The Twelve Month Check-Up

So by now we all know that the babies are 12 months old by the calendar, but their corrected age is actually just about 9 months. Overall, they look great -- especially considering their early start and all the risk factors that generally apply to 25 weekers. Mercifully, medical appointments are no longer a weekly or even monthly event. Although the kids still receive a weekly visit from an infant development specialist, that happens at home, and visits to the pediatrician and pulmonologist happen every few months now.

Since the babies just crossed the one year mark, they did go in yesterday for their annual check-up and to receive some much-loved vaccinations. The latest numbers are just below.

Maddy & Mr. Bear - June 19, 2009

Maddy weighed in yesterday at a respectable 18 lbs. 2 ozs. She was 28.25 inches long, and her head was 43 cm around. As a side note, she can't go out in the bike trailer until her head is at least 48 cm (the minimum helmet size) - ditto Milo.

Milo & Mr. Bear - June 19, 2009

Milo is still trailing his bigger sister. He was 16 lbs. 8 ozs. He was 27.5 inches long, and his head was slightly bigger than Maddy at 44 cm.

In terms of other exciting developments:

After only 6 short months of teething, Maddy appears to be getting her front teeth! Nothing yet for Milo, but should be any day...

Both babies now sit up for pretty long periods of time and are now captivated by their toys. It's nice to be able to set them down and just watch them play for a few minutes while daddy gets a beer :)

Crawling is still painfully elusive. Both babies can support themselves on their hands and knees and Maddy even crawls backwards a little but no official crawling. They are pretty ingenious about getting around, though -- lots of rolling and shimmying seems to do the trick.

On the eating front, as previously mentioned, the babies feed themselves Cheerios and really love them. They now prefer to feed themselves, and we've started to work with them a bit on that. This morning they shoveled in scrambled eggs, bagel pieces, and prunes. It's tough with Maddy, because she's slow, she hates getting help, and she also doesn't like eating cold food. It makes for a lot of reheating. Milo, on the other hand, takes the bulldozer approach -- he grabs as much as he can shoves it in his gob. He has about a 60% efficiency rate. The rest ends up in his bib.

Both babies love banging things together, and Milo really likes to clap his hands. Both babies have also developed "object permanence." That means that if you show them something and then hide it, they know it still exists. It was amazing to watch that change -- about a month or so ago they didn't have that skill. If you showed them the remote control, they'd immediately reach for it, but if you put a cloth over it, they just stopped cold. Now they lift the cloth and grab the remote. Kinda' neat.

Here's some video of this morning's playtime. Exciting stuff. Be sure to watch for Milo's big finale!