Our Kids

do you know?

your gaze is almost all-knowing
yet you’re barely six months old
what do you know?
why do you smile?

it’s as if you see in my soul
how much i love you
how much i will love you
how much you mean to my life

i look over
you smile
then return to fitting your fist in your mouth
how did you know?

is it something inside
that tells you the right time
when we need to see a smile
when your laugh touches us the most

you can’t understand it all
but you do.

may 26 2005

Well we ventured out for a Memorial Day party at my friend Rebecca’s yesterday. All went well until Lela woke up and realized that she was in a strange place. Piper woke up and figured it was okay because Mommy and Poppy were still there but she was not about to give out her beautiful smiles willy nilly. Lela on the other hand went into a tissy and could not be consoled. It was a bit heart breaking and after a couple hours of driving her in the car, consoling her in the back room, trying to get her to eat etc., I threw in the towel and we all headed home. I heard one party goer say, “Well Jason and Mystique aren’t the life of the party anymore.” But as I heard him say it a smile crept across my face because we are the life of our own party:) and that is just fine with me.

As soon as we got home, beautiful Lela opened her eyes realized she was home and then began kicking her legs tour de lance style and smiling the biggest grins you have ever seen. Just a little sign to mommy that she is not quite ready for the big wide world yet, and that is A-OK with me.

Well Lela had her sonogram today and everything is fine. She did not enjoy it one bit and let everyone know it. The doctor even suggested I use a pacifier, HA, LOL! I said she doesn’t take a pacifier. We were able to calm her down for a second or two with a bottle but that did not last long. She has got some lungs on her though. The doctor said that she looked like me but that could because I had my face right in hers trying to calm her down. Funny thing is that during all the intense screaming, Piper fell asleep. Those two are a riot.

Well as predicted (I hope we are always this smart as parents), Lela slept through the night for the first time. She is in a phase we call the “Vive la Lance”, where they do their best Lance Armstrong impersonation with their legs going 100 miles a minute and smiling all the time. She was doing her best Lance impression last night right before bed so maybe that helped her sleep through the night. Piper got up just once and has been sleeping pretty good. The little girls are growing up:)

I think we are almost at a standard 7PM bedtime for the girls. We have been noticing that they were going to be earlier each night, but last night they both fell asleep around 7-7:30 PM and we thought they would get up again but by 9:30 they were still fast asleep. Then Lela woke up around 4 (so the longest sleep ever for her) and Piper got up around 2AM for a little snack. Then 5:30AM Piper was ready to start her day and Lela roused around 6AM for a little fun time.

They still nap every couple of hours, today I knew Piper was tired but I wanted to clean up her room so I figured I would just let her play in her crib. Well after I got done she was so tired that she got pretty upset with me. Lela picked that moment, when Piper was full on upset, to tell me she was hungry. So I had two very unhappy babies and I was just wishing that Rupert could hold a bottle in his meaty paws. We survived but it was rough for a while. Now Piper is peacefully sleeping and Lela is just chillin with Mommie. Gone are the days when they both are asleep. But that is okay, I love the company:)

Don’t forget to check out our Flickr site: The Haslup Girls. Mystique put up some new pictures today that are great on their own but when you throw in her captions they are absolutely awesome.

Other than that, “nothing new”

jason

So I see now that chatty cathy prefers to do one GIANT post rather than daily “nothing news” like me, what a team:)

For a week or so now, Piper has been consistently grabbing at our favorite toy, a soft duck with chewable hands and feet named Mr. Waddles. Yesterday Mystique tucked Mr. Waddles’ feet into piper’s waistband which she absolutely loved… a lot of times she’ll have Mr. Waddles in her hands but drop him to one side. Then her friend is gone and she loses interest.

But not this time! Now Mr. Waddles was totally in Piper’s grill (or bill, in duck-speak) and she couldn’t get enough of him. She was smiling, laughing, poking, cooing, kicking. It was fun.

That went on for a good ten minutes, or so, at which point she had enough and let me know by pushing out her bottom lip and crying. You can’t blame her, though… I mean, how long would you want a duck in your pants?

This morning Piper and I were playing with Mr. Waddles and I decided to see how Lela liked him. Usually she couldn’t care less… not that she doesn’t like ducks (who doesn’t like ducks?), but she just hasn’t been that grabby. Until, it seems, today! The second I put Mr. Waddles on her tummy, her eyes grew wide (er) and she immediately grabbed at him, snagging his floppy hat and bill, bringing him close to her face. Pretty cool. She enjoyed playing with him for about three minutes at a time. I didn’t risk anymore since Lela tends to flip her emotions 180 degrees seemingly just to keep us on our toes.

Speaking of which… we went to our favorite burger place on saturday for what we hoped would be a nice quiet, early (it was 11:30) lunch with the girls.

Ahh, but Lela had other ideas. Maybe she didn’t like the smell of meat, or it could have been the bright red wall, or actually some other thing that only Lela knows, but she just cranked up a cry and would not stop. We thought it was cute, of course, and really none of the other four patrons really cared, but we tried everything. We had just gotten our burgers and tried taking shifts… Mystique walked around with her, which seemed to quiet her down, but whenever she came back to the table, out came the cry.

I tried walking around with her, going inside and outside, sh-sh-sh’ing so much that I almost fell asleep. But the minute I got back to the table (to count my fries), cry.start(lela). (haha, geek humor).

So we got some to-go containers and got out of there. We drove the girls to Lube-Alley, got the double jogger out, and walked around while some nice folks changed the oil in the trooper.

That was pretty much our weekend… Sunday was a day of mowing and cleaning, all of which we’re looking forward to the girls doing in a couple years. The girls have been great, lately… they’ve been getting tired earlier which means they’ll get up once during the night and then usually ready to be entertained around 6am, or so. Can’t really complain about that.

Mystique did an unofficial weighing of Piper on Saturday and she came in at around 14 lbs. Lela has an ultrasound scheduled for friday just to take a peek at her hips. It’s a standard thing for any breached baby. It’ll be kind of funny going back to the ultrasound… we had many appointments there, I think Mystique will hop up on the bed out of habit.

That’s it for now!