Our Kids

Howdy!

Sorry about the lack of entries lately… we’re just having so much fun with these babies it’s hard to tear ourselves away. That and an increase in mobility (of the girls, not us!) limits us a bit!

On to the update… Lela took her time but is definitely sitting like a pro these days… it’s a lot of fun sitting the girls in front of each other with a couple toys and seeing them interact. We still have the inevitable toppling over every now and then, but overall the girls are pretty stable on their butts.

Our flickr site is a great way of seeing the progress of the girls… the latest pictures show their latest trick: laughing and smiling a lot. The other day after work I just sat down with the girls and without tickling or even touching them I could get them both to laugh at me. Hmmm… now that I write it, maybe I shouldn’t be so happy (or surprised?) that the girls laugh at me so easily! Anyways… it was just adorable. Both of the girls were having a good ol’ time just sitting and laughing.

On Sunday while at the store with Mystique, Piper raised the bar again… this time by stringing together consonants and vowels! Good stuff here… she’s been saying, and this is purely coincidental and doesn’t count as her first word, “dadadadadadadadada”. Usually it happens if you’re not really paying too much attention to her (not ignoring here like a bad parent, just not… oh you know). Anyhow, it’s really cute… sometimes she even mouths “dadadada” without making a sound. It’s like she forgot the part about making a noise but she’s still practicing.

With all this progress the girls have decided that they’d like to see us more often at night so recently we’ve been getting up twice to feed them or put them back to sleep. While I can appreciate the desire to hang out with Mystique more, I’ve tried explaining to them that they have the rest of their lives ahead of them and not to overdose on us like this. Their response? A big ol’ gummy smile and “dadadadadadada”. At 3am.

Over the weekend we… get ready… had a garage sale! Holy cow, that’s quite a change for us. We’re much better at collecting junk than getting rid of it. Winter’s coming, though, and we weren’t really looking forward to getting the girls in and out of the car in the snow, so we had to get the garage cleared out for parking. The sale went pretty well… we priced things to sell so a lot of our baby stuff went out the door. I think sitting Piper and Lela at the end of a driveway with a “College Fund” mug in front of them might have helped.

That’s it for me… rumour has it that the girls might be going out on a hike today. The fun part about this hike, though, is that they’ll be in backpacks and not the double-jogger stroller they’re accustomed to. The times are a-changing!

jason

Well we have made it to the 8 month birthday. No major milestone but unbelieveable all the same. The girls are doing great. Lela still prefers to motor around on her tummy, rolling from place to place, while Piper enjoys sitting and reaching out for things.

We go for walks everyday and spend some time each week with our Mommy and Me group. No teeth yet and barely any hair. They both are eating well and adding new foods all the time. I think we are going to have some cottage cheese this afternoon and we tried Mango this morning, but I don’t think that was too popular with the girls but I liked it:)

All in all things could not be better.

Well it’s that time, the time where the girls are going to start toppling, falling, banging and bumping. Piper is getting stronger and can pick up toys, the bad thing is that she is not that strong and sometimes she drops them unexpectedly. This week she dropped one unexpectedly on Lela’s head. So Lela has a nice bruise right in the middle of her forehead. She bruises very easily so every little thing leaves a mark. Piper on the other hand is a bit more rough and tumble. Today she took a pretty good topple and hit her head on our exersaucer. After a second or two of make believe crying she was okay with a little red bump that soon went away.

Lela is still working on sitting and is REALLY good at rolling. So the girls have given me little warnings that it is time to never leave them alone in a room, less they roll across and into the fireplace:) They are getting more and more fun each day and they are full of laughs and surprises. The list of food they eat is getting bigger and bigger, here it is so far:

Peas, Carrots, Sweet Potatoes and Rice Cereal
Bananas, Pears, Avocado, Apples, Brown Rice Cakes, Cherrios, and Whole Wheat Toast

So things are going well, they are doing great and Jason and I could not be happier. We could be more rested though:)

Lela’s getting pretty close to sitting for more than five seconds all by herself. Is fun to watch the development… just yesterday she’d fall over (in any direction) if you sat her down and let her go, but this morning she was doing a great job of keeping face off the floor by adjusting her body as it tried to flop to either side. I haven’t seen her try the tripod, but I imagine that will come soon.

Sitting in front of Lela as a role model was Piper… she was happily sitting in front of their LeapFrog WonderBall, cooing at it and spinning it, listening to the music and watching the lights. It’s hard to believe that just a couple weeks ago she wouldn’t spin that ball, let alone sit in front of it.

We’re still in the process of teaching Piper that it’s ok to go to sleep at a reasonable hour… last night she stayed up until 9:45 or so. The little stinker… I’d like to say that Mystique and I are so interesting that she wants to stay up with us, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. It must be Rupert… everyone loves a golden retriever.

We’re getting some great pictures of the girls so be sure to check our flickr site. As an aside, I heartily recommend flickr for photo sharing… when you combine it with iPhoto on our mac, it’s just a piece of cake to share photos with our extended family.

That’s it for now!

jason

Well Piper is refusing to sleep. No big surprise there, I think she can be stubborn if she wants and yes I know where she gets it from (me). Anyway, life is so fun for her she can’t stand the thought of going to sleep. I am hoping that we get more boring so she will realize that sleep is actually more fun than mom and dad! She takes you right to the edge and then she finally gives in and doses off. Next time you see her she is a peaceful little angel.

Lela is working hard on sitting and will probably be pretty good at it by this weekend. She is a real champ when it comes to eating solids which is funny because she seems to be the more finicky of the two. She loves sweet potatoes and freshly mashed banana. Piper seems to gravitate more towards the plain old rice cereal, so maybe she has her poppy’s taste buds.

All in all they are doing wonderful. I think Lela weighs close to 17 and Piper close to 18, according to our very unofficial home scale. We don’t go back to the doctor until Sept 23rd, they could be 20# by then:)

It’s official, Piper can sit! She has been working on it a while but now she does it quite well. She sits up and can grab at things and steady herself when she is about to topple. It is very cute and fun. Now while Lela is rolling around on the floor, the Peeps can sit there and pat Lela’s head (something she does a lot) and pick up her toys.

Both the girls are eating well and we should be on to sweet potatoes this weekend, how fun. We are working up to eating twice a day, just some rice and bananas. Lela is very dainty and clean when she eats and Piper is more interested in her spoon, how it works and how handy it can be. They both are more vocal and that is kind of fun too. Piper really likes to hear her voice, I guess she gets that from me, blah blah blah:)