Vocabulary

For a while there, I was a little concerned about whether our kids were a little less verbal than some of their peers. Now that they’re eighteen months old, I thought I’d try to make a list of all of the words they can say. (As it happened, I mentioned the idea to Rachel, and she made a list, but I contributed to it.) Looking at the list, I’m no longer particularly worried.

This post, then, will serve as a little bit of history for later in life, when they won’t shut up.

Here’s all of the words the twins can say that we could think of, with the proper pronunciation in toddler dialect in parentheses. (If only one of them has a word, I tried to mark that as well.)

People

• Mama (occasionally “mommy”)
• Daddy
• Eloise (“Ellie” or “Alwee” or “Owie”)
• Julian (“Gi-gee” or “Doo-dee”)
• Grandpa (“Ba-pa”)
• Wapsy (“Wa-pee”)
• Grammy (“Ba-bee”)
• Several friends from school, including Avery (“A-wee”), Hannah (“Na-na”), and Apollo (“Uh-pah”)

Colors

• red (“ya”)
• yellow
• green (“dee”)
• blue
• purple (“puh-puh”)
• pink (“pee”)
• brown [J] (“bwow”)
• black (“bla”)
• white (“wha”)

Body parts

• nose (“no”)
• eye
• ear (“ee”)
• elbow (“ow-boh”)
• toe (“doh”)
• knee
• neck (“neh”)
• back (“ba”)
• leg [J] (“leh”)

Food

• peas (“peeeeeeez”)
• broccoli (“buh-la-buh-lee”)
• apple/applesauce (“a-puh”)
• Mum-Mum
• snack (“na”)
• cheese (“deeee”)
• water (“wa-wa”)
• bar (cereal bar) (“ba”)
• noodles (“noo-noo”)
• cracker (“kuh kuh”)
• pasta [J] (“tas-pah”)
• blueberries (“boo-bwee”)

Miscellaneous nouns

• balloon (“buh-loo” or “boo”)
• baboon (“ba-boo”)
• blocks (“blaaaaaaaaaah”)
• book (“buh”)
• bottle (“ba-ba”)
• bubble (“buh-buh”)
• bowl (“bo”)
• spoon (“suh-boo”)
• tree (“dwee”)
• flower (“fuh-vuh”)
• park (“pah”)
• outside (“ow-ee” [E] or “uh-tzuh” [J])
• window (E) (“wi-woh”)
• bus [E] (“buh”)
• truck [J] (“dwah”)
• moon (“moo”)
• star (J) (“daw”)
• baby
• ball (“baaaa”)
• barn (“ba”)
• iPod (“a-puh”)
• poop (“a-pu”)
• shoe [E] (“doo”)
• giraffe [J] (“doo-wah”)
• beep beep (“bee bee”)
• keys (“dee”)

Animals

• kitty/meow (“diddy”/”mow”)
• bird/tweet tweet (“buh”/”dzee dzee” or “tuh-wee”)
• woof woof (“wuh wuh”)
• quack quack (“kuh kuh”)
• the sound a monkey makes (“oo-oo”)
• neigh
• moo
• baa

Miscellaneous verbs and prepositions

• eat (“ee”)
• walk (“waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”)
• up
• down (“dow”)
• trade [J] (“doo-way”)
• rock (“wa”)
• ride [E] (“waaiiii”)
• sleeping [E] (“pee-pee”)

Miscellaneous miscellany

• yes (“yeah”)
• no (“no no”)
• hi
• bye
• please (“buh-lee” [J], “pee” [E])
• more (“muh”)
• all done (“ah dah”)
• uh-oh!
• oh no!
• me
• whee!
• choo choo (“doo doo”)

It’s worth noting that these are just the words they can say. They understand much, much more, so stay on your toes.

Eloise’s First Haircut

As impressive and fabulous as Eloise is by almost any measure, she has never been an overachiever in the hair department. Yet her mullet was growing completely out of control, even by mullet standards, and we decided that a little trim would, at the very least, not hurt. Her Aunt Rachel and I took her to Kidz Adventure Cuts in Seekonk for the procedure.

At first I almost dared to be pleasantly surprised by how well she was handling it…

…but quickly began to get a sense that my optimism would prove unfounded.

