Month 15

Week 65

Photos taken between January 11 and 17, 2010. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 64

Photos taken between January 4 and 10, 2010. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 63

Photos taken between December 28, 2009 and January 3, 2010. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 62

Photos taken between December 21 and 27, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 61

Photos taken between December 14 and 20, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Tumbleweeds

Sorry that the blog has been so quiet lately. Matt is finishing up school (and he even has a job waiting for him in January!), the babies have been quite stubbornly sick, and in our limited free time we’ve been trying to get ready for the holidays (and, okay, I spent a few evenings watching Pride and Prejudice for some much needed escapism).

The babies turned 14 months yesterday, so I’m due for a post about that. Matt’s out of town this weekend for his grandmother’s memorial service, though, and of course he’s trying to return during a giant snowstorm, so I’m pretty much on my own with the kids for the next day or so. So in anticipation of that post being tardy, here is a video to hold you over (for the few of you who didn’t see it posted on Facebook):

Month 14

Week 60

Photos taken between December 7 and 13, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 59

Photos taken between November 30 and December 6, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 58

Photos taken between November 23 and 29, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 57

Photos taken between November 16 and 22, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Thirteen Months

After the fanfare of the 12-month mark, this subsequent monthly update is bound to feel rather lackluster and anti-climactic. But in fact, the month was not at all lackluster: it was busy and fun and challenging.

The excitement of the first birthday festivities was quickly followed by the excitement of Halloween. It didn’t start out well: the babies were none too thrilled to be woken up from naps, stuffed into hot, cheap, polyester fleece costumes, and carted into my office to be shown off at the annual “Goosebumps” party to which the children of all employees are invited. Let’s just say that when the head of HR distributed the photos of adorable be-costumed children frolicking merrily at the party, Julian and Eloise were notably absent.

Things improved on Halloween itself, however. Our good friends Ilissa and Dave came to visit with their darling three-month-old son, Ethan, and we dressed all the babies up and took them on a late-afternoon stroll around the neighborhood. We returned home to greet the torrents of trick-or-treaters, and a torrent it was – the street was packed with children and parents. It was a very warm night, so we brought the babies outside to witness the action, and Eloise seemed to be electrified by all the activity. She ran laps up and down the street for as long as we would let her, trying to climb the stairs on the neighbors’ front stoops, weaving in and out of the throng of trick-or-treaters.

Month thirteen was a challenge because both babies were sick nearly the entire time. While neither had H1N1, their illnesses seemed to add up to a sort of deconstructed swine flu: first they each had a cold with some respiratory symptoms, then they moved on to a nasty gastro-intestinal virus, and finally they rounded things out with a 48-hour flirtation with high fever. They took turns — always Julian first — and while I think it was probably easier that they never were both very sick at the same time, it certainly was a long few weeks. Matt and I managed to stay healthy, mercifully, but this glimpse of the non-stop illness that comes with having young kids in winter has left us a bit apprehensive about what’s ahead.

Developmentally, the babies seem to be gaining receptive language at a rapid clip. This feels like a momentous change: now, whatever I say to them, there’s at least some slight chance that they’re going to derive some glimmer of understanding from it! I know that doesn’t sound like much, but after a year in which their knowledge of English words was inferior to that of the cats, it’s a huge improvement.

What they aren’t doing much of is talking. Both babies can say “Dada” pretty reliably, but that’s it. Eloise says “hi,” her catch-all syllable for “this object is interesting to me,” nearly incessantly, and won’t say anything at all if you prompt her with something like, “Can you say ‘kitty’?” Julian, on the other hand, responds to that prompt with a pause and then a jubilant “Dada!” It’s kind of adorable. “Julian, can you say ‘kitty’?” Pause. “Dada!” “Julian, can you say ‘Mama’?” Pause. “Dada!” We aren’t worried about their lack of verbal giftedness, because they seem so engaged and communicative now even without words (and they continue to love books, racing over and sitting down attentively when they hear the word “read”), so we know that language will come with time.

