New Orleans is Sinking and I Don't Want To Swim

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!