There’s the Eloise I know and love!

(Hmm, looking at this picture I’m thinking we should have double-teamed her with a dentist on the other side.)

In the end they only charged me for the equivalent of a bangs trim, since they only cleaned up the back. (When I brought her in, the “stylist” incredulously burst out, “What are you going to cut, Mom???” I explained that I wanted it tidied up to all one length in the back, she exclaimed with an emotion I would describe as just shy of horror: “But if you do that she’ll look like a BOY!”

Needless to say we went ahead with it, and while the result will not exactly win her a job as the Pantene poster girl, it does look a bit less unruly.

By the way, Julian got his first haircut back in December (and his second on the same day as Eloise’s first). Let’s just say that his handling of the trauma didn’t do anything to make Eloise look bad.

Mail Call

I have a Mother’s Day post coming, but for now, apropos of nothing, here is a cute video of Julian and Eloise being, you know, cute.

Abigail

Today we had to say goodbye to our superstar babysitter/helper/sanity-preserver, Abigail. For the three months or so that she’s been helping us out, Abigail has been absolutely indispensable. Diapers got changed, bottles got washed, and babies got strolled, but most importantly she has been endlessly fun, patient, and sweet with our two occasionally-challenging babies. In addition to being pretty much Julian’s best friend, Abigail is one of only about a half-dozen people that Eloise will consent to be held by. That’s pretty impressive, and it took considerable perseverance. (She’s also managed to put up with spending hours with me, Rachel, and assorted family members, which ought to earn her a medal of some kind.)

Abigail is heading off for her summer break, and we hope that we’ll see more of her in the fall, but for now all of us will definitely miss her. Thank you!

Six Months

Four days old and six months old. Needless to say, the cradle doesn’t get a lot of use anymore by our big hulking babies!

Well holy cabooses, it’s been six months. It feels like just yesterday that it the babies were…oh, about 5.9 months old. (It feels like roughly 10 years since they were born. No indeed, time has not exactly flown by.)

This has been a big month, and a good month overall — our best yet, I’d say. There have been visits by all the aunts and all the grandparents, plus the babies’ first Passover seder. (Julian was a model child, and Eloise…umm, let’s assume she was just trying to do her youngest-child duty and sing the Four Questions, loudly and incessantly, for the entire meal.) Many of the other major milestones have already been documented here: we night- and swaddle-weaned Eloise; I went back to work; we started them on solid foods. Things continue to go well on all three of those fronts, though we are a little disappointed that Julian and Eloise do not seem to have very adventurous palettes yet: rice cereal and applesauce yes, sweet potatoes and carrots a resounding no. (I, however, have discovered that fresh, pureed, unadorned vegetables are quite delicious!)

This month has had more than its fair share of miserably rainy days, which are brutal because they rule out the sanity-saving afternoon stroller excursions that we rely on so heavily. But there have also been some gorgeous spring days, and it has been wonderful to see the babies discover that outdoors does not necessarily equal freezing temperatures and bitter winds. Being outside really seems to interest them and calm them, so in addition to walks in the stroller, we’ve been taking them to the playground, letting them lie on the grass, and setting their Bumbo seats in the sun. Quite frankly it’s been pretty refreshing for us, too, after a long winter of looking at the same few rooms in our house for most of every day. We bought some cute sun hats and some baby sunblock in anticipation of lots of outdoor time as the weather keeps improving.

It’s a lot of the little things that are making the babies so fun and funny these days. Julian has an amusing habit of clasping his hands together up above his body and thumping them down on his chest repeatedly, as though he’s having a little trouble with the ol’ ticker. He also still grins like a goon when you sing any song and replace all the lyrics with “Julian.” Eloise will kick her legs up and jump if you hold her by her armpits and bounce her up and down — it’s so cute. She continues to have independent control of her eyebrows and can easily raise one or the other, allowing her to express her skepticism about all our efforts to impress or entertain her. On the other hand, she hands out face-splitting smiles like they’re going out of style. Even better, she has expanded the circle of people reliably permitted to hold her from two to four (my mom and Abigail have finally survived her hazing rituals and earned her trust).