One area that has seen some advancement at last is Eloise’s hair growth. She has progressed from complete baldie, to John Stamos on Full House (weird on top, long in back), to David Bowie in Labyrinth (really weird on top, really long in back). Okay, those are exaggerations, but that’s the impression that she gives me. Things seem to be picking up in that area, and it’s sort of nice to imagine how she’ll look in a few months with a regular head of hair. (Julian, on the other hand, is starting to look scruffy, and our first baby haircut is on the horizon, though Matt is in denial about this.)

There’s no question that the 13-month milestone feels different to me than the others. Each previous one felt momentous for one reason or another, especially since they seemed to be counting down to the one-year mark. And now the first birthday has come and gone, and the monthly milestones feel less like hurdles cleared, less like goals attained, and more like small signposts marking off the passage of everyday life. That said, the babies are still changing all the time, and the changes now are even more interesting to me than the changes in the first year (I remember that the changes from month one to month two were mostly things like a reduction in the amount of grunting they did in their sleep). So it’s nice to pause and regularly reflect on how fast and how far they come each month. (In a nutshell: Fast. And far.)

Month 13

Stacked

It’s been crazy around here, with the babies taking turns coming down with first some kind of nasty stomach bug and then some kind of 48-hour virus that, while it appears not to have been H1N1, still shot Eloise’s fever up over 103. We’re glad that’s over with.

Apropos of nothing, here are two pictures documenting Julian’s facility with neatly stacking his toys:

It’s worth clarifying that the wooden post on the ring stacker only comes up to about the orange ring. He just grabbed discs from another set and kept on stacking.

Week 56

Photos taken between November 9 and 15, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Maclaren Mania

I think people are going a little nuts with the Maclaren recall. It’s terrible that twelve children were injured, but I think it’s important to keep in mind how small that number is in comparison to the number of Maclaren strollers on the market.

The coverage has been a bit maddening. The NYT’s Motherlode breathlessly wonders:

Add frustration with the logistics of the recall to fears about finger amputation — not to mention the question of how on earth to get junior to the park or the supermarket if the stroller is now too dangerous to use — and you have some cranky parents.

Except, as I understand it, the strollers aren’t too dangerous to use. They’re just potentially dangerous to fold if your kid is sticking their fingers in there. We never fold up our stroller (it just lives on our porch) so there’s really no reason for us to freak out.

Motherlode also wonders if “too much damage to customer loyalty has already been done” by the fact that Maclaren’s website was overloaded by requests for hinge covers yesterday. Who in their right mind would stop using a stroller they already own and like because a company’s website crashed? I don’t think I understand people. Handling a recall is a very delicate operation, and customers are bound to get nervous and angry, but I don’t understand why the media is calling this a PR disaster just because the recall was successfully publicized.

Week 55

Photos taken between November 2 and 8, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 54

Photos taken between October 26 and November 1, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 53

Photos taken between October 19 and October 25, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Nerds

The twins had their twelve-month doctor’s appointment today. It involved 5 shots each plus a blood draw, which was no fun for anyone, let me tell you. There was one light moment, though, that I think speaks volumes about Rachel and me.

Dr. Griffith, our fantastic pediatrician, was being shadowed by a medical student. We were talking about feeding, and he mentioned that he recommended we continue feeding them baby cereal for a bit longer rather than switch to regular oatmeal or some other cereal. He then turned to the med student and asked, “Why do you think I recommend the baby cereal?”

“Um,” she said, “Fiber?”

“Yes, fiber is important,” Dr. Griffith said, “but the other very important thing is…” He paused for maybe half a second. At this point, had you been looking at Rachel and me, you would have seen us literally sitting on the edge our chairs and bouncing up and down. We very nearly both had our hands in the air, waving, “Ooh! Ooh! Call on me!”

We couldn’t restrain ourselves. We blurted out, “Iron!” a split-second before Dr. Griffith said, “Iron.”

So, yeah. Big nerds. (I’m pretty sure that med student hates us now.)

Twelve Months

I am not going to pretend I haven’t been dreading writing this post. One year — such a momentous milestone! How could I ever hope to write an appropriately momentous blog post? How could I hope to neatly capture the tumult and misery and euphoria of the past year? Frankly, I can’t. This felt like the longest and messiest year of my life, and I simply can’t sum it up (aside from maybe a long and messy blog post saying it was tumultuous, miserable, and euphoric). Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin.

