Twins & Teaching: Always Outnumbered: Months 5 & 6 Faves

Happy New Year!
It's been awhile. What a very busy couple of months it has been. Extra demands at work (that are just non-negotiable and at the same time very unnecessary) and ever-changing little boys, combined with general survival and prepping for the holidays, it hasn't been easy at all to find time to write. Now that I'm on Christmas break from work, I finally have time.
Thankfully, there weren't too many changes the boys went through from months 4-5, so my beginning-of-December post wouldn't have been very exciting anyway, therefore saving us all the trouble and time there.
But this past month...holy moly, have these boys changed. Just in the past week, they've decided to sit up on their own without support. They're eating veggies and a few fruits like they've never been fed before. They're contemplating sleeping through the night on a consistent basis, but aren't quite ready to commit yet, and are finally on a solid schedule during the workweek. The weekends are a mess, but the other 5 days a week are pretty consistent. Given that they're about 6 weeks behind in most development because they were popped out early, I'd say we're doing fairly well...so we'll take it!

My husband is the food expert in this house. (Are there many houses where that isn't the case?) But he's also the baby food expert. We inherited this book from a wonderful friend of ours (Hi, Bethany!) about making your own baby food. Now, this was the plan all along after reading a blog by a woman who was comparing the cost of purchasing baby food versus making it on your own with store-bought frozen food...and the difference was astronomical. Well, I like spending money on other things and think food is already overpriced, so she had my attention.
With some decent research from my hubby, we are making and freezing and thawing and feeding homemade baby food to the little ones, and feeling pretty good about it. We gave them some store-bought stuff and it didn't sit well in their stomachs and came out the other end pretty nastily, so we are definitely sticking with the homemade.
I'll be working on a post on that here in the coming months once I get better and writing down what real food costs vs. baby food, and I'll get back to ya.

TEETHING is in full swing in this house, and both boys' bodies are reacting differently to their incoming teeth.
Payton has had his two bottom teeth for going on 3 weeks. The side effects of his teething have included fevers, rashes that look like hives (we think that's just what it is?) and a yeast infection in his neck due to all the horrendous drooling that we just can't keep up with.
Owen is catching up with 3 teeth that just started to pop in this week. So far, he's had much less drool than his brother, but still an increase, and some pretty nasty poops.
Needless to say, we're ready for teething to be over with but that's a very. very. long way off.

On to the favorites...Just in the past few weeks their interests have expanded and we started doing some new things. Hopefully these are some goodies for your shopping pleasure. (All Amazon links this time! I have an unhealthy obsession.)

1. Food Processor: We are maybe a little crunchy (trendy word for hippie/earthy/natural whatever) here, and we like to make our own baby food. If that sounds like something you'd like to do, then you need a nice, big food processor like this one. Those tiny ones that fit maybe a single apple are not helpful. Well, maybe if you're making food for one baby, but who are we kidding? You need the big one to make bigger batches at one time. This is well worth the invesetment if you didn't receive one as a gift at some other point in your life.

2. Nuk or Nuby Food Making Storage: Other than regular ice trays for the homemade food, we adore this thing. Nuk and Nuby basically make the same product so it doesn't matter which you search/purchase. They are larger than ice cube trays and are made of a nice rubber material so they're easy to pop out, and easy to fill. Someone gifted us with one of these, but ice cube trays would work really well also.

3. Nuby Sippy "No Leak" (quotation marks are there for a reason) Cups: GREAT for teething! We just put a little water in these, since they're supposed to be drinking some water now, and they love them. It took the boys about an hour or so to catch on to holding the handles and chewing on the nipple, but they got it down and they reach for these cups pretty quickly once we put the cups in front of them.

4. Nuby Icybite Hard/Soft Teething Keys: Keys seem to just be a go-to for the boys, and now that they're teething and chewing on every.thing.in.sight, they love these. They're easy to grab and hang on to and get cold pretty quickly as well.

5. Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Puppy: Our faaaabulous sitter Joanna bought these for the boys for Christmas. They have trumped pretty much every other toy they have. They can be set for certain ages, so these little guys last a really long time. The ear, hands, feet, tummy and heart each have a button with 3 different sounds/songs that it sings, and with 3 different levels, that's a great toy to invest in! Mostly they like to grab them and gnaw on some part of the puppy but when we press something to make noise, their sweet faces just light up!

6. Infantino Jittery Toys: The boys do not like car seat time, so these toys are some favorites! They grab on to it, pull it down, and then shakes as it goes back up. They both love these! I love hearing them continually pulling it down before it's even at the top. There's a ton of different characters to chose from for these but you really can't go wrong with whatever you purchase. As an added bonus, it helps with their fine motor skills which is grasping small objects.

7. Sophie the Giraffe: I don't know a single parent that doesn't like a Sophie that has one. I ended up purchasing these with gift cards becuase they're cheaper than the regular giraffe, but they do the same thing. There's a few knockoffs available out there as well; Target has an elephant of the same material. (But I didn't have a Target gift card so...) O & P just started getting in to these recently with their teeting really kicking up. They're easy to grasp, and each of the half-circle pieces have a different texture, which is apparently good for them in exploration. They're easy to pick up and hold on to, which is nice when your baby/ies cry the second they drop something.

8. VTech Move & Crawl Ball: Add this to the list of Toys That Get Annoying But Are Still Cool. This ball has 6 different buttons that can be pressed with multiple sounds/songs per button. There are some ribbons on it as well, and there is a motorized weight inside that spins it gently around on the floor.

Oh, can't forget the pictures!