Speaking of smiling, one thing we’ve noticed recently is that the twins have started smiling when they’re enjoying themselves, as opposed to strictly in response to someone smiling at them. Before it was purely social and seemed largely reflexive (see a smile, make a smile), but now some of their smiles seem to indicate that they are entertained by their activities or our antics. (The big smiles in the official six-month photo are in response to my kicking around the living room chanting “Mama does the can-can! Mama does the can-can!” No sacrifice of dignity is too large for my children.)

Each month brings more and more interest in toys (and, hence, more and more toys into our home). Blocks, rattles, and stuffed animals are great, but so is a giant unopened bag of tortilla chips. They are loving the jumperoo and often enjoying the exersaucer. The cats would probably be the number one plaything if they were stupid enough to get anywhere near the babies; as it is, both kids practically hyperventilate with excitement if a cat looks their way.

The big developmental milestone that seems to have sped in out of nowhere is their ability to sit unsupported. Two weeks ago they could probably balance for 5 seconds before toppling over; these days I bring them downstairs in the morning, sit them on the floor, arrange some toys in front of them, and go back to bed. Okay, I don’t go back to bed, but I do go into the kitchen and make breakfast and do other morning tasks. I can’t believe how quickly this happened. I had been looking forward to it for a long time, suspecting that it might make both babies (particularly Eloise) happier and our lives a bit easier, and so far I seem to have been right on both counts.

There are still times when it’s really hard, of course. Matt is on his own with them a lot more often now, and when I check Trixie Tracker during the day and see that they each have napped for a total of 23 non-simultaneous minutes, I just cringe for him. But the trend definitely continues to be toward easier, and I can honestly say that I am finally enjoying being a parent much of the time. I am not sure that I would repeat the first four months for any amount of money, but it’s a great feeling to have the fog lifting, those brutal days behind us, and all the best stuff ahead. Time is speeding back up, and I know that they’ll be a year old before I know it. To quote from the Joni Mitchell song my parents used to sing me to sleep as a kid: “Take your time, it won’t be long now/’Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”

The Cutest

Rachel just called me upstairs, saying, “You have to see Eloise!” I peeked into her bedroom to see her in her crib… curled up lying on her side! It was the cutest thing I have ever seen. I’m still “eeeeeee”ing.

Update

Eloise, our little firecracker, has slept in her crib all night un-swaddled for the past three nights! Yes, she’s still woken up crying several times in the night, but we haven’t had to go in there, and she’s put herself to sleep each time. I can’t tell you how proud we are.

(It’s easy to take for granted our little Julian who continues to sleep blissfully through the night, unperturbed by all of the activity in the crib next to him. We think he’ll actually be more of a challenge to wean from the swaddle, but for now he’s content, and so are we.)

Thanks also for all of the helpful suggestions of rainy-day activities. I’m hoping the weather will just be completely awesome for the rest of the spring and summer so I won’t have to use any of them, but in the unlikely event that it, you know, rains in Providence during April and May, I’ll give them a shot.

Solo

Yesterday was Rachel’s first day back at work since the twins were born. I’m sure she’ll have a lot to say about that on her own, but it also means a bit of a change for me. We’re incredibly lucky that the twins’ wonderful grandmother is going to be on the scene Tuesdays and Wednesdays for a while, so that means that I had a considerable amount of help yesterday.

Today, it’s just me (at least until 1:00 when the indispensable Abigail, our babysitter/helper, arrives). Wish me luck!

(Tomorrow I’ve got them on my own from 8-5… I’m thinking the only possible thing I can do, in this day and age, is to live-blog it.)

UPDATE

The day was a smashing success! Julian was a little more difficult than usual, but Eloise had, no question, the best day of her young life. (One day, she’ll graduate from college, and I’ll say, “Well, young lady, this is certainly exciting, but it’s no Day 166.”) She was smiley and playful and happy, and she let Abigail feed, hold, and play with her, and she didn’t really even fuss once. It was kind of eerie. Of course, now I’m exhausted. Here’s hoping tomorrow goes as well.

Swings!

We went back to the playground last week, and got some video of the twins being adorable in the swings.