While I think about it, I’ll recount the twins’ birthday festivities. Two days before their birthday, most members of our immediate families came for a fairly low-key celebration featuring cupcakes, wonderful gifts, and a 35-minute slide show of the year of daily pictures (yes, that’s 724 photos at 3 seconds apiece). The babies were relatively well behaved, if somewhat overwhelmed by all the gifts and the people who wanted to snuggle them. Interestingly, they were not particularly wild about their cupcakes. I assume this means they just naturally prefer vegetables and that we will never have to worry about them badgering us for non-nutritious snacks.

Then this past weekend we hosted a 60-person birthday bash. A party of that size wasn’t exactly the plan, but a year of social deprivation can make you lose your head when you are listing all the people you’d really like to see. Then they all said yes, and before we knew it we were preparing for the largest party we’ve ever hosted. The babies were absolute rock stars, with Eloise comfortably walking around amidst all the guests and Julian playing happily in the family room, a.k.a. Baby Fun Land Happy Times Village. We are now all pretty thoroughly partied out.

Photo by Ken Zawsum.

Julian and Eloise also received more than 30 birthday emails from family, friends, and fans. I know that one day they will enjoy them every bit as much as Matt and I did (yes, we are reading their email — it’s our parental responsibility to ensure that no cyber-predators are trying to wish them happy birthday). Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to write to them!

Since there’s no point in taking a year-long look at how Julian and Eloise have changed (they were born scrawny and toothless and couldn’t do anything; now they’re plump and toothy and can get into all sorts of mischief!), I’ll simply continue my standard account of how they changed in the past month.

As predicted in my eleven month post, Julian is walking! It’s amazing how differently he and Eloise learned; she was zipping around confidently within a couple days of her first steps, while he has been slowly improving over the several weeks since he made his own first staggering attempts. Eloise was clearly physically ready for walking, but it just hadn’t occurred to her yet. Julian probably wasn’t really ready until much more recently, but seeing Eloise walk motivated him to try sooner than I think he might have if he were the only baby.

I love that they get ideas from things they see now. They pick up on concepts so much more quickly. At the playground recently, Eloise was pushing a large truck toy around, and an older boy ran over and started to scoop handfuls of sand into it. He quickly tired of it and ran off, but Eloise immediately starting scooping sand into it herself. Sometimes I think I underestimate how readily they will understand things. The other week I was brushing Julian’s hair after the bath, and it occurred to me that perhaps I should let him hold the brush while I demonstrated how he should use it. I expected him to require multiple weeks of repetition before he caught on, but he immediately starting moving the brush in the general direction of his hair in a brushing motion. (Not perfect, but he clearly understood what I was showing him.) When did my kids get all smart like that?

Relatedly, we are really starting to tune into their receptive language skills. We love testing out what they know — we’ll use words without any gestures or other helpful cues to see whether “Where’s the window?” gets them to look at the window, or whether “splash,” “clap,” or “bounce” elicits the proper action (they all do). And if I point to Matt and say “Who’s that?” Julian will smile and say “Dada!” Our children are not verbal prodigies, but they know a lot more language than I realized before I really started focusing on it.

Their love of books seems to go hand in hand with this. They display visible excitement when I pull out books (or even if I say, “Who wants to read a book?” — yay again for receptive language!), and they can sit still and listen to them for a good long time. Eloise will often pull a book off the shelf and sit and flip through the pages herself for several minutes, or bring it to one of us with an expectant “hi!” (her word for hello, look at that, read me this, and give me that.) We are also experiencing the parenthood rite of passage known as reading the same damn book two hundred damn times in a row. I’ll finish, for example, Knitty Kitty, and Eloise will promptly take it out of my hands, hold it up, and say “hi!” And so I turn back to page one. (By the way, Matt and I find that we almost always begin a book by formally announcing the title, the author, and the illustrator. I think I do this because I grew up on Reading Rainbow, may it rest in peace. Do others do this?)

