Something to Talk About

Leah and Riley have been babbling for months now, but the babbling has recently gotten a heckuva lot more intense. Here's a snippet of what our household has sounded like over the past few days:

Leah: Doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy!
Me: Really? That's interesting, Leah.
Riley: Gggggggggggpthaaaaaaaaaagggggg! [Spit flying everywhere]
Me: [wiping spit from face] Really? That's interesting, Riley.
Leah and Riley: aaaa--AAAAAAA-aaaa!
Me: You don't say!

I have definitely got to work on my baby conversational skills. I think some mothers are naturally gifted and can effortlessly carry on long conversations/monologues with their babies even though the babies (a) cannot speak, and (b) cannot understand speech. Which would normally be considered major obstacles to good conversation. But mothers always seem to be undeterred by this. When I see mothers pushing their babies in their strollers, they're always leisurely talking to their babies -- they're asking them how their day is going, they're updating them on where they're going and how the rest of the day is going to go, they're regaling them with fascinating tales about days of yore. When I see fathers pushing their babies in their strollers, they're usually just trying to go where they need to go as fast as they can, before the babies start crying.

When I do have a "conversation" with the girls, it generally falls into one of three categories:

• Category 1: Girls babble and daddy pretends that they're saying something (see "doy-doy" example).
• Category 2: Daddy narrates everything he's doing. For some reason, I usually do this in song. Some of daddy's greatest hits include "Daddy Put Leah's Onesie on Backwards" and "Daddy's Trying to Wash Riley's Legs (But Riley Won't Stop Splashing Him)". I don't know why it has to be in song -- maybe it's so that the music disguises the boringness of what I'm actually saying.
• Category 3: Daddy tells the girls how cute they are. As in "Who's the cutie? RILEY'S the cutie!"

Of course, the thing about having twins is that as soon as you tell one of them how cute they are, you instantly feel guilty unless you immediately follow up by telling the other one that, of course, they are equally as cute. You end up catching yourself and saying things like "Who's the sweetest girl in the world? Leah is! Um, except for Riley! Who is exactly as sweet as Leah! They score exactly the same on the sweetness scale! Uh, yeah!"

Oh well. So maybe I'm not a great baby conversationalist. I guess it's not like I'm a great adult conversationalist either. Actually, the next time I have an awkward conversation pause, I'm going to follow the wise words of my daughter Leah, and just say "doy-doy-doy-doy".

...Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

I've always liked hearing those stories about identical twins getting separated at birth and living totally different lives with different parents. And then they get reunited when they're like 40 years old and they find out that they have all these weird, quirky things in common. Like, say, they both put ketchup on their eggs, or they both always sleep on their stomachs, or they both get creeped out by the animation in the Toy Story movies. The general upshot of those stories is that it's all about genetics. When it comes to identical twins, genetics apparently kicks "environment's" butt. Shared DNA seems to trump those other pesky little details like, you know, their parents' emotional, intellectual, and financial support.

Now, I know that Leah and Riley aren't identical twins, but given that they have similar DNA and are being brought up by the same parents in the same parenting style, I was thinking that they would grow up to be at least somewhat similar. Or at least have at least one or two similar personality traits.

But here we are as the girls approach 9 months old and they really couldn't be more different:

• Riley: serene. Leah: spazz.
• Riley: stingy with smiles. Leah: always smiling unless she's crying.
• Riley: likes other babies. Leah: either ignores other babies or makes them cry.
• Riley: patient. Leah: totally incapable of waiting for anything.
• Riley: shy around adults. Leah: total adult-charmer.
• Riley: potato. Leah: po-tah-to.

And the list goes on and on. As far as I can tell, they don't share a single personality trait. Plus, they don't even look like sisters, at least to me. Basically, it's like Leah is from Mars and Riley is from, like, Krypton.

Kathy's explanation for this is that she had a little fling with the mailman about 18 months ago, and that one of the twins has a different daddy. I am pretty sure that she's joking.

