Our Abby Girl

Abby reached her six-month mark just nine minutes after Lydia did! She's our petite sweetheart. At five months she weighed 14 lbs 14 oz--more than a pound lighter than Lydia--and the discrepancy between them may be wider now (I haven't weighed them recently). Abby is noticeably slimmer and seems to have quite a different personality than her older twin.



Abby is less exuberant and more pensive than Lydia. Both girls smile readily, but Abby is sometimes a little more reticent to give a smile to a stranger. She squeals and babbles, but isn't usually as loud or demanding as Lydia. She just started using syllables like "babababa" and "mamamama." Typically she's a couple weeks behind Lydia in reaching developmental milestones.

As you can see from the above picture, Abby likes to spit and blow bubbles. She's honed the skill and likes to practice it! She also growls--something Lydia only did briefly--with deep, throaty noises that are surprising coming from our littler girl. (Josiah was quite the growler, so in that respect she's like her brother! Otherwise, Lydia's personality seems more like Josiah's than Abby's does.)
 

While Abby doesn't sit up on her own quite yet, she's working on it and can sit for 10-30 seconds if she supports herself with her hands on the floor in front of her. Lately she's also been a better sleeper than her sister! She can often sleep through Lydia's talking, complaints, and cries--sometimes even when the girls are in the same crib. I have started separating them for naps, though, because both roll so much--and they're so interested in each other--that they do keep each other awake. So we've temporarily set up a pack-n-play in our room for naps. The girls still sleep nights together in their crib in our room.
 

Just in the last couple days, Abby discovered her feet. Tonight after I put her down, she was quite happy in bed. She rolled onto her back and held a foot in each hand, looking back and forth at them and laughing a little.

Abby seems daintier, with a gentler or softer personality compared to Lydia's jolly vivacity.We'll see if this is really true as they grow older.

People always ask how I tell the girls apart. I don't think they look identical (though officially they are monozygotic); to me their differences are so obvious that the question is a bit hard to answer. How does any parent tell his or her children apart? But for the sake of conversation, I usually point out the girls' differences in eyes and head shape. Both have very blue eyes, but Abby's are bigger and shaped differently than Lydia's. Lydia has some flattening at the back of her head (plagiocephaly is apparently very common in at least one twin because of positioning in the womb, exacerbated by lying on the back after birth), and her forehead narrows more like Josiah's (though she doesn't have metopic craniosynostosis--we went to the specialist when I grew concerned about her head shape!).
 

Abby sucks her thumb more than Lydia. I love how she balls her fingers when she does so, with the pointer finger curled and resting on her sweet little nose. She can quickly comfort herself by popping that thumb in her mouth.

When she nurses, Abby likes to move her free hand over her head, playing with her hair and ear, and scratching at my shirt absentmindedly. 

Both girls are getting more hair, and it's light brown rather than the blonde fuzz Josiah got at this age. They still look bald in pictures, but in another few months they may look a little more girly! I hope they have curls like Josiah.