They can just do so much now! They will put spoons into bowls of oatmeal and bring them to their mouths about 50 percent of the time. Julian can suddenly stack all the wooden rings on our ring stacker. Eloise gives hugs both spontaneously and upon request. They both drink from Camelbak water bottles. They simply aren’t babies anymore — they are little people. Very distinct little people, at that. Before they were born, when I tried to imagine them, I kind of thought they’d basically be little versions of me or Matt, or a straightforward composite of the two of us. (Because, you know, clearly I am nothing more than the genetic average of my parents.) Well, obviously that’s not true — they are ever-more independent individuals who are wholly their own people. Frankly, it is amazing to me that they are “derived” from us at all! I will admit that when I muse on that, it’s one of the few ways in which I feel sad about not having more kids — who else could our genes produce? It’s so tempting to roll the dice again and see what utterly unique result we’d get next time.

But that’s just idle rumination — these two fun and funny kids are plenty, and we’re deliriously happy to be past the newborn stage. The day before their birthday, as we were getting ready for bed, Matt warned me that he would not appreciate it if I were to wake him up at 2 a.m. to mark the one-year anniversary of my water breaking. I joked that maybe I’d wake up and my water would actually be breaking, and I’d still be pregnant, and this whole past year would have just been a dream, and we’d be just about to start from scratch. We laughed for about a half a second before we comprehended the horror of such a scenario.

Instead, we can look back on the past year fondly, with the luxury of knowing that it’s solidly in the past. There’s something so very satisfying in ticking off the challenges and annoyances that have come and gone. Remember when we had to give Julian two bottles of prune juice a day? Remember when we had to set a timer so that we could hit the restart button on the white noise on the swing that inexplicably timed out after 10.5 minutes, invariably waking its sleeping occupant? Remember when we thought we’d never get them to sleep unswaddled, or in the cribs, or on any sort of predictable schedule? Remember when Eloise went through a (blessedly brief, thanks to Dr. Ferber) phase of needing to have her pacifier manually held in her mouth all night? Remember when we’d eat dinner with them in the Ergo carriers and spill food all over their heads? And let’s do what we can to avoid remembering the endless weeks when all Eloise did was cry (although to be honest, I remember them nearly every single day and feel so grateful for how happy and outgoing and pleasant she is now). Remember how sweet and sleepy and wee they were, and how frazzled and elated we were, the day they were born? Okay, I can barely remember that through the fog — thank goodness for all the pictures.

So that was the first year. It was incredibly hard. But — and I can’t tell you how great it is to be able to say this — it was worth it, because it rewarded us with these two amazing children. Julian and Eloise, we can’t wait to see what you have in store for us in Year Two. (Or in Month Thirteen, for that matter!)

One month:

One year!

Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days Later…

Whew! I did it. I took and posted one picture for (almost) every day of the twins’ first year. (I didn’t take every single picture—Rachel took probably about a third of the daily photos. And we’re missing Day Four, sadly: it was our second-to-last day in the hospital, and the night before had been pretty rough, and I only ended up taking a total of two blurry pictures that day.)

Two obvious questions came up time and again about the daily photo project. First, why would I do such a thing? Rachel and I always wanted to have two children, although we didn’t plan to be quite so efficient about it. Knowing that this was our only trip through baby-ville, I wanted to make sure it was well-documented. Having these pictures is going to be wonderful. I threw them together into a slideshow for their birthday party, and it was really great to watch all 728 of them go by.

The second question was, how long would I keep up the daily pictures? My stock answer was, “Until they stop me.” I was planning on taking a photo a day of each child indefinitely. One year in, I’m not so sure. The project has been great: I love having the pictures, and I think I’ve acquired a somewhat better photographic eye over the year, and it’s been frankly fun to have a daily reason to put something up on this blog. At the same time, taking, post-processing, and posting a photo a day is grueling. There were definitely times when it was a chore, rather than a fun project. The days when I said, “Oh, crap, I have to do the pictures,” definitely outnumbered the days when I said, “Ooh, let’s do the pictures!”

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll continue. I plan to keep taking pictures this week, and if I’m enjoying it, I’ll post them. I think it’s most likely I’ll start posting pictures weekly, throwing up a post each weekend with a sampling of good photos from the week. Thank you so much to all of you who’ve followed along, and I hope you’ll enjoy whatever I manage to pull together in year two.

Month 12

Day 365

Day 364

Reminder

Hey, friends, family, and occasional visitors: just a reminder that you can help me out with a little project for the twins’ birthday, if you like.

Day 363

Day 362

Day 361