She's joking about that, right?

Just Because It's Father's Day

The thing about writing a blog about your kids is that while parents always think that everything that their kids do is a-DOR-able, that adorableness doesn't necessarily translate into scintillating reading for all the non-biologically related folks out there. The girls do tons of cute things every day, but most of them are of the ya-kinda-had-to-be-there variety, and I'm pretty sure you all don't want to hear about every time Leah or Riley makes a cute noise, or every time they make a funny face, or every time they make a grunty-poopy sound at an inappropriate time. Or maybe you think you do, but trust me, you don't. 'Cause, for starters, they sure do make a lot of grunty-poopy sounds.

But it's Father's Day, so in the spirit of Father's Day, here's a little fatherly gushing. Because if there's ever a day when it's okay to gush, it's gotta be Father's Day, right? I apologize in advance. Sorry everybody, it'll be over soon.

As I've mentioned in the past, Leah likes her toys. If you give her a toy, she'll immediately do the following three things, usually in this order.

1. Put toy in mouth. See what toy tastes like.
2. Shake toy. See what noise toy makes.
3. Put toy in mouth again.

She'll do this even with toys that make absolutely no noise, like a teddy bear. Heck, she'll do this with things that aren't even toys. Burp cloths, hats, bottles, it doesn't seem to matter -- Leah will wave it around with this goofy grin on her face. My favorite is when we give her a finger food or a biscuit or something and she puts it in her mouth, takes it out to give it a good shake, then puts it back in her mouth.

As for Miss Riley, her favorite pastime is bouncing. If she didn't have to eat and sleep and poop, she would perfectly happy in her Jumperoo, bouncing all day and all night, from now until she turns eighteen. She's really not all that interested in doing anything else. She'll play half-heartedly with her toys, but we all know that she's really just biding her time until her next bouncing opportunity.

The bouncing is cute as hell of course, but it becomes a bit of an impediment now that we're trying to get her to learn to stand up and walk. We'll hold her up in a standing position or try to get her "walk" across the room, but instead of standing or walking, she'll rhythmically bounce up and down, like she's dancing to some music in her head. She usually has her lips pursed together in a Billy Idol-like sneer when she does this. With the face that she makes and the fact that she's doing these little bouncy pelvic thrusts, she kinda looks like what I imagine Elvis would look like if he were kinda uncoordinated. And about two feet tall. And um, a girl.

I'd better stop now, because I know you can tell that I could go on and on, and it could get very ugly. I did want to post the video below, which shows how the girls reacted when Kathy got the hiccups on Saturday.

Hey Jealousy

It's been pretty amazing watching Leah and Riley become more and more aware of each other, but the flip side is that we're starting to see what looks like the early stages of twin jealousy seeping in. You can see it when Kathy comes home from work -- both the girls' faces instantly light up, and both Leah and Riley eagerly hold their arms out toward mommy, impatiently waiting for mommy to pick them up. And because mommy has not yet mastered the art of simultaneously picking up two babies without bonking their heads together, she will generally pick up one baby while daddy swoops in to distract the other baby so that she doesn't realize that she is getting the oh-so-short end of the parent stick.

For the record, this swooping never works. Leah and Riley may be just eight months old, but they sure as hell know the difference between mommy picking them up and hugging them and daddy swooping in and making raspberry sounds and chanting "mmm-bah". Um, Daddy, I've known mommy a long time... mommy is a friend of mine. Daddy, you're no mommy.

So, despite daddy's efforts, the "other" girl will stare longingly at her sister being hugged by mommy, and you can almost see the little cartoon thought-cloud over her head saying "Hey! That's MY mommy! Get away from MY mommy!"

