Ten Months

I’ve had a hard time getting started on this monthly post, because I always feel as though these updates should have some broad themes rather than being a laundry list of what new things Julian and Eloise are doing. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to come up with any theme other than something along the lines of “More of the Same, But a Bit Better.”

I know that the babies are changing quickly — getting more mobile, more interactive, more vocal, etc. — but that has been the trajectory for months now. Lately it feels as though the most fun things are not the big developmental milestones, but the little transient skills and quirks that the babies surprise us with. For example, lately Eloise has been finding it hilarious when she sneezes. She’ll sneeze once or twice, then grin hugely and look around for us to confirm, “hey, that was hysterical, right?” Julian has been cracking us up for a while with his habit of wagging his hand back and forth over his mouth while making a sustained vocalization to hear the yodeling effect. (For a long time if we wagged his hand for him, he’d automatically make the noise, but now he’s totally self-sufficient.) I’m not sure whether most babies do this, because we’ve noticed that Eloise has just started doing the same thing. Finally, a favorite new development is the way they practically leap onto us when we pick them up, often screeching with delight, grabbing on with all limbs like little spider monkeys. I could never get tired of that.

One big milestone that I do think maybe we should be trumpeting here is that we think Eloise is saying her first words. I always thought that it would be clear when either baby went from meaningless babbling to saying an actual word — I’m not sure why, but I thought I’d just know. Turns out it’s not that obvious. But Eloise has been saying a very distinct “hi” for a couple of weeks now, and she will reliably do it when she sees a person, a cat, or a ceiling fan. (It’s the ceiling fan bit that throws me — is she really saying hi?) She also says “hi kee” or “hi kee-hee,” often indiscriminately, but almost always when she sees one of the cats. I don’t really dare wonder whether she’s saying “hi kitty”…well, okay, I do dare wonder. Matt thinks no, I think maybe, and Jen, our nanny, thinks yes. Finally, she has been saying “uh oh” whenever she throws or drops something — or when she’s about to. If I’m looking away from her when she’s in her high chair, and I hear her say “uh oh,” I can pretty much guarantee that when I turn around, she’ll be holding her sippy cup off the side of her tray, getting ready to drop it. It is incredibly cute and makes it very difficult to discourage that particular behavior.

As we learn more about their personalities each month, it is hard not to wonder when (and to what extent) we will see gender differences emerge. There are probably some stereotypical things you could point to that would suggest they’ve already started to appear — for example, Julian will watch passing trucks for much longer than Eloise will when we sit outside, and when they play with blocks, Eloise really seems to be trying to stack them, while Julian is Entropy Boy and only wants to knock everything over. On the other hand, there are ways in which the two of them diverge from standard boy/girl expectations. Eloise has a serious arm and will throw everything — rattles, wooden balls, blocks, books, and, once, the large Magic Mozart Cube. She’s pretty indiscriminate not only about what she throws, but what she’s throwing at. Poor Julian has been clocked in the head with a Fisher Price Roll-A-Round more than once. She’s great and playing “catch,” throwing a ball to one of us after we roll it to her, while Julian prefers to stuff the ball into his mouth. He is also generally more content to play quietly on his own, while Eloise wants to run around the house for as long as a poor, suffering adult can be persuaded to lend two fingers and keep up with her. Really it’s probably too early to see any real gender differences. (This in spite of the fact that often, when I describe the twins’ personalities, whoever I’m talking to will immediately attribute their personality characteristics to their sexes. “That’s a girl/boy for you!” I’m told. I am nearly positive that if I were to completely reverse my description of their personalities, I’d be told the exact same thing.) Still, it’s an interesting thing to be thinking about. I’m open to the possibility/reality of gender differences, though I do want to try to avoid creating them myself.

Some other highlights of this month include visits to some (relatively) unfamiliar places for the babies, including friends’ houses and Lake Winnipesaukee. In just about every case the babies did better than we expected. They continue to enjoy experiencing new sensations and had a great time up at the lake, showing real excitement every time we carried them down to the water’s edge to dip their toes in. One of the nicest developments this month is that Eloise has apparently decided that she does not wish death upon all humans outside her immediate family and has even become more outgoing and sociable than Julian, who is going through a bit of a shy phase.

As the babies start to show evidence of a transition to toddlerhood (Julian is a super-cruiser and Eloise seems determined to walk as soon as possible), we find ourselves encountering minor “Sunrise, Sunset” moments at every turn. Last week we said good-bye to the baby bucket seats and upgraded to fancy Britax convertible car seats. Bouncy seats are gone, safety gates are up. Boppy pillows and Bumbos are out, push toys are in. Matt organized the giant pile of baby crap in the basement, and it was odd to discover that there are more clothes and gear that they’ve outgrown than there is stuff we’re waiting for them to grow into. A year ago the possibility of such a scenario would never have occurred to me.

One thing that did occur to me, but which I often doubted I would survive to see, is that sometimes having twins is fun — and by that I mean even better than having a singleton. Later this week Matt is going to post a video of Julian pushing Eloise on their Little Tikes Push and Ride Racer, and upon viewing it you will all — male or female, young or old — run out and take potent fertility drugs so that you, too, can birth twins and replicate such astronomical levels of cuteness in your own homes. The Adirondack chair photos in this post and here are another example — one baby in one Adirondack chair would be unremarkable at best, lonely and sad at worst. Sure, Julian brazenly steals whatever toy Eloise is playing with, no matter how many appealing alternatives he has in front of him, and if she’s in his path when he’s cruising around the furniture, he has no problem attempting to cruise right through her, totally oblivious to her very loud protests. (In fact, she has developed a distinct noise — it sounds like an angry Donald Duck — that she uses exclusively when Julian is bothering her. Our first sibling squabbles!) I know that will only become more challenging in the coming months, but as long as we get those uber-cute twin moments to balance them out, I think it’ll be worth it.

So that’s ten months! We made it to double digits. The fact that I can’t believe it shouldn’t suggest that it went fast — in fact, it seems impossible it was only a year ago that I was writing the thank-you notes from our baby shower. But as I said to my dear twin-mom friend Julia the other day (a kindred spirit whose twins are a week older than Julian and Eloise — truly she is the lifeline that the universe threw me after misjudging that what I wanted more than anything in the world was twins), I’m sure that when we’re celebrating their 10th birthdays we’ll think all of this went by in the blink of an eye. Probably because we’ll be mostly senile by then.

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