Our Kids

Well we are keeping this blog so that we can remember all the girls firsts after we get ancient and have no memory. So I wanted to record another first.

THE GIRLS FIRST EARTHQUAKE!

Yep, that’s right we had our first earthquake. I think it is my first quake as well. I was changing Lela and Piper was fast asleep when it hit. It was quite odd but living in an area of lots of geothermal activity I guess it is not much of a surprise. It was about a 5.6 on the richter scale and was closer to Dillon Montana but was felt throughout the western part of the state. So pretty cool! These girls are daredevils in the making with a helicopter ride just hours after birth and now an earthquake.

No, not their Uncle Marc or Uncle JJ… that was me yelling “uncle!” when the girls ganged up on me. Ahh… fun times. I’ll share:

As I was yammering on about how well Lela ate and then poking fun at her for turning on her tummy and not liking it, the girls somehow decided it was payback time. I didn’t see them conference about it so it must be that special twin-to-twin protocol that sneaks under the parent radar. Sneaky.

It started innocently enough… Piper was fussy so I got the Leapfrog WonderBall out and we sat on the floor spinning it and practicing sitting (I’ll leave it to you to guess who was spinning and who was practicing). Lela, at that time, was in the bouncy chair (you know, the one that is in 1/2 of all the pictures we post on flickr), but she got a bit fussy, too. So I dropped her into the cool exer-saucer and she seemed happy enough.

For those of you without kids or who forget what an exer-saucer is, the key thing to know is that there’s a harness that the child sits in. It’s kind of like a little pair of shorts except when the child isn’t standing on their own, it’s basically supporting all their weight. And when they jump up and down, well… we’ll get to that later.

So we’ve got Lela in the exer-saucer and Piper playing with the wonderball. Good times. After a while, Lela starts watching Piper and the ball and decides that she wants some wonderball time. Easy enough… I rotate the girls: Piper to the bouncy chair and Lela on the quilt with the wonderball. Fine and dandy. Except Lela doesn’t sit all that well, so I sat her down then she layed herself down next to the ball. It was around this time that I was writing about her turning on her tummy, I think… because that’s what she started doing. Tummy… cry… daddy… tummy… cry… daddy. Whee!

So finally Lela was done with whatever it was she was doing on the quilt… it wasn’t exactly playing, and it didn’t seem like much fun since she kept crying (a muffled cry since she was on her tummy and had face-planted into the quilt). So I decided to take her upstairs and change her diaper. And this is where the payback started.

I knew I was in for some fun when I started to push up Lela’s onesie and my fingers encountered some… um… “mud”. Yep… Lela had a poo and thanks to poppy, it had blown straight up her backside, right through the diaper. Nice. Go back and read the paragraphs above but anytime I mention sitting or the exer-saucer, insert the sound of “squish”. Nice one, pops. Now I know why Lela kept rolling onto her tummy so often!

So I start cleaning up the… mud. And of course it’s not just a little bit that got out of the diaper, it was a nice chunk which made getting the onesie off of her quite interesting. I managed to only get a little bit on her arm, and once that was done it was a standard poop-tastrophe cleanup.

Until Piper decided that she was lonely and sick of the bouncy-chair and the elephant I had given her for company. She let me know by letting it all out in one of her best cries ever… virtually no warm-up time which was very impressive. Once I got a diaper on Lela I put her in her crib and went downstairs to rescue Piper from the horribleness of a bouncy chair, and elephant, and Rupert.

At which point Lela… say it with me… rolled on her tummy and realized she hated it. So back up the stairs we went. After Lela’s poop-tastrophe I wanted to make sure I hadn’t done the same thing to Piper, so I changed her diaper. Four minutes and five Lela-flips later that was done (no poop) so I put Piper in her crib, fired up her mobile, and got Lela for a wardrobe change.

Which is when Piper decided that she was tired and wanted no part of her butterfly (soft toy on her crib’s wall) or her mobile. Guess how she let me know? Yep… she cried. I quickly dressed Lela (she looks fabulous in her “Quackers and Milk” onesie, yellow pants, and socks), grabbed the girls, put them on our bed while I put in my contacts (which actually inovolved me dropping a contact perilously close to the drain), and decided that I needed some coffee.

One-by-one we went downstairs. Mystique takes them both downstairs at once but I did that once and neither of the girls liked their dismounts (something about flopping into the couch, I suppose), so I’ve pretty much decided that it takes two trips for me. We strapped into our car seats, and out the door we went. Once I had them outside the girls were happy again, and as we drove to McDonalds (we have Seattle’s Best Coffee at our McDonalds) I heard the magical sounds of the girls cooing themselves to sleep. Heaven is a McDonalds drive-thru with two sleeping girls in your backseat and a cup o’joe at your side.

