Leading the Double Life: munchkin

Happy Bunny Day!

11 months

Hi everyone! First and foremost, HAPPY BEST CANDY DAY OF THE YEAR! (aka Easter).

Before we go any further, I would like to take a moment of silence for our fallen Munchkin Fresh Food Feeders.

{SILENCE}

We really loved those little guys.

We had a great run, and last night I popped those puppies open to see if I could figure out a better way to clean them, and what I found was worthy of an R-rated horror flick - Stephen King style. I mean, seriously guys, I almost barfed.

I was then horrified that I have been giving those to my daughters twice a day every day. O.M.GEE! The party's over. Good thing that the girls are starting to move on to nommy-nomming on real chunks of fruit. I'll pick up a couple of new ones for when their little teefies are hurting them, but the ick factor doesn't make me want to run out and start giving them to them as often as I used to.

*SIGH*

There goes our guaranteed 40 minutes of silence a day.

On to more fun and exciting topics. IT'S EASTER!

~Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for my outfit or my hair in the following video. I had gotten 8 hours of sleep since Thursday due to the fact that Hershey had been fishing all weekend and Emma and Jane decided to tag team who could keep Mama up the longest each night. Jane won, but Emma sure did give her a run for her money! I do, however, take full credit for the adorable kids and the kitty cam as Tyson comes in to investigate as soon as I walked out of the room...~

The video is cut short because, well, I can only hold one camera AND keep the girls from eating the fake grass at the same time.

I filled the fake eggs with Puffs and Jane and Emma shakey-shake their little hearts out, until they get hungry from all of that shaking, at which point I simply bust open an egg and throw some puffs around like beads at Mardi Gras. Anything to keep them from making that whining noise...

Later that day, we made our way to my Nanni's house. Packing for a whole afternoon out can be tricky, so here's how I did it.

I always put together 4 bags (minimum). One bag full of the girls' favorite toys, diaper bag, cooler bag, and bottle cooler bag. Here's what it looks like:

It's insane, but it works. Then at least I KNOW where everything is when I get to my destination, which is important when the Twincess Tornado blows into town!

And if you're wondering what that cooler bag is that holds ALL of the ladies' fave foods (and dishes AND utensils), it's a YakPak. If you haven't seen one before, you can find it here. It is AWESOME. I received my YakPak in December. I had been carting my own lunches around in it for a while, and now it carts Jane and Emma's dinners when we go out to try to be social, too. It's the bee's knees!

In fact, I love my YakPak so much that I have teamed with the makers of this product to host a way cool giveaway! Here's what you need to do:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope that you all had a wonderful and relaxing Easter holiday weekend with those you love, whether you celebrate Easter or not (or if you just celebrate the Easter candy, like me).

Please don't forget to vote!! Happy {almost} hump day!

xoxo

This review was made possible by YakPak. I was provided the featured product free of charge to facilitate my review, but all opinions are 100% mine.

Please do not use, copy, pin or share any pictures of Jane and Emma.

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9:38 PM
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Chomp Chomp CHOMPERS!

avent

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