Stop and Sniff

Emma says, "Mom mom mom!" as she stands at the gate to her bedroom door. She holds onto the gate and bounces up and down, looking me in the eye beseechingly.

"Mom mom mom!" She wants me to pick her up and let her out of "jail". Her twin brother sits behind her, motoring around the room, practicing his new crawling skills. "Mom mom mom!"

Does she really mean it? Is she saying it because she means me or is she just making sounds? I'm not sure, but it makes me light up when I talk to her, pick her up and snuggle her. Is she learning the right word to go with the person or is my response to a specific sound making that sound more likely to be repeated? Chicken and egg.

Logan has really taken off with the crawling thing. He goes from one end of the room and back again, in his very traditional style crawl. He also has been pulling himself up to a standing position and checking the world out that way as well. Emma still uses the weird one-leg-up crawl. However she has also been practicing holding onto things with just one hand and then letting go. She stands there, unsupported for one second...two seconds...three seconds and then Whump! falls back onto her padded bum. She bounces up and down, excited to practice balancing with one hand holding onto something or someone.

Emma also likes to motor around the room with sound effects: "Bbbbbbbbb!" Logan likes to make "Deedle deedle deedle!" sounds. Both say da-da-da, but don't quite seem to associate it with Eric yet. Emma might be a little closer to doing so, but it's hit or miss at the moment.

At 8 1/2 months, they are eating solid food like champs. Turns out that Logan is a strawberry fiend. If you give him strawberries first, he won't eat anything else you put in front of him and will fuss until you lay out more strawberries. Thus, we've learned to put them down last. Emma, not as neat an eater as Logan is (Those few extra weeks of eating practice have really helped his hand to mouth coordination skills!), likes strawberries too, but she doesn't go on a food strike until you load her up like Logan. She does, however, like Mexican food: guacamole, tomatoes, refried beans and Spanish rice. Nice to know! Both babies take bottles just fine now. Turns out that starting them with apple juice in a bottle was the key. That and leaving defrosted breastmilk cold, instead of warming it up. I now escape for hours at a time to go work at the farm or sell at the Market until my engorged breasts send me running for the twins.

Both of the twins really like being "walked" around now, where you hold them by the hands and let them walk around the room. The only trouble is that they're so short it makes my back hurt and there are two of them! So you have to do twice as much hunched over baby walking as you would normally. Ouch! It is fun to watch their faces light up as Eric or Caitlin bring them walking quickly towards me.

It's fun to watch them play together/side-by-side. Emma climbs up and over me, 4-wheeling it (As we say.) over my legs and feet. Logan crawls away, plays with a toy and tosses me a charming grin from across the room before crawling back into my lap and getting chewed on. He laughs and laughs when I make raspberries against his neck and sides. Emma doesn't laugh quite as easily as Logan does, but when she starts, she's so very sweet. I like watching her nose and eyes crinkle up in delight.

It's definitely getting easier to have twins, but it's still a whole helluva lotta work! Each day feels like being tossed in a blender, with only a few minutes here and there to get anything approaching "work" done. Most serious work still has to wait for them to be asleep at night. I tend to resent all of the interruptions during the day until I just give up and sit down with them and watch them explore the world around them. Then, suddenly, it's all new again and I'm too enthralled watching to get up and get my camera. I have to learn that instead of "stopping to smell the roses", I instead "stop and sniff the babies". This is one of my favorite stages and it will be gone all too soon.

Must remember that.

Stop. Sniff babies. Snuggle. Photograph. Repeat.

Especially that photograph part!