So it’s about 11:30am now and the three of us are sitting outside in this awesome Montana weather. The girls are still asleep and thanks to the wonders of wireless technology, I can regale you with tales of my most wonderful family while keeping an eye on these sweet little bundles of fun.

Today’s Monday which means I get to spend my morning with the girls. It’s usually a fun morning… I get some quality time with each of the girls individually and then they get to have the fun of ganging up on me for the rest of the time.

Last night Lela gave us a couple of hints that she’s ready for some solid food. Those hints came at 10pm, 2am and 5am. We hear ya, geez!

So I had my orders for the morning… feed Piper her daily dose of Avocado (mmm, mmm, good!) and start giving Lela some yummy (not really) rice cereal. Sounds like fun! And here’s how it went:

Piper really gets into eating… she even wants to help you out which, as it turns out, isn’t so helpful. She grabs for the spoon as it’s just about to get into the mouth. And since she’s a mere seven months old, her “grabbing” is usually off target and turns into punching the spoon right into her cheek. Or eye. Or nose. Or really any part of her face other than her mouth. Mystique already has a picture or two of her “helping” on our flickr site, but I’ll put up a picture of the mess she made on my watch.

I also learned that you want to put on her outfit-for-the-day after you feed her avocado. I realize now that should have been obvious. Oh well.

Looking beyond the helpfulness of Piper, she really seems to enjoy eating the avocado. She ate up her entire serving and topped it off with a glass of milk. Pretty cool stuff.

While Piper and I were face-painting (eating), Lela was sitting next to her doing her standard thing: watching and learning. Once I got done cleaning up Piper’s mess, I whipped up a little rice cereal (no avocado) for Lela. She hasn’t eaten much of this sort of “food” so I was ready for anything.

And as she usually does, Lela suprised me by gobbling up the cereal and loving every minute of it. I even had her opening her mouth as I held the spoon in front of her and closing it when the spoon touched her tongue. She did a little bit of “helping”, but she made no mess whatsoever and ate up the cereal and could probably have eaten more. I didn’t want to push it so I let her top off her meal with some milk, but it’s really great to see how she handled it. We’ll be kicking in some more cereal tonight and hopefully that’ll help her sleep through the night.

I’m typing this while the girls are playing and it just cracks me up the way Lela has learned to flip onto her tummy so well. The problem is that she really doesn’t like being on her tummy and hasn’t quite figured out that she can flip back on her back if she wanted to. So she gets on her tummy, lifts her head up and looks around a bit, then starts crying because she doesn’t like it. Once I flip her back over, she’s happy, plays for a bit… and goes right back to her tummy. Rinse. Repeat.

Now Piper’s playing on the floor and it turns out she does the same thing. I guess I need to get down there and show them how it’s done.

That’s it for now!

jason

Howdy!

Happy 7-month birthday to the girls… it’s hard to believe that it’s been seven months since they surprised us and popped into our lives. It’s certainly been an adventure. It seems like every other day there’s something new.

Piper’s been chowing down on the bananas that Mystique fixes for her… it’s fun to watch. Her digestive system seems to be handling it well, too, so we’ll keep her on the bananas for a while. Yesterday when I got home Mystique showed me Piper’s new trick: sitting all by herself. She’s still a bit wobbly at times, but it was great seeing her sitting on her blanket steadying herself and sometimes even using her little arms to make a tripod.

When Piper was sitting, Lela was watching intently, learning like she normally does. I expect her to be sitting by herself pretty soon now that she sees what’s required. Lately, though, Lela’s been experimenting with rolling onto her tummy all by herself and hanging out. She actually seems to like it… for a little bit. Then she’ll let you know (and apparently try and let our neighbors know by her volume) that she’s done and she’d rather you flip her back over than her do it herself. Actually, I think she’d rather you pick her up for a while which I’m always a sucker for.

A week or so ago it seemed like Piper was trying to shift her sleeping schedule to match ours… that meant staying up late and refusing to sleep or take a nap. Luckily Lela missed that memo so at least we weren’t dealing with two grumpy girls who wouldn’t go to sleep. And of course when I say “we” I really mean “me for five seconds and Mystique the rest of the time.”

Piper has quickly found out that Mystique is way more stubborn than she is… after a couple of late nights, Piper’s back to her regular schedule thanks to her persistent mom. She’s the best.

We’ve noticed lately that Lela just loves to be outside. Luckily the Montana weather has been great so during the day Mystique’s been sitting outside with the girls. She’ll put Lela into our awesome exer-saucer (where she can sit and stand depending on her mood) and she’ll just soak it all up outside. I’m not sure that Piper’s too interested in being out there, she’s just indifferent to it all. As long as someone’s out there to talk with her, she’s fine.

