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Okay, no, not really. How satisfying is it that when you are a Mama, you can pick up your baby and immediately fix what ever is wrong? Well, most of the time, anyway. Unfortunately, when you are a twin Mama, you don't always have enough arms for all the babies who are crying. Thankfully that only happens once in a while (like twice a day).
Anyway, we've had a busy week developmentally speaking. The girls have discovered that their hands are attached to their arms, which are attached to their bodies. They bring them together at the mid-line and then stare at them as though they were the best things they've ever seen. Then they watch carefully as they bring their hands to their ever eager mouths. This means less swaddling for us, since they can now fully realize the potential of their hands to sooth themselves. I skip it all together for naps, and often when I go in to get them, they are contentedly sucking away on their fingers. Sometimes it even wakes me up at night (they are pretty good at getting out of a swaddle) and I know it's time to go in and feed them.
Yesterday we went over to a girlfriend's home to visit with her, her 2.5 year old and 6 month old. The children (and Moms) sat around on the floor and my girls marveled at baby Anna, and young Maria. It was quite an evolution getting everyone out the door, but completely worth it. I'd like to start introducing the girls to more and more people, and we always look forward to visitors.
The girls are getting stronger on their bellies and hold their heads up at 90 degrees for longer and longer periods. I thought Tilly might roll over the other day, but she doesn't quite understand that she needs to giver herself some momentum to get all the way over. Since babies are now put on their backs to sleep, the age that babies roll over has been pushed back to around 7 months. That said, some babies do it earlier, and some skip it all together. Frankly, it's safer if they don't roll over, but I figure it might be more fun for them if they could do it.
Both girls are now openly laughing. In my opinion, this is the cutest thing in the whole entire universe. Even cuter than a herd of snowy white puppies and kittens. It really just gets better and better. I'm always told these things in advance by well meaning people, but it just doesn't hit home until it happens. Ivan's arrival home also invokes many super smiles and giggles. I imagine that must feel pretty good too.
Well, this will be a short post. I had an extra waking by Alexis this morning, and although it certainly was quality time, I am feeling the pain today. The girls are down for the count, (how long I couldn't say), and so I think that I will join them. All the very best to you all!
Well, not really, but I am currently grooving to that song while it plays on the radio. CBC doesn't play a great deal of music during the day, so when they do I like to take advantage of it. How weird that I would go from always having a pop music station on in the background to listening exclusively to CBC. Okay, it is the only English radio station in these parts and that may have something to do with it. I miss singing along with the radio though. I do try to make an effort to play music for the girls. They know the Barenaked Ladies, The Beatles and The Irish Rovers. Mostly they enjoy the musical stylings of their mother. Sometimes I play guitar for them, and always I sing to them. Alexis loves loves loves this. She just lights up when I sing for her, and when I play guitar she stares at me with wide eyes. I know this won't last forever. Soon she'll realize that I was too lazy to learn any more than 20 chords, and I only play songs from the one guitar tab book that I've had since I was 16. But for now I'm her Guitar Hero, and I'll play for her until she pleads for me to stop! Maybe.
The girls are making leaps in their abilities every day. They went from not being able to hold anything in their hands, so holding spoons, hairbrushes, blankets, whatever, in one day. It boggles the mind when I think about it. How did that happen? When did it happen? Why could they not do it one moment and then be able to the next? They babble and coo and talk to anything with a face. There are some stars and a moon that hang from the mobile on their bouncy chair that are often the recipients of a good yarn. I wonder what it is about two dots and a curve that are instantly recognizable to an infant as a friendly face.
Both girls are getting better at tummy time. They seem to enjoy being able to look at the world from this perspective. They also love looking at books, and just today, I put some toys on the tray of our infant swing for Mathilde, and she smiled at them and touched them. Alexis smiled at and touched a teddy bear this morning while I nursed her sister. She will mostly turn her head towards you when her name is said, but not Mathilde. Not yet anyway.
Both girls have been supporting their own weight on their legs for short periods for over a month now. We don't pay much attention to supporting their heads either. They can sit up right when propped up by a pillow, which is handy when one girl is waiting to get changed. It makes a big difference when you can hand your baby an object to ponder while you change the other.
Napping is getting better too. Alexis seems to go down without much of a fight (for the past two days that is), while Mathilde screams bloody murder the second she is in a hover over the crib. It's challenging for me, as I can hardly stand to let them cry. It would be so easy to nurse them to sleep, but then they'd need it to get themselves to sleep. I've stopped swaddling them for naps over the last 2 days, and unfortunately it has cut down on the amount of time that they are able to stay asleep, but we want to foster self-soothing behaviors that help them to fall back to sleep on their own. They love to suck their hands, but still lack total control over the fine motor skills required to always connect their hand to their mouths, and then keep it there. These skills really do fall apart when they are tired, and so swaddling is still essential for bedtime. They sleep a lot longer when they are swaddled.
They are darling. They smile and smile. Mathilde more readily gives up her gummy grins, but Alexis doesn't require much prodding either. The days seem less long now, and I am more relaxed as my confidence grows. This, I'm sure, reflects on them as well. I thought I'd up the level of difficulty yesterday by putting them in their cloth diapers. They hated them. They screamed and cried until I took them off. At least Mathilde tried hers out first before rejecting them. Alexis just said no! I feel some level of guilt about not pursuing this earlier, but I have enough going on without having to worry about adding yet another load of laundry every day. Enough about that.