In general, Leah's the jealous one. She's the one always reaching to the other side of the double stroller to steal Riley's toys. In one instance, Leah reached over and grabbed Riley's pacifier right out of her mouth and triumphantly inserted it into her own mouth. This happened even though Leah doesn't actually like pacifiers, and never has. No matter -- Leah saw Riley enjoying her pacifier and had to put a stop to it. Gotta show Riley who's boss, ya know.

Speaking of jealousy -- why the heck does mommy get the dramatic, heartfelt hug greeting when she gets home and daddy just gets a smile and maybe a giggle if he's lucky? What is daddy, parental chopped liver?

As it turns out, kinda, yes. I guess that's what we get for not having things like breasts and birth canals.

The Wave

Over the past week or so, we've had a couple of bad days with the girls where they haven't been their usual chipper selves for some reason. Leah's had a bit of a cold lately and has occasionally been waking up from naps crying as if someone were trying to kill her. Which of course freaks Riley out just a bit and so we end up with a not-so-great start to the afternoon. This is what happened to us yesterday afternoon as I was at home with the girls covering for our nanny who had the day off. After this inauspicious start, the girls just generally didn't feel like cooperating with daddy, so everything that afternoon -- bottle-feeding, food-feeding, getting them into the stroller, whatever -- was just a little more difficult than it usually is. And so as the afternoon dragged on and I waited desperately for Kathy to get home, I was feeling more and more frustrated and defeated.

I think the girls can somehow sense when daddy's almost at the end of his rope, because at times like these, one of the girls will usually throw daddy a bone. I had Riley on the floor on her tummy and was holding her favorite plastic fish in front of her trying to get her to reach for it. I do this occasionally to try to encourage her to crawl, but neither of our girls has shown much interest in learning how to crawl yet. But in this instance, for some reason, Riley desperately wanted to grab this fish, and she started trying everything she could think of to try to get closer to that fish. First she started doing this weird breaststroke-like swimming motion. When that didn't work, she lifted her butt up and pulled herself into this crouching-tiger position. Then with a mighty "gggggggga" sound, she lunged after the fish, but she got the motion wrong so she ended up propelling herself backward, and face-planting into the ground.

It was pretty much the cutest thing you ever saw in your life. It's one of those moments where the cuteness totally bowls you over and knocks you down, like a wave at the beach that comes out of nowhere. This was a cuteness tsunami, basically.

Raising twins is frequently exhausting, but one of the best things about it is that we get twice as many moments like this as we would with one baby. We get a whole bunch of these moments, although most of them would sound mundane or stupid if I tried to describe them in this blog, but trust me, they're fricking cute. But dammit, we NEED twice the number of these moments, because these moments are what sustain us. They're like food to our famished souls, or like water to our parched souls, or like -- um, something else to our something souls. Ran out of analogies there, but you get the idea. We need 'em.

Here's to getting knocked over again...

The Golden Age

Leah and Riley are now eight months old, and the general consensus among parents that we talk to is that this is supposedly one of the easiest and most fun ages for children. Eight months is old enough for the kids to play and laugh and smile and to generally be adorably cute, but it's still too young for them to be able to get into much trouble or injure themselves or others too badly.

So far I've got to agree with the parent consensus. Kathy and I have been realizing lately that this past week that we're kinda living in the Leah-and-Riley Golden Age right now. The girls are generally sleeping 11 hours through the night, they're eagerly eating the food we're feeding them, they're taking two solid long naps most days, and the inexplicable periods of fussiness are fewer and farther between.

And when I've had to take care of the girls by myself recently, of course it's still tiring, but it's no longer the life-draining, painstaking ordeal that it used to be. It no longer leaves me a sad, lifeless, defeated lump at the end of the night. I'm not quite sure if that it means that I'm getting better at this twin parent thing or if they're getting easier. My money says they're getting easier.

But there are definitely a few lessons I've learned in the past few months about how to take care of twins when you're by yourself:

1. When bottle-feeding both babies at the same time, you need to switch your focus back and forth between babies every few seconds. Otherwise, the baby you're not watching will move her head and the bottle nipple will go astray, and you'll eventually find out that you've been holding the bottle over the bridge of Riley's nose for the past 45 seconds and there's a big pool of milk on her forehead. Not that that's ever happened to me. No.
   
