The Martin Girls: 9 Months!

The girls turned 9 months old this week! We still have our moments of "what the heck has our life come to?!!" BUT... more often, we feel so blessed and happy with our situation. It was such a big adjustment... going from just the two of us... working, sleeping in on Saturdays, doing whatever we want whenever we want, to a one income family with 3 infants! It's difficult to go anywhere, and when we do it's a short stay and we have to bring a million things! Needless to say, we stay home most of the time and only venture out for church and Dr's appointments, but we have the occasional dinner outing when we're feeling brave. We took the girls out to a Pryor restaurant last weekend, with my mom and Matt's parents. It went AMAZINGLY well. The girls sat in high chairs, ate their puffs and played with toys while we ate. Not one of them cried! We, of course, got a lot of attention anyway, but I was very proud of the girls. Matt says they were like that because they were in awe of everything going on around them... maybe... but, I like to think it is because they're such good babies! :)

I'm really loving this stage... I love to watch the babies play... they're so busy all the time. One of my favorite things is how they lift up their arms to be picked up and now that they're more mobile, they try to crawl to me when they're crying or when they get hurt. It's SOOOO cute to see a little baby crawling to you to get cuddled. Very endearing. Another cute thing: they're starting to really look at what Matt and I are eating/drinking. We drink fruit smoothies sometimes for dessert, and the girls LOVE to drink them up thru a straw. They can't get enough! It's a habit we're beginning to wish we hadn't started! :)

Izzy is now babbling consonant sounds like: momomom, dadadad, and rarara. It is so fun to listen to her talking as she's playing and crawling around. She is the cutest little booger in the world! She still pulls up on EVERYTHING and is starting to get a little more graceful with her falling... thank goodness! Her meemaw was contemplating buying her a helmet for a little while there! She's starting to favor her daddy a little more... the past few months, she really just wanted me, but now when Matt gets home from work, she's crawling up on him all night. She's still a little explorer and when she sees an open door, she makes a beeline for her freedom. We're really needing to start baby proofing outlets, etc... the other day I turned my head for a second and she got on top of Abby and rode her like a horse! Needless to say, Izzy keeps me busy.

Abby is still sitting up and army crawling. She was trying very hard to pull herself up the other day... but it looked more like she was doing pull ups... peaking her head over and hanging by her arms. She's loving to get under things... I keep finding her under the play car or bouncer. She's waving a lot, but still not really associating it with "hi" or "bye". She failed her hearing test at the Dr. last month, but we found she had a double ear infection, so we attributed it to that. She got retested this week, and failed again, so they referred me to an audiologist at the local health dept. She failed there too, which got me a little worried. I'm certain she can hear... she turns her head when I say her name and wakes up when I walk in the room, etc, but we are being referred to a pediatric ear nose and throat dr. to investigate further. We believe she's harboring fluid in her ears, which is attributing to the failed tests. This is what we're praying anyway...we'll keep you posted on that.

Ally has definitely made the most progress since the last post. She progressed really quickly... going from only sitting up, to crawling efficiently and pulling up to a stand within a two week period! She's pulling up on everything (like Izzy) and is now very active! I'm finding she bruises much easier than Izzy and has little bruises all over her little head from minor bumps and falls. Poor little bruiser. The other babies still just have two bottom teeth, but Ally is now getting one top tooth also. She's also getting in the habit of throwing temper tantrums... obviously crying because she's angry with her situation. She kicks her legs and bucks her back, which REALLY tries my patience! Do I say that about Ally everytime I write?! :) Mom says she looks and acts just like I did when I was a baby, so maybe it's because we're so much alike that it frustrates me so much... Although she can be ornery, she can be the sweetest little thing too... she still LOVES to cuddle and she's never met a stranger. Abby and Izzy get a little stranger phobic sometime (is that a word?) but not Ally. Ally has also JUST started babbling, saying "Babababa".

Last Sunday, my mom watched the girls while Matt and I went to see a movie. (The first time she's been alone with them in a long time). The girls napped for the 1st hour and she had to feed and take care of them the 2nd hour. So, one hour alone with them. When we came back, her hair was all messed up, she was sweating, and Ally was crying her eyes out! It kind of cracked me up, because it was nice to see it's still not an easy task! Mom said the only thing that would have made Ally happy is her mommy coming home or her Lala's (my mom's) undivided attention. She said when you give Ally your undivided attention, the other two come crawling up on you like "what about me, Lala?!" Believe me, I know the feeling... sometimes I feel like I'm being swarmed! I really should be thin, unfortunately that's not the case.

That's all for now... here are some pics of their latest activities: (Sometimes you'll see duplicate pics from what I have displayed at the top of the page... this is bacause the top pics are temporary... If I want the pics to stay with this post, I add it again).

Bunny babies in their new jammies - Izzy, Abby and Ally (left to right)