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.
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:
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:
A few mornings ago, Claire was lying on her back after I’d just changed her, and I was making my usual assortment of cooing noises and silly faces at her. She smiled. We’ve spotted occasional spontaneous smiles in both girls for a while now, but this was the first time it looked like a social smile. I stopped the noises and faces until the smile went away, did them again, and she smiled again. I shouted to Kat, who was in another room, “I think I’m making Claire smile!” and she dropped what she was doing and came running in to see. (What she was doing, apparently, was getting dressed, because she arrived topless.) We both let loose with the best baby comedy we could come up with, and Claire responded with more smiles. A couple mornings later after an early morning feeding, Brooke started smiling up a storm at Kat. Kat mercifully let me keep sleeping, but I heard about it later and we’ve been enjoying the ability to make both girls smile ever since. This smiling is a big deal.
Social smiling is part of normal development, so it’s not a big deal in the sense of being surprising, but it’s big for us because: 1) Every sign of “normal” development is good news, especially in the context of their preemie history; and 2) It’s the first outward sign of acknowledging or enjoying our presence, which all parents enjoy, of course, but it’s extra sweet after waiting two extra months.
I am completely enamored of my daughters, and my paternal instinct to love and protect them kicked in even before they were born (maybe even before they were conceived), but I think it’s a good thing we have these instincts, because there’s not a lot of personality or “giving back” from a newborn. It’s easy to love the many little things they do, and to feel joy and satisfaction in caring for them, but what I mean is that they don’t intentionally give back, because they still lack the capacity to really want or intend anything that isn’t driven completely by reflex. Social smiling may start out reflexive, too, but at least it’s in response to something we’re doing, which makes it the first hint that these babies we love so much actually know who their Daddy and Mommy are.
On a side note, I’ve confirmed that the phrase, “I think I’m making Claire smile” does not cause Kat to whip her shirt off and come running. Too bad, because if it worked again, I was interested to see what effect, “I’m making Brooke smile” would have.
Premature babies have two ages: 1) their actual age based on the day they were born; and 2) their “corrected age”, which is based on their full-term due date. Their corrected age stops mattering after a while, but it’s important for assessing early development, because milestones like “Most babies begin to babble and to imitate some sounds by the end of the third month” are based on what’s normal for full-term babies. Without correcting age for prematurity, most preemies would appear developmentally impaired, even when they’re perfectly normal. In two days, Brooke and Claire will be exactly two months old, but today was their due date, so in corrected age, they just turned zero!
There aren’t a whole lot of updates to give or stories to tell about Brooke and Claire these days because they’re still doing what newborns do, and there’s not a lot of variety to that. Don’t get me wrong - I love it. It just doesn’t make for a lot of interesting stories to tell. They sleep (a lot), cry, eat, burp, poop (infrequently), spit up (occasionally), grow, smile randomly, jerk their arms around, grab stuff reflexively (including their own faces), get the hiccups, make a variety of adorable expressions and sounds, and study their ABCs. Next week they’ll start learning pre-algebra.
Brooke and Claire had their first eye exams today. It was Brooke’s first trip out of the house since coming home last weekend, and Claire’s second because she already had her first pediatrician appointment earlier in the week. It was our first time going anywhere with the twin stroller, and even though the only action it saw was a short trip from the parking lot to the waiting room, that was enough to have the first couple of run-throughs for a script I’m sure we’ll repeat over and over and over again:
“Are they twins?” “Yes.” “Boys or girls?” “Two girls.” “Identical?” “No.” “How do you tell them apart?” “They look different.” “They’re going to be double the trouble.” [Nudge nudge, wink wink.] “Yes, children suck, don’t they?”
Brooke spent the last few days trying to master finishing a bottle at every feeding under the time limit (30 minutes), and what finally seemed to do the trick was spacing her feedings out a little more (every four hours instead of every three) and compensating for the decreased frequency with increased volume. She improved with that schedule enough to be ready for a car seat test last night, which she passed, so… Brooke is coming home today! Yaaay, Brookie Brooke!
