There can't be a more pleasant way to wake up in the morning than to wake up to your beautiful young daughter gently stroking your face. The big girls have been coming down stairs and crawling into bed with Kari in the morning while I have been gone and letting her get an extra half hour of sleep.
Yesterday, Kari woke up to Rylee stroking her cheek. My wife peeked one eye open and smiled at her daughter. Rylee smiled back and said "Poop." "Oh oh." Kari thought.
"Okay, just a minute and I will help you." Kari said as she rolled out of bed. She lead Rylee to the bathroom to clean her up. Rylee had already remove the soiled undergarment, which was nowhere to be found. After cleaning her up Kari asked "Where are the dirty pull-ups?" Rylee lead her to the diaper pail and pointed. Kari lifted the lid and peered inside. She found the missing pull-up, she also found several wet wipes that had recently been used. Yes, Rylee had been trying to clean her self. Kari glanced down at Rylee, who held her hands up over her head, fingers splayed wide, and announced "Wash-a-hans!" The same hands that had been gently caressing her face as she was sleeping were covered with "objectionable material."
Needless to say, Kari gave Rylee's hands and her own face a good scrubbing.
The jungle gym seems to be having the desired effect. The big girls occupy themselves for hours on playing on it. The only drawback so far is that they have not figured out how to propel themselves on the swings yet and insist on being pushed. There have been a few meltdowns when we told them they were going to have to make due without us for a few minutes.
I was feeling a little guilty about buying the jungle gym. It was pretty expensive. However, since we have no help during the day anymore it made sense to me to have something like that, where the big girls could be distracted for a good stretch of time. I figure that it will pay for itself in a matter of weeks compared to having a live-in nanny.
Jordan just pulled herself into a standing position. I figured that we were at least WEEKS away from that. Just in the last couple of days she has really figured out how to crawl. We tried to get a picture of it, but she couldn't hold her self up that long.
Madi is not far behind.
The opponents have gone mobile and can now attack from unexpected directions. You really have to watch were you step. It is not uncommon now to set a baby down on the floor, go get a bottle and then have to make a room to room search for said baby.
Jordan especially has taken to the crawling and seems pretty pleased with herself for figuring that out. Madison, as usual, is about a week behind. She can skooch across the room, but her technique needs some work.
They have also gotten pretty good at moving about in their walkers. They can work up a pretty good head of steam from one end of the kitchen to the other. Whoever designed those walkers either has a sense of humor or is a moron. The bottom of those walkers are just the right height to glide over your toes gash the sensitive skin on the top of your foot. More than once I have been forced to throw myself in front of an onrushing walker and subject my feet to sever damage to save a toddler who was playing carelessly in the middle of the thoroughfare/kitchen. It makes me uneasy thinking of when they turn sixteen and want to drive. Right now they are utterly reckless, a down right menace, showing complete disregard for their own safety and the safety of those around them.
Rylee and Reagan both continue to amaze me. Even taking into account my obvious bias, I think that they are both very bright. Rylee is very organized and likes to have her toys placed in patterns, symmetrically, when she plays. She has gotten into puzzles and surprised me with how well she was doing with a 100 piece jigsaw. Her vocabulary is expanding rapidly, even to include one four letter word that Kari let slip while changing Madison and finding no diapers and no wipes after removing a very soiled diaper.
Reagan is picking up many words also and likes to do everything that Rylee does, much to Rylee's chagrin. You know that your brother or sister always has the better toy. Pushing is still an issue with both of them, but Rylee is usually the instigator. However, they can play nice and do spend plenty of time chasing each other around the house.
The big girls have gotten in the habit of coming down stairs and crawling into bed with us first thing in the morning, I love it.
You know what I mean.
Hilda went home to Mexico on Friday. We sent her off with mixed emotions. She has been a huge help, but having someone live in your house is quite an invasion of privacy.
It is a lot of work just keeping the kids fed and happy. I am sure that the house organization will suffer due to the loss of an extra set of hands.
Enough is enough!:
We have, now that Hilda is gone, decided that the twins are ready to sleep/cry through the night. The last two nights we have turned the monitors off so that we could wake up every 15 minutes to look at the lights on the monitors to see if they were crying. We weren't really able to do that while Hilda was here, because the babies would wake her up and she would get up to hold them. The language barrier made it difficult to explain that we wanted to let them cry and learn to sooth themselves or maybe she just was doing what she wanted (I expect that was the case at least some of the time.) We are still having the night nannies come in the late afternoon till the twins go to bed. 5p.m to 9p.m. is still the bewitching hour. I don't know what it is about that time of day, but it gets crazy.
The reflux is still an issue. They are doing much better, but it is a struggle to get the twins to eat more than about 3 oz. in a sitting. I tend to give up after a little while and figure that they will eat more later. Rarely do I get them to eat much more after the screaming and twisting starts. Kari seems to have the magic touch, that or maybe she is just more persistent. She is a die hard and will work on them for what seems like hours (see the post re: postnatal jujitsu). It can be very frustrating, but I don't think that the twins would be doing as well as they are, weight wise, if it weren't for Kari's efforts. Although, I have seen her get frustrated enough to sling the bottle across the room she seems pretty upbeat at the end of the evening. I think that there is hope for us.
"WASH THEIR HANDS! WASH THEIR HANDS!" Kari was yelling franticly.
She was sticking her head in the back door, hollering like the house was on fire. You can probably guess what they had gotten into to elicit such a reaction from my, usually calm, wife.
Reagan has a toy grocery cart that has migrated from upstairs out to the back yard. Normally, she will cart around stuffed animals, sometimes cups, and occasionally rocks. This day she found a new product with which to fill the basket. And she sure did have a large quantity of it piled up on her cart.
I had been meaning to make the rounds of the back yard with my trusty shovel to pick up after the dogs, but I just had not gotten around to it yet. Now I don't have to.
This is what the GI specialist says to us after we spent ten minutes explaining what is going on. I was thinking "Great, this guy is going to tell us that we are morons, the kids are fine, and send us packing." I was feeling a little self conscious and wondering if I should be feeling silly about bringing the twins in to see him. "Maybe this is as good as it gets and I need to quit whining about it."
But, that wasn't the case. He saw that there was indeed a problem. He was merely curious, and I mistook his comment for an admonishment. "Why do they still have reflux?" " Why didn't your doctor refer you sooner?" "Why did you wait this long to come to me?" "I can help" is where he was going with that line of questioning. Most infants have outgrown the reflux by this stage and I think that he was intrigued. New material for his books and medical mysteries to unravel.
As Kari said in her last post the twins are doing much better on the new meds and we are feeling less like we are in a crisis situation.
I know that there are several people who read this blog to keep up and feel connected. Sorry that we have not posted for so long. I think I was a little down in the mouth and just wasn't up to it.
There is more to tell, but I just got home from a long trip and it will have to wait.