Happy New Year's Day . . . with twins!

Welcome to 2007 from the Ellison twins, Iliana and Lenora, and myself, Ethel. Iliana and Lenora are 9 mos. old today. They are fraternal twins who are very different, though obviously sisters. Iliana is older by one minute, though almost everyone is surprised by this for some reason. She is the smaller and quieter of the two, but also the more social and better at her fine motor skills. Lenora is a very large baby, weighing over 22 pounds at 9 months, and into the gross motor skills. They have very complimentary personalities, just like I imagined they might during pregnancy.

This is a great age to have twins. Iliana finally got the hang of crawling during the last week, after several weeks of watching her sister move around the apartment at whim. Up until this point, they loved to look at each other and would occasionally play small games, like Lenora rubbing her head on Iliana's stomach to make Iliana laugh (this first happened when they were as young as five months . . . wow). However, yesterday was their first day together as crawling buddies.

It's like watching my daydreams from pregnancy come true. They spent most of the day hanging out together, with Iliana following her faster sister all over the babyproofed parts of our apartment. They laughed a lot, and there were only a few minor squabbles - such as when Lenora tried to crawl over Iliana, or when one baby took the other baby's toy.

I think the highlight of the entire day was when I had one of those "Hrm, it's awfully quiet" moments while Bjorn (my amazingly wonderful husband, also known as SuperDad) and I watched a DVD on the laptop. I glanced over at the girls, and noticed that Iliana was playing with an orange. We've had a number of them rolling around here since Christmas Day from our stockings. Then I noticed that she had actually managed to bite off a piece of the peel and eat a fair amount of the fruit! We rescued the orange and fished the peel out of her mouth. Fortunately, it didn't seem to upset her stomach at all.

Hrm, maybe I can get around to posting my New Year's goals (not resolutions, I resolved not to make New Year's Resolutions back in the second grade) later today. But probably not - I'm really very sick. Fortunately, I am blessed with a wonderful MIL who will be coming over and giving me a chance to sleep later today. Yay good MILs!