Our girls may only be 15 months old, but if you hope to get into Stanford or UCG (University of California at Google) someday, you have to start formal education early . That’s why when Mommy or Daddy are wasting time on menial tasks like emptying the dishwasher or eating, you can often find the girls learning important skills at the Tupperware Academy.
So many pretty colors - especially the lids. Swirl them around and look at the pretty patterns that emerge from the chaos. Today, abstract. Tomorrow, maybe we’ll make a mosaic.
If there are two shelves and one shelf has about 80 objects on it and the other has about 120, how many objects will there be if you mix them all together?
Question: What happens if I hold an object at head height and let go?
Hypothesis: Something fun.
Experiment: Drop object.
Observation: Loud noise! Wheee!
Conclusion: Fun.
Repeat: Experiments must be repeatable with the same results in order to be considered valid, so repeat test with objects of assorted size and color.
If I grab this bowl from my sister, it makes her sad. On the other hand, it makes me happy. Emotions are weird.
“Once upon a time, there were lots of cabinets. Most of them had locks on them to keep little hands from opening them, especially the ones with mystery liquids that look yummy to drink. The Big Bad Parents didn’t have enough, though, so one day - okay, most days - the two little children decided to go exploring. Tupperware, Tupperware, let us in!”
If all the objects are taken out of a cabinet and there’s no lock to keep the doors shut, is there any point to putting them back in?
Today was Brooke and Claire’s 1st birthday. It’s hard to believe. It seems like just yesterday that they were waking up screaming at 2am and refusing to go back to sleep until 4:30am. Oh, wait. That was last night, so I guess that explains that. Fortunately, that kind of night is a lot less common now, and we’ve got two healthy daughters who don’t seem any worse for wear for having arrived two months ahead of schedule.
If you could see all the blog entries I’ve written in my head about my girls and being their Daddy, you’d be impressed. For reasons that escape me, though, Brooke and Claire are less interested in giving me time to blog about them than in using my time for their own purposes. Thus, life happens faster than I can write about it.
It would take too long to catch up, so here’s some current highlights instead:
Claire started crawling around 8-9 months old, while Brooke chose to observe first and joined in maybe a couple months later. They both cruise (walk around holding on to things) and are improving at standing without holding on to something to keep from falling. Neither is walking yet, but Claire looks very close.
Claire is a climbing maniac. We have a fenced-in play area we call the “Brookeclaire-ium” with lots of toys in there including various stand-n-play kinds of toys along the inside perimeter. Claire’s favorite activity in there lately is to grab onto the fence and start climbing on top of those toys, threatening to topple over to the unpadded outside. It hasn’t happened yet, but she keeps us on her toes.
We haven’t weighed them lately (they only get weighed at doctor appointments and their next one is coming up), but we think they’re probably around 17 lbs., based on a comparison to our friends’ 8-month old son who already weighs 21 lbs. Our girls are on the little side, but that runs in the family.
Claire has beautiful blue eyes that everyone seems to notice and compliment her on right away. Brooke goes for the much more understated beauty of brown eyes - like her daddy. People never tell us how pretty our eyes are the first time they see them, but we know.
Brooke’s first two bottom teeth are almost all the way in. Claire’s bottom two are in, and now her top two are coming in and she thinks it’s funny to bite us and cause us pain. She has also learned to click the upper and bottom teeth together, which skeeves Mommy.
Sleeping has improved compared to how it used to be, but they’re still not consistent. Sometimes they’ll sleep through the night, sometimes they’ll fuss some but get back to sleep, and sometimes we have nights like last night where time definitely doesn’t fly. Naps are hit and miss, but they usually get at least one good one a day.
Eating has improved compared to how it used to be, but as cute those messy little faces are, it doesn’t feel cute at the time when they’re blocking, spitting, slamming, or otherwise making it difficult to get them fed.
They both have great laughs. Brooke’s big laugh is a rapid tee-hee kind of giggle that reminds me of Daffy Duck when he’s doing his silly laugh, and Claire has a throaty guffaw when she really gets going.
They enjoy weekly playtime at Gymboree, which is like structured playtime at a place full of toys with babies and little kids to play on, with lots of songs and other goodies. They started out pretty shy, but have gradually gotten more adventurous about joining in the fun. As at home, Claire is more the adventurer and enjoys some roughhousing, while Brooke likes to observe and take it all in.
We’re still waiting on first words, but they do babble. Brooke is fond of “ba ba ba” strings, while Claire’s preferred sound is “da da da”. They both like making whatever sound happens when you pat their mouths with a finger or jiggle their belly.
Last night was an exciting night for us, because before settling in for the night, Claire decided to give us a little fashion show, treating us to all the latest in Size 0-3 month onesie fashion.
First, she was resplendent in a pink and other shade of pink striped onesie, which boldly made the statement: “I’m a pretty flower”. It didn’t just make that statement figuratively — onesies are apparently required to spell out any metaphors or messages right on the front in case a figuratively challenged parent is too dim to get it on his own. (Not “or her” own, just his. This is fashion, after all.)
Next, she was 100% adorable in a red and pink outfit with flowers. If anyone thought she was only 99% adorable, they’d be wrong, because it said it right there on the onesie: “100% adorable”.
Next, she honored her father in a pastel green number which announced to the world that she was “Daddy’s little sweet pea”.
She followed up the homage to Daddy with a playfully polka dotted baby unitard (I’m getting tired of saying onesie), proclaiming: “I’m a little ladybug.” She looked fierce.
Finally, she closed with her most daring number, a plain white short sleeve t-shirt that left nothing to the imagination since it didn’t even have snaps to close at the crotch. Only her diaper kept her decent. Some might think a plain t-shirt with no writing on it would be boring or worse, playing it safe, but I think I understood what she was getting at. Sometimes, you just have to strip away all the frills and step outside the onesie box to just be seen for who you are, and not what bug you resemble or which adjective fits you and by what percent. Sometimes, you just have to be: Claire. It was a brave statement, and quite a show, even if it did only last about ten minutes.
I should also mention that between outfits, Claire kept spitting up what she had just eaten all over whatever she was wearing, thus necessitating the next outfit. So young, and already purging like a real runway model.
When Brooke and Claire were born, it was not very easy to tell them apart for the first few minutes because most newborns look alike before they get cleaned up, and as cool as the ultrasounds were, they didn’t really give us much in the way of detailed features to distinguish one from the other. After they got cleaned up, though, it was easy to tell them apart for a couple reasons: 1) Their size; and 2) Their hair.
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Hey, Brookie, look what Daddy has! It’s your bottle! Look at that smile on your face. You’re so pretty. Okay, here it comes, open up. Whoa, what’s the matter? Where’d your smile go? Remember ten seconds ago when we you were all happy and smiling at Daddy? Those were good times, weren’t they? It sort of reminded me of that other time twenty seconds ago, when I showed you your bottle and you smiled at me like you wanted it. I’ll never forget those happy times we had. It’s just like that other time thirty seconds ago when I told you how pretty you were while I was holding you and getting ready to feed you, and you smiled at the compliment. I treasure times like thirty seconds ago. You never know when things might take a turn for the worse, Brookie, so savor those times like you had forty seconds ago. Remember that time? That was a special, happy time. Sometimes you don’t even realize how good you have it until the moment is gone, like this one time fifty seconds ago, you were smiling and looking forward to your bottle, not like now when you’re crying and spitting the nipple out every time I try to give it to you. There you go, that’s better. See how nice and cozy it is when you don’t resist and you just eat when you’re hungry instead of crying about it? You even look like you’re on the verge of happiness again. This is so nice, it reminds me of another nice time we had lo these sixty seconds ago. I remember it like it was yester-minute.
Hey, Brookie, look what Daddy has! It’s your bottle! Look at that smile on your face. You’re so pretty. Okay, here it comes, open up.
Whoa, what’s the matter? Where’d your smile go? Remember ten seconds ago when we you were all happy and smiling at Daddy? Those were good times, weren’t they?
It sort of reminded me of that other time twenty seconds ago, when I showed you your bottle and you smiled at me like you wanted it. I’ll never forget those happy times we had.
