Better late than never... (Do I start every post that way?) Anyway, here are a few random things that I knew I wanted to get down.
- Dinner time is our hardest meal of the day. Blaine is doing really well overall with big boy food, but Pierce doesn't want much to do with it. It's almost like the site of meat offends him or something. Are we going to have a vegetarian on our hands? He'll just fuss and whine and, for awhile, throw the food off his tray. This began the institution of time outs. They get a strike each time they throw food and on the 3rd strike we take their tray off, move their chair towards the wall, and leave them in time out for one minute. Then they get to come back and try again. It actually seems to have worked with Pierce! Now he just fusses, but leaves the food there. We've settled for feeding him a pureed veggie and a fruit when he refuses to eat what we've given him. We figure it's the middle ground without starving him before bedtime. I'm not sure when we'll ever be able to eat family dinners. There's just no way BJ and I can sit down and eat while refereeing food and making sure they've gotten a decent amount.
- This has been a sick summer for us and I suspect Child Watch at the Y has something to do with it. I teach on Mondays and Fridays at 4:30 and take the boys with me. That is, when they're not sick which has been more than half the time. They had a cold right after their birthday, then the three of us got a nasty virus at the very end of June complete with coughing and croup for Pierce. It was ugly! Now Blaine has had a runny nose again, but thankfully it hasn't turned into much more than that. Everyone tries to reassure me that they're just building their immune systems, but really? Three illnesses in 6 weeks. That's too much. We'll survive though.
- Blaine is starting to take his first steps. He is quite proficient at standing on his own and started doing it without really realizing it. Sometimes if we reach out for him he'll take a few hurried steps and then fall into our arms. I think he could do more, but is gaining confidence. He took about 8 one time at my mom's though! This is actually the first new accomplishment that I'm kind of sad for. It feels like another chapter of official babyhood is ending. I love carrying them around. That's one of the things about twins that's hard. I've always loved the feeling of carrying a baby on your hip, but I am so much more reliant on our stroller having two. In either case, I'm in no hurry for either of them to walk.
- Pierce still only has two teeth. I'm starting to get slightly concerned, but yesterday I thought I could see a slight outline of his top two....I hope.
- Blaine has become quite the talker lately and I love it. He is constantly chattering away in his own little language complete with voice inflection. One of his favorite sounds lately is "sh" and he often ends his "words" with it. I hear the word "baish" a lot is seems. :) I try to be good about naming things throughout the day and find myself doing it more specifically with him than Pierce since he has shown an aptitude for talking more, but I need to be more equal about it. Pierce still chatters some in his high, whispery voice and has taken to the phrase "gaga".
- They are still taking two naps a day (usually) and they go down so easily now. They take a morning nap around 9 and an afternoon nap around 1:30. Bedtime is usually around 7 these days. (That's a late bedtime for us!) I think I can safely say that we are seeing all of our hard sleep training pay off. This will be an important paragraph for me to go back and read with our next baby at about month 7. There were some incredibly difficult nights and days when it felt like we'd never get there. Letting them go in the middle of the night and setting an alarm for every 30 minutes to listen in, listening to an hour of crying during naptime when I just wanted a quiet break, allowing the other baby to be woken up from a nap due to his brother's crying. Whew...it still makes my stomach twist thinking about it. Certainly one of the hardest things I've ever done. But now they just go right down for naps and bedtime with maybe one fuss as we leave and a few minutes of chatter before drifting off to sleep. Did I really just type that?? I don't know if every baby ends up here eventually without having to go through the sleep training hell that we did, but I'm gonna say no. I think we'd be surprised about other kids' sleep habits who still wake up at night some and have trouble going to sleep. We did it!!
- Nicknames still abound. Here are the current ones (mostly initiated by me I'm sad to say). Blaine: Puppa or Pup (short for Puppa Lup which I think came from Snuggle Puppy and the fact that he held toys in his mouth), Blainer, Blainer Boy. Pierce: Pooh Bear, Piercey, Pixie/Pix (I think my mom called him a little Pixie sometimes and I just feel like it fits.), Pick a lix. I know, I'm weird.
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