Bottles

I thought it would be interesting, for the sake of posterity, to record just how many bottles we go through in a day. I’ve gotten into the routine of making up all of the day’s bottles the night before, which means we get to see them all laid out:

• Julian’s morning bottle: 6 oz of milk
• One top-off bottle for Julian and Eloise before their morning nap: 2 oz of milk each
• Julian’s three daytime bottles: 5 oz of milk each
• Julian’s two prune juice bottles: 2 oz each (1 oz prune juice + 1 oz water)
• Bedtime bottles: 7 oz of formula for Eloise, 8 oz of formula for Julian, with a milliliter of TriViSol vitamins in each

It adds up to a lot of milk, a lot of formula to mix, and a lot of bottles to wash (as our friend Emilie beautifully documented).

Bottles Drying, by Emilie, Inc

When Julian’s prune juice issue finally resolves, that will be a relief. Of course, when Rachel goes back to work we’ll add three more daytime bottles for Eloise. Whew!

Goo

Hey, does embedding video from Facebook work?

Kinda! It’s too wide, apparently. Hmm. We’ll work out the kinks. In the meantime, enjoy this video of the babies squirming around at the doctor’s office.

Four Months

Oh boy. The babies are demonstrating an unfortunate habit of being brutally difficult on their monthly birthdays. Either that or I have a habit of being particularly emotionally vulnerable on those days. Perhaps I build up so much expectation around those milestones that when they don’t wake up on those days making me breakfast in bed, I’m bitterly disappointed and handle the whole day poorly.

Anyway, yesterday was a rough day. It happened to be my birthday, and I would say it was marginally worse than last year’s birthday, which was spent at a funeral in New Jersey followed by an early dinner at an Applebee’s off I-95 in Connecticut. This year was about as much fun as the funeral, but there were no cheeseburger sliders afterward.

I thought about waiting a few days until I was in a slightly more peppy place before writing the four-month post, but I’ve done that every month, and this time I just want to get it out there and not have it hanging over me (the post). Besides, while I know that our visitors come here for the cute pictures and the happy stuff, I figure you can all handle a little bit of the reality that more often than not, those little cherubs are kicking my ass. I know that I’m dealing with some mild postpartum depression, and I am doing everything I can to keep my lowest moments at bay; in my heart, though, I know that the only thing that’s really going to help is time. So now I’ll just start focusing on the slow march to the five-month mark, when things are sure to get better, right?

Eesh, now that I’ve started with a total downer, the positive stuff I’m about to put up here is going to sound disingenuous. And it really shouldn’t, because the good stuff really is good. But I was chatting with another twin mom recently about how hard it can be as a parent to go to other people’s blogs and see all this sunshine and adorability and to feel as though you must be the only person who sometimes (or regularly) feels less than rosy about the whole experience. So just read the above as an attempt at making this blog fair and balanced. Consider it the token Democrat on Fox News. Now on to the happy! (Hmm, this analogy makes it sound as though I’m equating “happy” and “Republican.” Purely an accident.)

The first half of this month was actually really good. The babies became far more interactive and really interested in the world. They also seemed to fall into a bit of a routine during the day, eating at 3-hour intervals and napping somewhat regularly. It was a huge relief to have some structure and predictability in our days. Unfortunately, the second half of the month saw all that go right out the window, and it now seems that the babies are so fascinated by the world that they have very little interest in sleeping, lest they miss anything good. Eloise has been refusing to nap, ever, and while Julian is still a fairly good sleeper, oftentimes I hear him at night through the baby monitor grunting for an hour straight, and when I go in he’s repeatedly kicking his legs up and to the side in his swaddling blanket, mimicking the motions he made when he rolled over (!) from back to front last week (a feat he repeated three times that night but not since). These grunts wake Eloise, of course, and the less said about that the better. Their lack of sleep not only means we get less sleep at night and fewer breaks during the day, but it also makes them exhausted crankypants. Which makes us exhausted crankypants.

Still, their interest in the world is welcome and lots of fun. There are now lots of big “hey, I know you!” smiles when we come into their field of view, which can go a long way toward mitigating the challenges of the day. They are starting to reach and grab, which means they often have fistfuls of my hair, delightfully. Julian lies on the playmat and flings both his arms out at once, trying to hit as many hanging toys at a time as possible, and Eloise is adoring the tags on her Taggie blanket. They are also vocalizing a lot more. Julian does lots of classic coos alternated with a noise that sounds just like radio static, so when he’s “talking” to us it sounds like we’re getting bad reception on the baby talk station. Eloise, who has always been less chatty than Julian, now makes a lot more noise, but she pretty much only says “Aah, ahh” (the A sound in “cat,” as opposed to “car”). It’s pretty cute.

