It's a crazy Crain life!: Five months!

Baby Crains are five months old today, and oh how I love them! I am so proud and thankful to have been chosen to be their mom. Cheesy, I know :) Of course there are days and moments that are plenty hard, but double the difficulty means double the reward. It's so precious to have not one, but two, gummy mouths grinning at me! So here's the latest on the twinsies...

Major

Major man had his first night of being unswaddled last night. He was such a champ! He went down easy and slept his normal routine (up once in the middle of the night & early in the morning).
He celebrated his five month birthday by waking up happy. Mitch told me that Maj was just a talking when he woke up and then grinned and squealed when Mitch went to get him. Be still my heart!
My little stud is officially in 6 month clothes. I think he has more clothes than Harper and I love dressing my baby boy. I know people always say it's more fun to dress girls, but when you've already dressed a baby girl, it's fun to have a change to polos and plaid shorts!
Major LOVES his bouncy. He "giddy ups" in that thing all day long! He kicks his legs and just gets that sucker bouncing. We've started to put him in the exercauser some, but the bouncy is still his favorite. This has earned him the new nickname "Scoots."
Maj won the award for best baby at church on Sunday. We never even got him out of his car seat!
My favorite fact is the new faces that Major Man is making. I don't know if it has to do with him teething, but he has been making the BIGGEST kissy lips! And he pooches them out over and over again like he really wants a kiss! I love it!
Major just discovered his foot. He grabs one foot and hangs on to it. He has also started putting things in his mouth - mostly his bib. Now it's always soaked with drool & spit instead of spit up!
Speak of spit up, we took Major to the chiropractor 3 days last week. We had a great experience as far as the clinic and people. They were so sweet and loooooved our babies! We are hoping that some visits to the chiro will help Maj's reflux. Personally, I do think he's spitting up less. His bibs used to be soaked with chunky gross spit up each morning, but now they're not near as saturated. He's definitely still spitting up, but I don't think it seems as much. I told Mitch that evidence of this is that I'm doing baby laundry less often! He'll go back to the chiropractor this Friday.
Major still has a blocked tear duct. This results in "Him's got eye boogers" in Maddex terms.
He's still about as bald as usual. He gets cuter by the day!!

Harper

Harper is also in 6 month clothes. It is so fun to see her wearing so many of the outfits that her sweet big sister wore not that long ago!
Harper is sleeping great in her crib. She seems to enjoy the crib aquarium and has been sleeping for longer stretches at night (hallelujah). She is close to skipping her middle of the night feeding (still wakes up sometimes), but definitely still wakes for the early morning feeding.
Harpy is still the SWEETEST thing! She is so content these days. She will sit there completely happy & doll-like. When she sees you, she gives the biggest smile! I adore her.
Harper is so giggly these days. She's super ticklish and laughs and laughs when you tickle her. I told Mitch the other day that I want to bottle her sweet giggles.
Harper's been really tooty lately. In contrast to Major's nickname, we have deemed her "toots". The gas seems to be bother her less than it used to, but she sometimes will still cry and wriggle with those toots.
Harper has discovered her hands. She is wringing them and looking at them a bunch. She also loves hugging on soft baby dolls. She gets so happy when I wave one in front of her and give it to her.
Harper has a Kate Gosselin style hairdo going - its flat in the front & then sticks up spiky toward the back. Her hair's pretty light to go along with her blue eyes.
I've started supplementing with a bit of formula so that I don't have to be so stressed about pumping and I've been able to start building a small freezer stash. I've been doing an experiment with Harper though...it seems like she naps shorter on days that she has formula in her bottle. I'm still experimenting though, so I'll have to update about this again.
Harper also went to the chiropractor, but not as many times as Major. She seemed to be more aligned I guess!

It's so hard for me to believe that my babies are 5 months old. They are both drooling and about to enter the teething stage. We'll start food, and sitting, and crawling soon. I just can't believe it. Because the twins are not my only babies, here's an update on their big sis, Maddex, too :)

Maddex

It's also hard for me to believe Maddex is over two years old. Time truly does fly by!
As evidenced in the quote above, Maddex has started speaking with incorrect grammar. It's about 5% cute and 95% driving me nuts! We don't speak like that to her or around her, so I'm not sure where she's picking it up! I correct her every single time.
Mad is turning in to a sweet big sister. The twins seem to be noticing her more, and she's responding with more attention to them. She's tried to pick Harper up a couple of times. Thankfully for us, Maddex is weak and Harper's getting heavy :)
Maddex has been eating wonderfully lately! She's been eating anything we put in front of her without much, if any, of a fuss. There are still some nights where we will make her some macaroni or something else special, but she has mostly been eating the same meal as us!
This child is uber silly. The other night while I was getting her dressed for bed she told me she was being a carrot. She points at a bonnet in her room and tells us it's a helicopter.
She loves playing with her dolls and mimics many of our parenting techniques. We obviously tell the twins "come here" a lot when we pick them up!
She's becoming independent and has been helping me wash her hair and body during her bath. She also tries to put her own clothes and shoes on most days.
We are definitely in some form of the "terrible twos" that you hear about. Maddex throws several fits a day (anyone remember the Easter pictures??), and we sometimes have trouble calming her down from them. I know much of it stems from communication issues (which is so frustrating b/c she communicates so well!) and the rest is from not being able to get her way. Sharing is such a difficult concept at this age!
When she's not throwing a fit, she's super sweet. The other night she had her head on my shoulder and said "Maddex is snuggling Mama." My heart melted to the floor right then and there.
Fun fact: Maddex still has not had a haircut!

I'm really looking forward to the summer with my babies. After having a week off at spring break, I realize that my house is going to stay a mess, but we are going to have such special, sweet memories. I'm looking forward to the last weeks of school - not just because it's the end of the year, but I usually really enjoy these last 6 or so weeks. It's during these weeks that I feel more freedom in my instruction (no observations or standardized tests to prepare for) and can pull in topics and texts just because I want to and because they're good. I'm also on the cusp of finishing my master's degree (hallelujah, praise the Lord!). My 47 page research project has been submitted. I probably need to do some revisions this week and should have a defense scheduled soon. I'm actually not yet sure if I'll officially graduate in May or August, but either way - I have a minute amount of work left to do! I will soon finally be done with school! For now ;) ;)

As always, I'll end my post with some pictures of my kiddos and five month pics of the twinsies.