Sweet Potatoes.

Not only a delicious vegetable, but an appropriate nickname for these darlings, don't you think? Here they are, with their first taste of tubers.

Naomi, still with some enthusiasm for the idea. That faded pretty quick, but we took advantage of it while we could. (The flash makes it look as though she's just made an unfortunate lipstick choice, doesn't it?)

And Lillian, who (surprise!) took to it pretty well. She still made some hilarious faces, as she adjusted to a new flavor sensation, but she got the hang of it.

We're still trying to teach them not to suck on the spoon as though it were a very inefficiently shaped bottle, and that involves a lot of noises and open mouth expression that you hope they'll imitate. Feeding Naomi the next day, I figured out that if I shook a rattle over her head, she looked up and opened her mouth. Then I could launch a surprise attack with a spoonful of orangey goodness. She was on to me in about 3 spoonfuls. You'll notice in both of those pictures, that neither girl has sweet potatoes in her eyelashes or ears. It was early in the process. Lillian had a small dot of sweet potato cemented to her nose for the next 36 hours.

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Think these two like each other much?

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I am trying to teach Lillian to give herself her Prevacid. I think she's almost there. (Disclaimer: this is _not_ a hypodermic needle, no matter what it may look like. It's really an oral medicine doser. I swear.)

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Had the girls been born on their due date, they'd be 5 months old today. They are, in fact 33 weeks exactly, or 7.6 months. (I found a 'how old are you' calculator on Google. Yay!)

Developmentally, they are doing splendidly. They are working on impressive things like sitting up for a few moments before they topple over sideways like drunken sailors. They approach lots of things two-handedly, especially those things that they'd like to put directly into their mouths. They bear weight on their legs, especially Naomi, who gives the impression that she'd like to begin pole vaulting lessons now, please.

Mostly, they just work on being cute.