My favorite development this month by far was that they started noticing each other. It happened quickly. For a while one or the other would occasionally gaze with studied interest at his or her twin, but they did that with the cats, too, so it wasn’t particularly meaningful. But then all of a sudden both of them at the same time seemed to realize that the other existed. Matt and I were sitting next to each other on the couch about two weeks ago, each holding one, and before we knew it they had locked eyes and were smiling and cooing at each other. This lasted several minutes, and since then we have been able to reproduce this just by pointing them at each other. (And we do that a lot, it’s so cute.) Sometimes they’ll even catch eyes and start smiling at each other without prompting from us, which is a treat. This gives me hope that very soon they’ll be great playmates and let me return to my life of heavy drinking and trashy magazines. In seriousness, I’m looking forward to being able to sit them both in Bumbo seats, facing toward each other, and letting them entertain each other for, oh, minutes on end.

I’ll end with a quick nod to another recent anniversary: they day before their four-month birthday (February 18) was their “conceptoversary” — one year after they were conceived. (We know this for sure because we conceived with the help of fertility science, so those of you who would prefer to believe that Matt’s and my love is a chaste love may go on doing so.) It is odd to think about this period last year. I wanted so badly to be pregnant, and I was but didn’t know it yet. I look at pictures from my last birthday and can’t believe that I was already hosting the two little balls of cells that would become Julian and Eloise. I could probably say something insightful and profound about that if I weren’t so sleep deprived. I’ll just stick with the uninsightful and obvious: What a year it has been.

Travel

We successfully made it to St. Louis! Julian and Eloise were remarkably well-behaved for the flight—Julian only screamed for about twenty minutes or so, and Eloise was a perfect angel. (Weird, right?)

Right at the end of the flight, Rachel remembered that our point-and-shoot camera takes video:

Two Months

It is tempting, when considering the content of a post about our second month as parents, to write “Ellie cried” and leave it at that. Because honestly, that was by far the most prominent aspect of month two.

I know that other things happened in there, though. For example, we moved the twins out of their co-sleeper in our room and into their crib in their room. This seems like a big transition to me, but for whatever reason, unlike practically every other parenting move we’ve made, we barely discussed it — we just did it. It was time, though: their combined weight was creating a depression in the co-sleeper mattress, and it didn’t take long each night for them to roll into each other and wiggle around like two little jumping beans. Which, while adorable (“They’re snuggling!” Matt says), is not conducive to long stretches of sleep. They sleep better in their cribs, and we sleep better with them there.

In fact, as difficult as the second month was (I’d venture that it was even harder than the first month), I do realize that some things have actually gotten easier. Part of it is just that we’ve figured some stuff out: bouncy seats are magical, Ellie and the pump should each have a designated boob each day so they don’t have to compete for resources, muffins and other one-handed foods make eating breakfast more likely, and a tiny bit of formula supplementation keeps Mama sane. The other part is that there are a (precious) few ways in which the babies themselves have gotten easier. Julian, for example, sleeps long stretches almost every night (anywhere from 5 to 8.5 hours). They poop less often, and usually not at all at night, so we do fewer diaper changes and none at night, which helps them go back to sleep more quickly after wakeups. And toward the end of the month, every so often, they started rewarding us with quick little (real) smiles and even the occasional big gummy grin. That makes everything feel worth it for about 30 seconds until the screaming starts back up.

Seeing their likes and dislikes emerge has also been fun. Eloise loves to have the hair dryer blown on her during diaper changes. (In fact, everything about the hair dryer makes her content. That, in combination with the fact that sticking her in a Tiffany’s box made her the happiest she’d been in days, makes me a little concerned that we have a real girly-girl on our hands.) She also loves looking at the pictures that we taped to the underside of the shelf above the changing table. She gives those things much more consistent smiles than she gives her parents. Basically if she could spend all day on the changing table, there would be no colic.