2. Any activity that can simultaneously entertain both babies is a winner. Even if it makes daddy look like an idiot. Because the only people who know that daddy's making an ass of himself again are eight months old, and they have no social standards yet. (I mean, they still grunt loudly when they're taking a poop in public -- daddy stopped doing that decades ago.)
3. Conserve energy. I used to jump, hop, and leap around the room to try to keep the girls smiling and entertained. That usually worked for about five minutes, after which the girls would get totally bored with daddy's antics, and daddy himself would be totally wiped out and in need of oxygen - with no energy and still another long hour to go before the babies' next nap. I've realized that in the long run it's much smarter to just say - hey Leah, you chew on this burp-cloth for five minutes while daddy eats this granola bar. Leah finds it just as entertaining and daddy gets an energy-boosting snack!
   
4. When all else fails, just kill time by putting the girls in a stroller and going for a walk.

The bad thing about living in the Golden Age is that you realize that it can't last forever. Pretty soon, Leah and Riley will be crawling in different directions and I'll be frantically running after them to keep them from causing property damage or personal injury. And I will think back to when they were eight months old, and I'll think -- ah, those were the days.

Down with Progress

Leah and Riley turn eight months old tomorrow, and of course every month brings a whole bunch of new milestones and changes in behavior. Now I love a good baby milestone as much as the next guy, but I’m discovering that with every cool milestone there seems to come a bunch of hidden drawbacks that I hadn’t considered.

Like the girls are eating all kinds of solid foods now, which is fun and cool and cute and everything, but the whole dietary shift has Leah’s digestive system a little befuddled so that she is now experiencing near-daily bouts with painful constipation. Or the girls have recently become great sitter-uppers, which is awesome because they can now play with all their toys more easily, but once in awhile when they're sitting they become so entranced by the toy they’re holding that their sitting-up muscles kinda forget what they’re supposed to be doing, and we watch helplessly as they tip over in slow motion like the last bowling pin and unceremoniously bonk their head on the floor.

And I suppose this isn’t exactly a “milestone”, but for the past five nights in a row, Leah and Riley have both slept through the night from about 7:15 pm to 6:15 am without any intervention from mommy and daddy. The girls have actually been pretty good sleepers for awhile, but typically Riley would start complaining once or twice or three times a night and somebody would have to briefly wake up to put the pacifier back in her mouth. That “somebody” would usually be the lighter sleeping parent, aka (ahem) Daddy.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. It sounds like a drag to wake up twice in the middle of the night, stumble over to the nursery, find Riley’s pacifier in the dark, and stick it back into her mouth, but I really didn’t mind at all. Actually, upon hearing Riley start to complain, I would eagerly leap out of bed before Kathy ever had a chance to wake up. Why? Because Riley is actually at her peak of cuteness when she’s awake in the middle of the night. When I walk in there, Riley’s face lights up with the light of a thousand suns and a huge grin spreads across her face and she does this little ecstatic dance of joy within the confines of her sleep sack. I put the pacifier in her mouth, and she looks up at me with this grateful, content, peaceful expression that I almost never see in the light of day. It’s frickin' awesome, I tell you.

Because Riley has not woken us up in the past five nights, my best guess is that Riley has figured out how to find her own pacifier and put it back in her mouth. Which is awesome, because mommy and daddy have gotten to sleep uninterrupted through the night (bladder permitting) for the past few days. At the same time, part of me is crushed that my nightly moment watching Riley’s dance of joy might be going away. Totally crushed.

Progress: It’s awesome, but it kinda sucks.

Of course, now that I've blogged about it, karma will now cause Riley to wake me up eleven times tonight. Just you watch.

And here's another fleetingly precious moment from a couple weeks ago: