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.
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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.
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:
I understand a horse’s hooves; they make it possible to support all that weight on a variety of surfaces at a variety of speeds. I understand an eagle’s talons; they’re useful for keeping a good grip on perches and for killing and holding prey. I understand a bear’s claws; they’re great for knocking a salmon out of a river in one swoop, and for scratching bear asses. I don’t understand a baby’s fingernails.
Taking care of Brooke and Claire is immensely satisfying and rewarding, but there’s not a whole lot of variety at this point from one day to the next. Both to amuse ourselves and to have some convenient shorthand to get us through our days, we’ve come up with some baby lingo that makes complete sense to us, but would probably leave anyone else scratching their heads at times. Here are some of my favorites:
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.
It feels so nice to give a bottle to a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to put a fresh diaper on a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to swaddle a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to sing to a crying baby, and she stops crying. It builds confidence in my ability to understand what my baby is communicating and to respond appropriately, which I know (or think) I did because the crying stopped. Other times, I can feed, change, swaddle, sing, or try anything else I can think of, and the crying just continues, driving nails into my brain until I want to scream, “What the fuss!”
Everything seems to shrink around these babies. Onesies that fit just fine only a week or so ago can barely even snap shut anymore. (Fortunately, Claire and Brooke are pretty set for the next few sizes with all the gifts and hand-me-downs they got from friends and family.) My arms must be shrinking, because the girls don’t fit the way they used to, and I know my hands are smaller, because my cupped hand doesn’t swallow them up anymore. I suspect my chest is imploding, because I can barely fit them at the same time if I hold them there nestled beneath my chin.
We track poopy diapers pretty carefully around here, because neither of our girls are frequent poopers. To the casual observer, that sounds like something to be thankful for, not something to worry about, but that’s not the way it works. There are some pretty serious digestive issues that can develop if the bowels aren’t moving, not to mention the simple discomfort and crankiness that accompany constipation, so when they don’t poop enough on their own, we have to help them. That usually starts around the 24-hr. mark with some gentle rectal stimulation with a Q-tip and K-Y jelly during a diaper change. That sometimes does the trick, but not as often as we’d wish. The next step, like if it’s getting closer to the 48-hr. mark, is a glycerin suppository. They don’t come in “newborn” size, so we have to get the normal adult size and cut them down to about 1/8 the original size.
A common variation on the question, “Are they natural”, when people find out you’re having or have twins is, “Which side of the family do they run on?”