It’s just like that other time thirty seconds ago when I told you how pretty you were while I was holding you and getting ready to feed you, and you smiled at the compliment. I treasure times like thirty seconds ago.
You never know when things might take a turn for the worse, Brookie, so savor those times like you had forty seconds ago. Remember that time? That was a special, happy time.
Sometimes you don’t even realize how good you have it until the moment is gone, like this one time fifty seconds ago, you were smiling and looking forward to your bottle, not like now when you’re crying and spitting the nipple out every time I try to give it to you.
There you go, that’s better. See how nice and cozy it is when you don’t resist and you just eat when you’re hungry instead of crying about it? You even look like you’re on the verge of happiness again. This is so nice, it reminds me of another nice time we had lo these sixty seconds ago. I remember it like it was yester-minute.
Brooke and Claire turned four months old a few days ago. Besides the requisite amazement at how fast that much time can go by, I reflected on some of the things I can do now that I couldn’t do four months ago, such as:
We listen to a lot of white noise these days. Not long after the girls came home from the hospital, we got a machine for the nursery (plus another kind for downstairs), so we’ve heard a lot of wind, rain, ocean, and sundry other things that hiss, whoosh, and swoosh. The nursery machine has a setting where you can combine sounds, so I like to keep the babies on their toes by combinations like heartbeat + seagulls, or rain + buoy. I hear the vacuum is also a very effective source of white noise, but I hate to waste the electricity, and I don’t know how to turn it on anyway. In the car, we usually find some static between stations to crank up for the girls until they fall asleep. I sometimes listen to white noise (rain or waterfall, usually) when I write, because it’s effective at blocking out distracting sounds without being distracting itself. So, I’m not new to white noise, but until recently, I never gave much thought to why it works.
Kat and I lean toward the homebody end of the lifestyle spectrum already, but from the time her bedrest began around the sixth month of her pregnancy to now, we’ve had a lot of time together, but very few “dates”. We haven’t been completely housebound, but outings have been either one at time (while the other one takes care of the girls), or family outings to such exotic destinations as “the pediatrician” or “the eye doctor”. We still don’t have the pediatrician’s go-ahead to venture out to crowded or enclosed public places like restaurants —giving immunity more time to develop — but we’ve done outside seating a couple of times during off-peak hours. Our last leisurely outing with just the two of us was long enough ago that neither of us could remember when it was or what we did, so we decided to ask Helen to come to work early one day recently so we could have a date. Here’s how it went:
It was, without a doubt, one of my best dates ever.
Last night, when Kat and I took the girls up to bed, Claire and I had our first conversation. Kat was sitting in the glider giving Brooke the last of her bottle, and I was sitting on the floor leaning against the crib, with Claire propped on my bent legs, facing me. Claire was already finished feeding, and as she often is at bedtime, was very alert and smiling a lot. I was smiling back, and she said, “Eh.”
Most of the sounds that come out of the babies’ mouths are crying or hiccup related. They’ll make other sounds occasionally, but they definitely seem random and accidental, not deliberate. There’s been a lot of happy cooing during their first few months (almost four now), but it’s all been unidirectional - cooing by us at them. For Claire’s first “Eh,” I didn’t get too excited.
If you’re a parent, you can probably relate to looking at a hundred different pictures of your baby or child and appreciating each one for it’s unique cuteness, but you probably also know that if it’s not your baby, one or two pictures is usually enough to fill the cute tank and the rest just look the same while you smile and nod politely. That’s sort of how I feel writing about mundane details like who’s eating what or how much they weigh. It’s all interesting to me and I’m grateful for everything about being a father, even the mundane parts, but I’ve steered away from describing Brooke and Claire in meticulous day-to-day detail because I reckon it’s just not that interesting to anyone besides us, and also because one day is pretty much like the next at this point in their development. I don’t mean that as a complaint, and I know that soon they’ll be doing and learning new stuff faster than I can share it in my blog, but for now, the general fatherhood stuff is more interesting to write (and hopefully to read) than redundant updates about how the pooping is going. If you really go for the more mundane stuff, though, here’s what you’ve been missing:
