Last Call! March for Babies!

The March for Babies in LA is on Saturday and we're sooo excited!

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped us so far! A super special thanks to Hookaholic Yarn Design Studio and JAG Designs for helping me out with awesome giveaways! You girls are the best!

We're less than $400 away from our goal so this is our last call for donations to our team, Team Pepka Twins!

We've been hard at work getting ready for the big day...

If you'll be at the walk in LA at Exposition Park on Saturday, we'll be helping out with the family teams tent after the walk selling some goodies and chit chatting with people to tell them our story so stop by and say hi! There are supposed to be around 12,000 walkers! That's crazy! It's going to be a really great day!

Again, thank you so much to everyone who's donated so far. If you haven't yet, last call for donations :) We'd love for you to help us out! If you didn't join our team this year, you can join next year! We'll be sure to be doing this for many, many years, probably all over the country thanks to the Air Force ;)

Friday Favorites

For a little break in the usual blogging, I thought I'd share some of our favorite things right now at our house!

Lansinoh mOmma Straw Cup

We've tried, probably a good 4-5 sippy cups and a few straw cups. Our friend found these ones and they worked great for her little one. They're still adjusting to them, and don't always like to suck on the straw as much as biting the handles, but they work better than any of the others and don't make such a mess so I'll consider it a win ;)

Mac n cheese

Amelia is a mac-n-cheese-aholic. No joke. Her favorite. She''ll eat half of the box usually. And she's still only 16lbs. If only I had her metabolism....

Applesauce

I cook apples, blend them to a nice creamy texture and give it to Jackson, he gags it up. I give him a container of applesauce, he sucks the whole thing down. My kids are weird. Lucky for Jack, I'm desperate enough to get him to eat that I'll give him whatever, just so its something other than milk or formula.

These have been fun too...

Amelia loves the squeeze packs and it's nice that I can put her in her hairchair, give her her water cup, squeeze pack and some puffs or small food chunks and she'll sit there happily eating while I feed Jack or make dinner. Saves us a lot of time ;) I don't always give her these but on a busy day, they're a big help.

Soothe and Glow Seahorse

I'm not sure there are enough words for me to describe my love for these. They were a Christmas present from Uncle Nick. The twins have been sleeping in their cribs and all through the night for awhile now but occasionally, they wake themselves up and have a hard time going back to sleep. We put the seahorse on, and they're instantly calm and nodding off. I love you seahorse. And thanks for reminding me that Jack's needs new batteries ;)

'Nuff said. I'm addicted. Click n buy is evil. I could spend my entire day on amazon and pinterest.

BreathableBaby Crib Bumper

Due to Amelia's obsession with sleeping with her face shoved up against something (blanket, pillow, floor, etc) I knew regular bumpers were out of the question. But life with no bumpers was a nightmare. Feet flying everywhere, pulling up and climbing, getting stuck with legs in weird angles, I'm pretty sure they'd be broken if they were adults. I'm glad we found these, recommended by a few other moms. Now we all sleep better.

The Happy Herbivore

 My mom has been vegan for awhile and bought me this book for my birthday. True story, I only used it once. Now that we found out Jack can't have milk, eggs or peanuts, which means I can't either while I'm breastfeeding, we've decided to go semi-vegan. I'm sure we'll still eat meat from time to time but because of Jack's bad weight gain and poor eating, I'm going to try really hard to stick to life without dairy, eggs or peanuts until I'm done breastfeeding. The doctor seemed optimistic he'd grow out of these allergies but he didn't know when. He said eggs was a severe enough allergy it would probably be years, if ever. Since we'll have to be feeding him regular food soon, we thought we better get used to the lifestyle anyway so we probably won't have many eggs in the house for quite some time. We tried a muffin recipe last night that was 90% fruits and veggies and I thought they were delicious! I'm taking a few to a breakfast get together and saving some for our multiples playgroup tomorrow so I'm anxious to see what other non-vegans think of the muffins :)

Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Fun with Friends Musical Table

 The favorite toy of the moment. The legs come off so they can sit at it and play. They each take a side and sit there babbling and pressing buttons for forever. It actually has a lot of different music and settings so it's not so annoying either playing the same 2 songs over and over and over and over ;)

So that's our favorites right now. Do you have any great favorites we should check out? :)

Feeding Baby

We're at a weird place considering the twins, developmentally, fall anywhere from 6-10 months. Some tasks they do great for a 10 month old, some things, they barely pass the 6-7 month standards. So we have tried to adapt and work at their pace and try to hit all of their benchmarks as well to their actual age as we can. I'm not expecting miracles out of them, especially Jackson. Not that he can't do it, but he's had a bit of a tougher road with lots of health issues slowing him down.

Food has been the hardest. What do we feed them? Do we go by their actual age or their adjusted? The GI doctor says he wants them eating like a 1 year old when they're 1. That's less than 2 months away now. I feel like we have a lot to accomplish to be held to a 1 year old's standards in just 2 months!

So where are they?
Amelia is right on track. She realized somewhere around 7 or 8 months old that she loves food. When it clicked, nothing slowed her down. She eats pretty much anything in arms reach. No seriously, keep your plates away, she will grab a bite of whatever you have before you had the chance to blink. So we've been checking off the boxes with her pretty quickly and not letting her adjusted age slow us down.

I really liked the idea when I was pregnant of baby led weening. I thought it was up my alley. By 6 months actual age, they were no where close to be ready for such a feet. All of our doctors agreed though, we should start giving them some food by that point if they had any chance of catching up. They were just over 3 months adjusted so I was in no hurry to really rush, but purees and us feeding them were the only way it was going to work. We started slow, I only really introduced a few foods their first month or so of eating, and for the most part, they both hated it.

Essentially, we gave Jackson a break for a few months. He wasn't ready. He was gagging, choking and throwing everything up. That led us down the road that helped us eventually find out he has a milk allergy, so I guess it's a good thing we took some time with him, but it was frustrating to see him hating food.

Now at 10 months old, they both eat 2-3 meals of solids a day. Jackson's HAVE to be purees, he won't let anything else pass his lips. Amelia will eat chunks, take bites of foods, pick up foods with her thumb and pointer, and she will even feed herself with a spoon, under careful supervision and when I have the patience for a clean up of half the house that she's thrown food over.

We're working on sippy cups but that too has been a massive fail. So we started straws. After a few straw cups and stealing ideas from friends, we finally found cups that I think will work!

They've been a hit so far!

So a run down of food: They're drinking 4 bottles a day, 6-8oz of breastmilk or formula. Eating solids (anything from purees, to chunks, to puffs, to table food) 2-3 times a day. HOPEFULLY drinking from cups over the next few weeks. Bottle weening will commence at the 1 year point for Amelia, and hopefully for Jackson soon after, once we know he can get enough nutrition from solids.

I've made a big executive decision that I'm going to start weening them from breastmilk in June. At this point, I'm doing it more for a cost saver than for anyone's benefits. Amelia still nurses several times a day. Jackson just never got the hang of it so I've been pumping 4-5 times a day to get a chunk of his milk (which is a wonderful and much needed drop from the 8-10 times I was pumping the first 6 months). It's been a long 10 months though and I'm ready to hang up my pump and spend time focusing on my kids and not how much milk I can pump. I'm glad I've been able to feed both of my babies for so long but I'm just ready to be done. It's exhausting and stressful and an extra few hours I spend a day on pumping and cleaning and sanitizing that I want to be spending giving my munchkins 100% of my attention. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with Amelia as far as nursing, but my guess is she'll be ready to ween by then too.

So that's our life in food! I'm going to do a good update on their activities lately as soon as I can get some good video of them rolling and scooching around. It's sooo funny now that they're mobile :) but I'm running out of places to hide the dog bowls that they can't find. Baby gates are our on list of things to do SOON ;)

This Girl

I'm thinking we should sign her up for modeling or acting.

She clearly enjoys stealing the show. haha What a little stinker ;)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everyone!

Love, these 2 little crazies :)

Jackson takes Easter egg hunts VERY seriously ;)

The most magical place on earth

How many times have the twins been to Disneyland?

Umm...3.

Before they turned 9 months old.

Spoiled much? haha

My family has always vacationed to Disneyworld. My mom worked there a "few" years ago. We love Disney movies and have tons of stuffed animals and things. When Tom and I were stationed in Florida, I got to take him to Disneyworld for the first time and show him the ropes ;) We had so much fun and glad we did it before we left Florida.

The next month, I got pregnant, a few months later we moved to California and luckily, we were right next to Disneyland!

It's a bit of a different experience going to Disney with kids. We go a lot slower, we don't go on the big rides, we have to plan things making sure we squeeze meals in, we don't go to the fancy restaurants, but it's so fun seeing their eyes light up on all the rides :)

My mom came to visit for a good chunk of February and of course, we had to go to Disney, even if the twins had already been a time or 2 already ;)

Amelia got to meet her first Disney princess, Ariel.

Although she was way more interested in her hair than the princess thing.

The twins had a lot of fun, and I think my mom did too.

We stayed until the evening parade but by then, these 2 had enough for the day and were ready to go home.

But atleast we got to see my favorite...snow white :)

I think next year we're going to get season passes since we've had so much fun going so many times this year and want to enjoy it while we're so close, before the Air Force moves us again :)