A Wonderful Kind of Ordinary

As I sat down to write this post, I tried to single out something significant, something newsworthy --a good headliner. What seems most striking to me, however, is that nothing in particular seems striking to me. Don't get me wrong: I have plenty that I can (and will presently) brag and blather about in connection with Jesse and Evelyn. But, the "news" I have to share with you today is pretty much just the stuff of everyday life (with twins). ... We're not in Kazakhstan anymore, Toto. No, we're home, we're settled in together, we're a family and we spend our days occupied with the mundane kinds of things with which any family with young ones is occupied. Still, I must say, ordinary life turns out to be pretty wonderful.

(It also turns out to be loud, often tiring, full of challenges, and everywhere shot through with unbelievably awful smelling diapers.)

Ordinary life with little ones seems to me to fall into 4 broad categories: Eating, sleeping, playing, and doing-new-things-for-the-first-time. So, I thought I'd divide the post accordingly. (I should mention for those of you inclined to quibble that I am fully aware that these categories are not at all clearly demarcated. After all, with babies it's often difficult to distinguish eating from playing with food. Similarly, at least for our babies, the lines between the eating and sleeping categories get fuzzy (e.g. Evelyn has been known to fall asleep in her high-chair in the middle of a meal (especially if she doesn't like what's on the menu) and Jess has recently come to think a bottle at 4:30am is an important part of his sleeping routine). Or, again, things that fall under the sleeping category and the eating category often fall under the doing-new-things-for-the-first-time category--like drinking out of a straw for first time, or starting a brand new routine of crying when put down for a nap. But, since nothing hangs on the my way of dividing these things except the organization of this one post, let's not get bogged down with questions of taxonomy.)

Eating

(Cute Halloween bibs, eh? Thanks to Aunt Sherri and Uncle Bob!)

We've seen the kids go through a number of phases during the last month with their eating habits. At the end of last month, mealtimes with the little people were fraught with fear, frustration, and mystery. Frequently, these sessions ended with tears and tantrums the cause of which we could scarcely determine--except that it had something to do with food. Jess went through a phase there for a while where he simply INSISTED that the food that entered his mouth only be conveyed by his hand. If one of us put something in there, he'd spit it out and return it to his mouth himself. Evelyn wasn't quite so insistent, but still preferred feeding herself. This phase was frustrating for everyone involved since neither of our little ones had a whole lot of hand or hand-to-mouth coordination. Brent came up with the perfect analogy: he pointed out that the twins' way of eating is like that game you see at movie theater's where a player tries to pick up a prize with a mechanically driven claw. Here, let me show you:

Here's Jess and his claw:

Jess considers his options:

 The claw drops...

closes...

Is anything actually going into his mouth?

(Check out Evelyn and her double pincher grip!)

Fortunately, this difficult phase has passed. Not only are the twins much more adept at picking up food and getting it into their mouths, but they also have become much less fussy about eating. In fact, they eat pretty much whatever is offered. This week, the menu included apple-cream-cheese wontons, banana buckwheat pancakes, and broccoli cheese nuggets (all made by yours truly). They loved it all, which makes it fun to cook for them.

Sleeping

We seem to have arrived at some new phase with sleeping patterns too. The picture to the left is fitting since sleeping seems to involve more crying now than it ever has before. When we first came home we would just rock the little ones till they fell asleep (10 minutes or so) and put them down and they would go to sleep (for the most part) and stay asleep (for the most part). Nowadays, however, they seem less inclined to fall asleep in our arms and more inclined to play or fuss for a few minutes before finally drifting off.

Jess has been having difficulty with sleeping. Part of the problem is that he is teething (4 on top coming in all at once!). For awhile there he was waking up twice a night, in pain, needing his Tylenol fix. (Recently, I expressed to Brent a concern that Jess is becoming a baby drug addict --he loves taking medicine of any sort. Brent reassures me, however, that babies can't get addicted to Tylenol, Ferrous Sulphate Elixir (Iron) or Little Tummies Gas Relief drops, and this bit of scientific information has eased my anxiety.) Anyhow, I think he was really beginning to enjoy the middle of the night cuddling and so began waking up even when his teeth stopped bothering him. His proposal, it seems, was that we (well, preferably me, but Brent would suffice in a pinch) should hold him from about 3:30-5:30 while he slept, snug and peaceful, in our arms. He was, in fact, so wed to this idea that any attempt on our part to put him down resulted in cries of fury and, eventually, desolation. Needless to say, it didn't take long before we were both worn out by this routine.
As we were getting ready for bed one night, each of us dreading the night that lay in front of us, Brent turned to me and said: "You know, Susan, I think if we turn the monitor off Jess will stop crying at night." I got a laugh out of that one especially since Brent has, for some time now, been campaigning for a lower volume level on the baby monitor in our room. (For some bizarre reason he thinks we don't need to hear every single mattress crinkle and snuffle the babies make over the course of a night.) This wasn't, in the end, the solution we pursued, but we did have to let Jess know that, nice as his proposal to be snuggled in the wee hours was, we really had to decline. Needless to say, he was initially sad about this. He has, however, accepted the reality of the situation and is now sleeping through the night again. Well, pretty much....

This is them just before bed. Hard to believe from their sweet faces
that they might be about to cause us grief in just a few hours.

Playing

Here, the pictures for themselves.

Look at Evelyn's face in the picture below, I just love it!

Playing outside

Taste Test

We love it when dad carries us around in a laundry basket!
Meeting (and playing with) Aunt Janice, Uncle Jeff, and Ruby the dog for the first time!

and cousin Ellie...

and Lucy!

At the botanical Gardens with our Meemaw who stayed and played with us for 2 whole weeks! Yay!

New-Accomplishments

It seems to us that Jess and Evelyn do something new each day. It is an exciting time.Perhaps most significant, is the development we've seen in Evelyn this last month. Before now she was, as I mentioned in previous posts, resistant to eye contact, not responding to our voices, not really babbling or making any kind of sounds beyond squeals and cooing. The strides she's made in the last month are amazing: she not only makes eye contact with us but does so on command. I say, "Evelyn, look at Mama." And she does, every time! She also responds to her name and "talks" up a storm. Indeed, she is now pretty much exactly where Jess is now in terms of her language development. The main difference between them is that whereas Jess prefers to say "dadadadada" she likes to say "mamamama" (and I think she even understands the meaning of that one--though I might be biased).

Other recent feats:

Jess has taken a few steps without the aid of his lion king truck. And he can also balance on his own two feet with no help for up to about 15 seconds! He climbs stairs (his record is 6), "reaches high" above his head, gives kisses on demand (where this means licking your face), and waves bu-bye.

In addition to beginning to drinking from a straw, Evelyn shakes her head 'no' (though she doesn't necessarily mean 'no'), she waves, claps, reaches high (they both do this on command, we can have a baby wave at our own dinner table), pulls to standing, and cruises around holding on to furniture.

In the fashion department there are many--indeed, almost daily--achievements, but I include just a few.

The outfit Jess is wearing in the next picture is one his dad wore when he was a baby!

So, all in all, ordinary life as we now know it is, well, pretty great. I must say there are still many days where I look at this new "ordinary" life of ours in utter amazement. I still cannot believe we did this--traveled across the globe to Kazakhstan, lived there for a whole summer, and then came home with TWIN BABIES! Isn't that wild?

Isn't it cool?