Big changes!

Now that the twins are nearly nine months old, life as we know it is changing very quickly.

Take our morning routine, for instance. After play time and bottles, the boys usually sit in their bouncy seats in the kitchen while Keith and I (or just I) eat breakfast. They happily sit and flash us gummy smiles while we eat and drink our much-needed coffee.

This morning, we put Matt and Nate in their seats as usual and went about making strawberry pancakes. As you can see, they were quite content:

But a few minutes after I took this photo, Nate leaned over to reach for his brother—and the entire seat toppled over with him. He screamed, and Keith had to run and rescue him.

We’d had signs for a couple of weeks that the big guy was starting to outgrow his bouncy seat. For one thing, the typically upright seat started to look more like a recliner chair—the back of it got lower and lower to the ground. Also, the fabric  was starting to tear from the strain of holding him. But we were in denial. After all, the instruction manual said the seat can hold babies up to 25 pounds, and Nate is only about 20 pounds! But it seems we now have to face reality—the bouncy seat is no match for Nate’s heft.

That stinks. The boys not only love to chill in their seats in the mornings, but in the evenings we remove the front panels and they wind down in them while watching a Baby Einstein or Baby Sign Language DVD. Now where can Nate sit? He can sit up on his own, but that’s not exactly relaxing enough to help him drift off into la-la land. And what about our breakfast routine? Do we put Nate in his high chair now instead?

Another big change: It seems we may have to stop going out to restaurants for a while. Until now, we’ve typically gone out to eat with the boys once a week. We’ll go early and keep them in their car seats, where they’ll either sleep or sit happily and look around. So we thought we’d have no problem going to a local Vietnamese restaurant at 5:30 on Friday with Keith’s sister, Pato. The restaurant was more crowded than we’d expected, but we thought we’d still be in the clear. Nate was fast asleep in his car seat, and I fed Matt right when we got there. But about five minutes later, Matt wanted out of his seat and began to fuss.

“Why don’t we get him a high chair?” Pato asked.

We were doubtful about doing so because the boys had never sat in one of those low-backed restaurant high chairs. But as soon as we sat Matt in it, he got a gleam in his eye. We put a few of his toys on the table in front of him and he began to play.

Matt takes his place at the table.

Well, right when our steaming bowls of pho arrived, Nate woke up and began to shriek, and Matt began to throw his head back and fling things around. Pato quickly took Nate out of his seat and tried to feed him, but he was too interested in his new surroundings to eat. Keith took Matt and struggled to contain him while I shoveled my food in so I could take a baby. Then Pato put Nate in the high chair, where he proceeded to purposely drop his toys on the floor and then whine until Keith picked them up.

Nate in the restaurant's high chair.

After Pato hurriedly downed half of her soup, she took Matt so that Keith could eat. Matt immediately went for her hot bowl of noodles. She moved the bowl, so he stuck his hand in Nate’s uneaten sweet potatoes and smeared them around. When he started grabbing for the utensils, we knew it was time to leave, and our dinner was cut short.

Now that the babies are getting more mobile and are not as content to sit in their car seats, it seems the extent of our restaurant-going with them will be to places like Red Robin, where loud children are the norm. Besides, in a few months, the boys will no longer be in their portable, rear-facing car seats. That eliminates even the possibility of them sleeping at a restaurant while we enjoy a leisurely meal. And now we’re starting to wonder: What else will be more challenging now that the boys are so active? Next week, we are flying to New York for their Baptism. Will our airplane luck run out, and will this be the trip from hell?

Yes, life with the twins is going to get more challenging and more crazy. But we are very excited for all the new changes the coming months will bring. We’ll just have to learn to be flexible—and to go to bed earlier. We’ll need all the energy we can get!