Chomp Chomp CHOMPERS!

9:00 PM

Just when we thought that the girls were all set -- off of the apnea monitors, off of the reflux medication, sleeping through the night, rolling over, sitting up -- dun dun DUUUUNNNNN... enter TEETHING! Yes, that's right, our little ladies are trying to break their first teeth. And you know what that means...

A List of PARAPHERNALIA we are PASSIONATE about!

Jane and Emma are miserable. Absolutely miserable. Emma has adopted this gutterel, primal screech whenever she doesn't have something in her mouth. And Jane has all but fallen in love with her pointer and middle fingers on her left hand. I'm surprised they haven't turned into two little shriveled stumps at the end of her hand by now.

And the DROOL. Oh.Ma.GAH. So gross. All over. Strings of it. I've considered putting two bibs on them lately. Not kidding.

I started out by giving them Ibuprofen. That seemed to upset their little sensitive tummies, so we moved on to Tylenol. Lots and lots of Tylenol. Apparently that's frowned upon by the medical field, so we stopped that, too. My bad. Emma's mood did seem to improve when we stopped giving them the pain medicines, but we had to substitute SOMETHING in their place, because they still seem SO uncomfortable. Here's what we have had success with:

1. Mini bagels. We bought whole wheat ones and just stuck them in the freezer, and I gave them to the ladies tonight, and they LOVED THEM. Total success.

2. If I've said it once, I've said it a MILLION times. Sophie the Giraffe. Just suck it up and buy her. You won't be sorry.

3. Sassy Terry Teethers. Wet them with some filtered water, pop them in the freezer, then let the littles go to town on them. They occupy Jane and Emma for a good 15 minutes before they go into babyzilla meltdown mode.

4. Lamaze Logan the Lion or Mortimer the Moose Teethimals. It's a rattle. It's a teether. It's a cute and fluffy stuffed animal. So many ways to love this little slice of silence.

5. Green Sprouts Cool Hand Teether. Freezer. Done. Lots of ridges and bumps and different ways to hold this little hand-sized and shaped teether. The girls love them extra lots when their gums hurt extra lots because they freeze SOLID and are very hard, so they numb their gums. And they're little tiny hand-friendly.

And, finally, as you know, Emma and Jane's favorite thing for their little sore gummies are Munchkin Fresh Food Feeders. They looooved frozen blueberries, but their cheeks started to turn pink and I feared eczema (plus the blueberries were staining EVERYTHING in a 5 mile radius), so I switched to frozen peach slices. The twincesses love peaches. LOVE peaches. As in, they may actually love peaches more than they love me. 20 minutes GUARANTEED silence (with the occasional pause to pick up a feeder that has been launched across the kitchen). As soon as they are done with their dinners, I punt one of these into their hands and then Hershey and I can finish OUR dinner in peace, AND clean the kitchen before the girls graduate to bat-shit crazy meltdown mode.

Now, these are temporary fixes. According to our pediatrician, teething comes and goes here and there, and should not last for days on end. Some of the signs that Jane and Emma are having teething issues are drooling, hands in the mouth, whining, diarrhea, slight fever, and just general baby bitchiness. Sometimes they wake up in the night and I know that they're teething because when I try to give them their choopie, they turn it around and start gnawing on the sides (which makes these choopies great for teething because they HAVE gnaw-able sides). Putting things in the crib with them is not advised, but at least if they have a choopie that they can chew, they are usually content enough to go back to sleep.

When all else fails, bury them in tissue paper.

Do you have any tricks of the teething trade that you can share? Have you found any unique or interesting ways to help your babes through this painful rite of passage? Please share them in the comments below!

And as always, please don't forget to vote!

Have a great week! xoxo