better at it everyday. She's starting to figure out that she can go places faster when she crawls instead of rolling or scooting. Henry is getting close, but still hasn't managed to move forward yet. He's still trying to get the hang of sitting himself up on his own. Both of them can crawl backwards and can move pretty fast doing it that way believe it or not. So it's off to Walmart to get childproofing materials.I've already moved almost everything that we can think of out of their reach, but I'm sure we'll discover that we missed something! On another note-we are having the kids evaluated for a program provided by the county for child development. It focuses on speech, social interaction, certain behaviors, etc. Sometimes twins tend to have issues with speech-so we're trying to get a head start if they do discover that either of the kids needs help. We'll let you know what we find out. More pictures are on the way too.

Henry was chatting with Granny, Mama, and Daddy when we got this shot. He loves the camera, but it's hard to get him to smile even with us making crazy faces behind the camera! He was saying something, but I can't remember what! 

Henry as a little pumpkin and Granny. He was tired and we had a hard time getting him to smile, but I think he looked pretty cute in this shot! He managed to keep his hat on the entire time-he's not one for hats!

 

Emma discovering that she has a tail! It was so cute. We didn't know that her costume included a tail until I opened up the package to run them throught the wash. Luckily she didn't get too excited about having a tail-otherwise we would have been up all night trying to get her to sleep! 

Happy Halloween!

Granny(Jason's mom) came down from Washington state for a visit at the end of October. She bought the kids Halloween costumes/sleepers. Emma was a black kitty cat which even included a tail! They were so cute! No trick or treating this year-the kids are too little and it was past bedtime. Maybe next year. 

Four generations of family-Mammaw Christie(right), Granny(left) Henriksen, Jason-Daddy Henriksen(middle), Emma(black kitty cat hat) Henriksen, and Henry(orange pumpkin hat) Henriksen. We had family in for a visit at the end of October which included Jason's mom(Granny) and his grandmother (Mammaw)-featured in this shot. We had a great time!