Julian likes…well, Julian seems to like just about everything just fine as long as he isn’t separated from his pacifier. Basically he’s as easygoing as Eloise is not. He particularly seems to like sleeping on our shoulders and cooing at the multi-colored giraffe on his activity mat. Oh, and eating. He doubled his birthweight in 2 months and went from less than one chin to three chins in the same amount of time.

So while there’s no question that our babies are still grubs, they are becoming grubs with more distinct personalities. Here’s hoping for tons more of that in Month Three.

Colic

Since the cause is not conclusively established and the amount of crying differs between babies, there is no general consensus on the definition of “colic”. Having ruled out other causes of crying, a common rule of thumb is to consider a baby “colicky” if it cries intensely more than three days a week, for more than three hours, for more than three weeks in a month. —Wikipedia [Yeah, yeah, I know.]

A simpler definition might be: colic is when your baby cries all the goddamn time for no goddamn reason.

So, Ellie’s going through a rough patch. She’s basically devolved into a finite state automaton with only three states: sleeping, eating, or screaming her head off. Since the only way to get her to stop screaming for any appreciable length of time is to transition her into another state, and since we can’t magick her to sleep, that’s meant a lot of feeding on demand and sore boobs for at least one of her parents.

The difference between the intellectual idea of “a crying baby” and your own frantically crying infant is really quite something. I know it’s a trite observation, but it’s true. Her crying somehow turns off my brain’s ability to reason and solve problems rationally, which seems like a pretty crappy evolutionary adaptation. It’s amazing we ever made it out out of the veldt.

Dr. Harvey Karp says colic is natural for a lot of babies. Developmentally, he says, it would be ideal for humans to spend a full year in the womb. Since this wouldn’t be ideal for their mothers who have to push them through the birth canal, evolution compromised at forty weeks or so. Dr. Karp refers to the first three months of life as the “fourth trimester” of pregnancy, and advises parents to treat their infants, in many respects, like fetuses. His techniques for soothing colicky babies (swaddling, sshhhing, etc.) are designed to replicate the womb environment. (Happiest Baby on the Block is one of the two books we wholeheartedly recommend for new parents.)

It makes sense, and it seems to work. Generally. Most of the time. Sometimes swaddling her and sshing her and swinging her just isn’t enough: Ellie seems to want to eat all the time, and we know she can’t be hungry all the time, so we realized she must just be comfort sucking. If she’s just sucking for comfort, rather than nutrition, then there’s really no reason she has to be attached to Rachel all day. Hence, we’re sending her to pacifier boot camp.

For a baby, Ellie is just terrible at using a pacifier (unlike her brother, who’s happy to be sucking on one every second of the day). For the first five or six weeks of her life, she would ostentatiously gag every time we put one in her mouth. We’ve been patiently and painstakingly working over the past few days on getting her to be able to take and hold on to a pacifier and it seems to be working. We’re starting to see more and more of the sweet cute little girl we remember from a few weeks ago, and we’re feeling a little less at our wits’ end.

Our yoga ball is getting a work out (she likes to be bounced on it), the swing we borrowed from Dana is on its third set of batteries (it seems to keep her calm to swing from side to side) and we’ve quadrupled our supply of “Soothies” pacifiers. We’re prepared, and we’re trying new routines and strategies and techniques, and generally trying to stay calmer than Eloise. Everyone tells us things start to calm down and ease up a bit after eight weeks. Or possibly twelve. They’d better be right.

Flowers

While I stand by everything I said before, I have to admit that Eloise looks flipping adorable in her flowery pink nightgown.

Arrival

We are very excited to announce that our twins have decided to make an early entrance!

Julian Spaulding Harvey was born at 5:27 a.m, October 19. He weighed 4 pounds, 15 ounces. Julian is named in memory of his maternal great-grandfather, John Julien McCoy.

Eloise Spaulding Harvey was born at 5:28 a.m. She weighed 5 pounds, 1 ounce. Eloise is named in memory of her paternal grandmother, Lois Rappoport Harvey.

Rachel is recovering nicely, the twins are healthy, and we’re ecstatic, if a little stunned! We’ll be camped out at Women and Infants’ Hospital for a few days, but we’ll hopefully get some more pictures up soon. We look forward to introducing you to them!