Bring out the gates! - Ari On December 30, watched by her Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Dan, Ryan and I, Julia climbed up the step between the living room and dining room! Well, that natural gate was very short lived in this house. I used to be able to set them down and go make bottles or run and get the laundry, but not anymore. Time to set up the gates! I made a makeshift one out of large letter blocks and a tunnel, but I know that they are too clever for that. Our house is about one quarter stairs, we have four flights for babies to go up and (gulp!) down, for those of you that have not been here yet. So, we have to break out the superyard (a very large play pen with interlocking gates formed in a circle with hard corners) and gate off the stairs now!
2008-01-01
Marayla's first tooth - Mommy Marayla cut her first tooth on Christmas Eve! The same front, left, bottom tooth that Julia cut first. She was a bit fussy when it was cutting but handled it very well. Julia just cut her other bottom tooth and is suffering a bit from the runs, commonly caused when babies are teething. Both girls are sleeping more through the night, but whine a lot during the day!
2007-12-22
a little crawler - Mommy Julia has shown the signs that she is ready to take off crawling for the past month. But in the past few days she has put the pieces together and moved one hand then one knee. Previously it was a combination of the army crawl, pulling the body forward with one or both hands while laying belly down on the floor, and being on her hands and knees in between the army pull. Sometimes she (and Marayla too) would look like a wounded solider with the one arm pull. This was very concerning to me, tucking one arm under the chest and using the other to pull, but after I saw a few of their play group buddies doing the same thing I was relieved to know it was a step toward crawling.
I have seen the rudimentary crawling (hands and knees coordinating but not moving forward) a few times. Yesterday, while I was out at the Chiropractor, GMarmy and Ryan were here with the girls and my Mom saw her crawl (a little bit). They didn't want to tell me so Ryan waited until Julia was doing it later and said, "LOOK!" I had seen her do this before so I wasn't surprised, although she was doing a lot better than I had seen. Then today she lined it all up in her head and made a few laps around the kitchen. She was banging on the stove, trying to open cabinets and crawling under our feet. The glee on her face is priceless!
2007-12-20
Treasure Chest (A Lost Shem Dem) - Ryan
One late night last May, shortly after the girls came home (what feels like an eternity ago), Arianne, GrandMarmy, and I were up trying to settle Julia after a feed, while Marayla slept in the bedside sleeper.While Julia fussed, Marayla slept soundly – and when the girls slept soundly, and they had their belts on rather than the leads, the monitors often failed to pick up the signal of their breathing and would produce that wonderful gut-wrenching, piercing wail.Arianne and I dealt with this the previous night and into that morning (referring to the "You might want to squeeze her" story from a previous posting), when Marayla’s monitor was going off like crazy. To counter this, we had to press down slightly on her chest to simulate a deep breath before 20 seconds elapsed between breaths.Whenever we realized almost 20 seconds had gone by since seeing a blinking green light indicating a breath, we’d get a surge of panic and jump to the sleeping baby to press her chest.We would tell one another over and over, “Press her chest.”Over enough nights, this phrase became synonymous a simple head nod, and the other person would understand. Now that G-Marm was with us for the night, she would have to be indoctrinated into the program and learn the steps. As Arianne dealt with Julia, GrandMarmy settled Marayla in her arms.On this particular night, Marayla's monitor went off without warning, and GrandMarmy gently tried to stimulate Marayla to take a breath (who was, of course, breathing fine, just shallow). As the beeps continued, Arianne burst into the room, facing a panic-stricken GrandMarmy. Arianne said to her mother repeatedly, “Press her chest!”Unfortunately, the recipe of little sleep, the delirium of 2:00 in the morning, a crying baby, an ear piercing monitor alarm, and the repetition of pushing our daughter’s chest all mixed together, causing Arianne's loud, panicky instructions to sound mumbled to poor G-Marm. All she heard was, “Pressure chest!Pleasure chest!Treasure chest!!(breath)Press – her – chest!”But it was way too late. At this point, the alarms and cries faded away over our hysterical laughter. Shem Dem.