This morning Piper woke up around 6am… Mystique had left for work already (after feeding Lela at 5am), so Rupert and I were left in charge. We played rock-paper-scissors and, oddly enough, I lost, so Rupert stayed in bed and I got up to feed the Pipes. She was happy to see me (or the bottle, I’m not sure which), and we ate together, and I tried putting her back into her crib so she (read: I) could sleep some more.

That was apparently unacceptable to the Peeps, so after squeeking at me for a bit, I went and got her and decided that it was time for a little bit of cuddling with Poppy. So she and I tucked ourselves into bed, being sure not to disturb the sleeping beast, Rupert. After a bit of fidgeting she decided that she was comfortable enough and closed her eyes for a nice little nap.

All of this, of course, I did for purely selfish reasons. The girls seem to be growing so fast I just know I’ll miss these times. After about a half hour Lela decided she had had enough with napping, so slid out of bed leaving Piper tucked in and had some nice Lela time. We walked around, fed the dogs, cleaned up Rupert’s vomit, and played in the exer-saucer. Overall, an awesome morning (except for the vomit). Happy birthday girls!

jason

Quick update… the girls are doing great. It’s kind of risky to mention this because whenever we do, somehow the girls find out and spoil it, but… the past four nights in a row, I believe, we’ve had the luxury of both Piper and Lela sleeping through the night. Lela will actually wake up around 4:45am or so and want some food, but then she’s nice enough to go back to sleep for a couple more hours. She’s such a funny baby… when she’s sleepy but she doesn’t want to go to sleep, she’ll lift her legs up high over her head and just let them drop onto the mattress of her crib. Hilarious. We’ll be laying in bed and just hear “clomp…. clomp… clomp…” for about a minute, then silence.

Piper will usually roll out of bed around 6:30 and it’s such a sweet thing when she wakes up. Usually by the time we get in there she’s been awake for a little while, just chatting to her crib toys every now and then. She has a colorful butterfly on one wall and usually when we walk in she’s got a hold of her feet, rolled on her side and is staring at and squeeking at that butterfly. When you lean over the crip she’ll roll back over and give you the sweetest little smile you’ve ever seen… until you reach down and start to pick her up. That’s a smile you’ll never forget.

We’ve hit Montana’s “hot” season which means every week or so there’s at least one or two days where the temperature might hit the 90’s. During the day we keep our house closed up pretty tight to keep the cool air in from the night before. The girls’ room is nicely located so that the sun hits it in the morning which gives it time to cool down in the late afternoon. The girls don’t seem to mind, though… we just have them take their daytime naps downstairs where it’s still cool and by the time it’s their bedtime their room has cooled off nicely. I wish I could say the same about our room!

That’s it for now… I’ll refrain from my usual “oh my gosh I love these girls so much” paragraph… but I do!

jason

The girls are getting more and more fun everyday. Piper is already showing signs that she is going to be into everything. Lela continues to smile and laugh all day long unless you do something to upset her, which isn’t too hard and usually you have no idea what you have done:) They are both working on sitting and Piper is into grabbing everything in sight, the button on your pants, your jewelry and especially mommy’s hair. Lela is thinking about rolling over and loves to grab her toes, she is just a touch more limber than Piper or more motivated to get those toes. Piper is laughing more and smiling more and getting frustrated more when she can’t fit things into her mouth. The weather is warm so we are taking our walks early in the morning and having cool relaxing afternoons indoors.

Howdy!

The girls had their 6-month checkup on Tuesday and all is well… they survived two shots each and handled it relatively well. Lela actually didn’t start crying until after her second shot, but Piper started up as soon as she saw the needle. Poor little girls… no lasting side effects, though, which was nice.

Weight update: Piper tipped the scales at 15lb 5oz and now stands up at just over 24 inches tall. Lela, as we suspected, weighed in a little less than her sister at 14lb 14oz but stands up to a height of 25 inches and some change. It’s hard to believe that these girls were once fighting to get up to found pounds each.

Not much else going on here… we’ve really been enjoying Montana lately… Mystique takes the girls out on a walk/run at least once day, and on the weekends we usually get out for a nice walk after breakfast each day. It’s great being able to get outside and spend time with Mystique and the girls. Piper and Lela really seem to enjoy the walks… Piper will usually sleep through most of it (bumpy trails put her to sleep), while Lela will usually stay awake for a while just staring at all the sites until her eyelids become too heavy and she’s forced to sleep.

Sometimes when I leave for work in the morning Mystique has the girls packed up and ready for a walk. As I pull out of our driveway I look in the rear-view mirror and see my beautiful wife, our two wonderful girls, and our best friend Rupert walking down the street with the Bridger Mountains as the backdrop. Life is good.