8 Months Plus!

The girls are over 8 months old already! How can that be?? I was just getting over the fact that they are half a year old! It's hard to tell from the weather, but summer is on the wane. Before we know it we'll be planning their birthday party.... (I hope not too soon because I love autumn.)

The girls are all doing splendidly. They keep doing more and more and they make us laugh everyday. Yesterday we had a NICU follow-up clinic. The therapists put them through a battery of tests to see how they are developing. They were all separated into different rooms (Debbie went with Sofia, Dan went with Josie, and I had Madeline). The bummer was that Debbie and I tried so hard to get the girls to have a good solid nap in the morning, but of course it didn't go as planned. Despite their tiredness they did pretty well!

Madeline: In every category: cognitive, motor- gross and fine, and language- receptive and expressive, Madeline either scored in-between her adjusted and actual age, or right at her actual age. She showed off her new skill of army crawling and also sat for a long time. Luckily, she was in a good mood almost the whole time.

Madeline
Sofia: She scored well in the cognitive and motor categories (in-between adjusted and actual age), but she was too sad to show-off her language skills. I guess she was crying the whole time and did not feel like babbling! She was our first babbler so we know the results weren't accurate. These tests are very dependent on mood, unfortunately!

Sofia

Josephine: She scored in-between for all the categories as well and even scored above her actual age in receptive language. I'm not sure what she was doing to score so well since I wasn't there during her test, but woo-hoo! Yesterday, before the test at home, Josie army-crawled for the first time. Of course she didn't do it at the clinic, but that's just how it goes.

Josie

It was great to hear what we already believed: that our girls are on track and catching up to their actual age. By two years old they should be caught up developmentally. The therapists who tested them were pleased overall and were so happy how much they loved tummy time. While we were at Children's, we visited some of the nurses and nurse pracitioners that took care of our girls. They couldn't believe how big they were! It was great to see all of them again. The next follow-up clinic will be when they are a year old adjusted (March!)

Here are a couple more random pictures... couldn't help but share them.

Josie, Madeline, Sofia

Sofia and Madeline ("Whatcha lookin' at?")

Madeline fell asleep in the Johnny Jump-Up!

Madeline, Josie, and Sofia showing off their sitting skills. LOVE this pic!
Here's Madeline demonstrating her army crawling! Uh-oh, we better start baby proofing!


I have to mention a cute little tidbit about Odin... On more than one occasion, when the girls are crying "bloody murder", he has ran down to the basement and brought up his blanket. We are thinking he is trying to help out because he has never randomly done that before. What a sweetie!

On a side note, Dan and I just had our third wedding anniversary! Dan picked a nice Italian restaurant in Stillwater while my parents watched the girls. Nice choice, Dan! The next couple weeks are going to be exciting because my grandma from out in Connecticut is coming to visit, as well as my cousin traveling from NYC and my brother from LA. Yay!! Have a great rest of the week, everyone!