Well, there you have it. An update and on the day I said I'd have it out. But time is short and so I'm off to get the girls up for their afternoon meal. Until next week.
Happy Spring everybody!
I'm only two days late, but here I am. I'm tired. Alexis has been sick (sort of), and refused to sleep! Okay, so she's down for the count at the moment, but it's only a matter of time! So I think she's sick because she lost her little voice for a few days, but had no fever, and kept her voracious appetite. We didn't worry too much about it, and she seems to be on the mend, but it broke my heart! Tilly is herself and cute as a button.
Grandma and Grandpa are here for a visit this weekend (so I've got a minute to Blog). It's so nice for the girls to spend time with them.
So the previous posts brought about a topic to write about from Toni. She wanted to know if and how the girls interact with one another. I'd hoped to have a video to illustrate this, but this week was just weird with getting their schedules down pat. Needless to say they are out the window this weekend. The schedules, that is.
Alexis and Mathilde do seem to recognize one another now, but only really in short bursts and when they are both well rested and happy. They can spend 20 minutes lying beside one another and not acknowledge the other, but every so often, when we get them face to face, they will smile and coo at one another. And it's really cute.
Up until last night, they shared a crib, but I'm not sure how aware of one another they were in that context. If one cries, the other is usually not affected by it, but who can say what they gain subconsciously from one another's proximity. Perhaps we might find that their breathing is regulated by the other's presence, or perhaps their blood pressure is positively affected. But nothing that I'm able to measure without gadgets. This will change, no doubt, in the future. I'm excited about the day when they learn to play with each other. I expect this to be really fun, but for now, they simply co-exist.
This post will be short. I've used stock footage for the video and I'm sorry that I'm not able to focus on it much this week. As I say, we are working on their nap schedules and learning to read their moods. It takes up all of my time! But I do enjoy doing the Blog, so please keep tuning in, eventually I'll get back into the swing of things!
Have a great week everyone!
I am obsessed with parenting books. Well, books in general, but parenting books especially right now. And it's driving us all nuts. As you can see from the video we (meaning I with Ivan dubiously agreeing to go along with it) decided that it was a good time to take away the girls' pacifiers. We don't see anything wrong with pacifiers in general; if used correctly they can be a wonderful tool. And babies need to suck. Also, the offering of a pacifier at night is seen as a significant factor in reducing SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Sydrome). We were all for it! While we were co-sleeping, it worked really well too. Onc hardly has to wake up to insert a dropped pacifier when your baby is an inch away. Now consider what this is like when the babies are in their own room and there are two of them. Twice as many dropped pacifiers equals twice as many trips to the nursery. So in a desperate act to restore my sanity, I took the stupid things away. They're young, they won't remember, it'll be easy....right? WRONG!
But I suppose I should have started with the fact that we kicked the girls out of our room. That was actually going quite well....for them. I kept them in sucking all night and they were happy little clams. Even once we removed the pacifiers (suckos) they were fine. I was simply nursing them to sleep. Nothing wrong with that! Wrong again. Can I rock them to sleep? Nope! Oh and apparently they're supposed to have two three hour naps per day. And this is where I became extremely confused and ended up messing up sleep for everyone in the house. (Well, Ivan managed to get some sleep bless is heart.)
I read and read more books. And when I ran out of books, a well-meaning girlfriend brought over even more books. And all of these books contradicted one another. So on Thursday, with a stack of parenting books and a whole lot of newly acquired free time, I set about putting the girls down for the first of their 3 hour naps. I nursed them to sleep, (then learned you shouldn't do this), I rocked them (whoops), I walked them around (oh dear!). And they slept. In the afternoon, I put them back down in the sleepy-awake state that one popular book directed me to do. They slept again for 3 hours. I thought "Oh dear, these girls have been so tired all along, look at all the sleep they've been missing out on!" And then night time came, and if you were predicting that they would not sleep at all, you were RIGHT! They were tired though. Yawning, kicking, crying the whole time. I could get them down for an hour and then they were up again. I thought I was going to lose my mind. I pleaded with Ivan in the morning to please take the car to work and come home at noon so I could get some sleep! Thankfully, he did this.
After a phone call with a voice of reason (thank you, G) and 2 cups of strong coffee, I began to see the light. The girls had been fine all along. They were already "sleeping through the night". One five hour stretch, a feed and then a few more hours etc. I had been convinced by some well meaning Nanny-turned author that a 3 month old baby can and indeed should sleep through the night by our definition. Ridiculous! So last night, we took the hour we needed to get them to sleep calmly, knowing that eventually they would go to sleep. And at 3 am after 6 hours of uninterrupted blissful sleep, I went into the nursery, fed my first girl, then my second girl, and then put them back to bed. All the while thinking how wonderful it was that I was still able to nurse them, how wonderful it is to have this quiet time to spend with each of them, one one one. (On to Toni's topic next week). I rocked them, and stroked their hair and just loved them. And I realized that I already know what I need to know. It's not everything there is to know, but it's enough. I come pre-programmed with all the information that I need to raise healthy and happy people. It's already in me. So away with Dr. Sears (no offense, I'm sure he's a lovely man), and down with Ferber (who lets their baby cry it out?!). I'm going with the well intentioned Mommy method. The oldest, tried, tested and true!
Don't forget to set your clocks back and change the batteries in your smoke detectors!
