It’s been awhile since I documented the growth of my girls. So here’s what’s going on these days.
Of most importance is we’ve got two teethers. M. is working on her two year molars, and C. is pushing through her bottom two front teeth. That’s right, she’s getting teeth before she’s four months old. So we’ve been going through Motrin and Tylenol and diapers like it’s going out of style.
One of M.’s favorite phrases is, “OH MY GOODNESS!” One evening last week, when I was changing a particularly nasty, teething diaper, she let me know how she felt about it, “M. made more poopies. OHHH MY GOOODNESSSS!!!!!” Even she was disgusted.
In a related note, anytime we change M., she is nice enough to repeat the following mantra, “Don’t pee on Daddy/Mommy!” Depending on which parent is changing her, of course.
On to better things. C., about two weeks ago, discovered both her laugh and that she was ticklish. We’ve had great fun getting her to belly laugh at us ever since. I’ve discovered that you pretty much forget everything about kids as they grow, because there is so much going on. Thus, I was delighted to relive the moments when infants start smiling and laughing and cooing anytime they see you. There’s nothing like watching C., as she stares blankly at the ceiling or a toy or something, then her eyes catch me and they immediately beam while she grins and flips her legs up in happiness. One night, I got her to laugh for a solid 20 minutes. After a few minutes, M. walked over and started laughing along with us. So, for about ten minutes, I was sitting on the couch just laughing with my daughters, without anything funny, apart from our laughter, going on. Very good times.
M. is just a little language machine these days. There’s definitely been a leap from a few sentences up to almost always speaking in sentences. A month ago she babbled indistinguishable nonsense. Now, when she’s playing in another room or entertaining herself in the morning before we get her out of bed, almost everything we hear is coherent, English sentences. It’s been a pretty dramatic change. Now, she’s a person, it seems. Another one of my favorite lines of hers came one afternoon, when I was getting her up from her nap. C. was in her room, lying in her crib, watching her mobile. M. heard the music and said, “Do you hear it? C.’s mobile?” “Yes, I hear it,” I responded. “It must be close…” she said. Whoa, where did that come from? She’s really starting to spit out phrases like that, which for the past two years she’s been carefully taking in and holding until she found them useful.
Oh, and we finally figured out what Poppy Doppy means. Humpty Dumpty, apparently. I think I like Poppy Doppy better. Strange how she was saying it at totally random moments.
C. still doesn’t understand that she should be fully capable of sleeping through the entire night. We’re pretty consistently down to a mid-night feeding, usually around 2:00 or so, then often another one between 5 and 6. About once a week, we have a three bottle night. We’ve finally decided just to let her cry sometimes, which kind of works. I think if you wake up and hear her for the 45 minutes it takes her to get back to sleep on her own, it’s just as bad as getting up, but I guess this is progress.
M. never climbed. She never tried to get out of her crib, or climb onto things she wasn’t supposed to be on. Within the last month, though, her curiosity about what C. is doing in her crib took over, and she now climbs up the side so she can peek in and see what her little sister is doing. We have a small step-stool next to C.’s crib, which M. uses to get to the lowest rail, then she hangs with her chin just over the top rail, watching C. watch her mobile or play with her aquarium.
I’m a little worried that I saw an early indication of how the girls will get along last weekend. I was holding C. and M. decided to climb up next to us and cuddle. As soon as she got situated, C. reached out and grabbed a handful of M.’s curls and pulled hard. Rather than fighting back or screaming or otherwise acting out, M. looked at me with a face of sheer helplessness, got huge tears in her eyes, and just laid her head on my chest. She left it there until I was able to pry C.’s hands open and remove the hair, then she just looked at C. with tears streaming and her bottom lip stuck out. So, naturally, C. reached out and grabbed her hair again. Same reaction. I’m pretty sure I saw a look in C.’s eyes that meant something like, “Oh yeah, she’s mine!”
Fortunately, despite the teething and her sister knocking her around, M. has really curtailed the whining quite a bit. Don’t get me wrong, we still get more than we like. But compared to a couple weeks back, it’s been greatly reduced. It’s nice to remember what a good kid she is most of the time.
As our latest pictures show, we pulled out the exersaucer this week. M. is still trying to understand that it’s not hers anymore, and that she shouldn’t grab the seat and spin C. around (that activity has prompted two time outs this week), but she does love to watch C. play in it, and “helps” her with all the toys around the edge. I’m not sure C. needs, wants, appreciates the help, but M. pitches in anyway.