Abs of Jelly

The babies are going to be 3 months old next week. The last two weeks, I've started getting much more sleep, and they're going longer and longer between feedings. So why, one might ask, do I continue to freebase chocolate like there's about to be a shortage? I've been disappointed anyway with how much weight I still have to lose just to get back to where I was before I got pregnant, and now I'm actually starting to gain. It's not like it's a mystery what I need to do - move at least occasionally and stop having dessert with every meal (okay, with every snack, every glass of water, every feeding of the babies. Really, I'm out of control with the sugar). The weather is getting cooler, so I should be able to get out and walk. Yeah, I'm going to get right on that. After I polish off this piece of fruit cobbler. Fruit is healthy, right?

To sleep perchance to scream

Generally, Sabrina is a much better sleeper than Simon. Although she is a bit of a night owl and tends not to go down until 11 or 12, once she's down she stays down, something I dearly love about her. Two nights ago, however, she wouldn't go down at all. Not at 11, not at 12, not at 1. We rocked, we rubbed, we fed, we soothed, we changed diapers, we begged and pleaded, but nothing was working. At 1:45, as I began to truly despair of getting any rest at all, and knowing that Simon was due for his first feeding at any moment, I tried taking off the shirt I had put under her pajamas. Instantly, she passed out cold and slept the rest of the night.

Mind you, this was a shirt she has worn before, a shirt completely devoid of sharp sticks and knife blades, a shirt that had never in any way caused her any offense that I am aware of. I put the shirt on her in the first place because she'd been waking up with cold hands and I wanted her to be warmer, but apparently my concern was misguided, and my daughter is trying to give the princess of princess-and-the-pea fame a run for her money. Cold hands it is from here on out.

Emerging from blobdom, times two

The babies are 2 months and 12 days old, and it seems like they're changing faster than ever. Abruptly, they are no longer just sleepy needy little blob people. Don't get me wrong - they were always cute, and they exhibited very different personalities from the very beginning - but now it's almost like you can see them learning and growing. I have other children, so this shouldn't strike me as so amazing, but it's a miracle each time. They've already learned so much, and yet they know almost nothing.

As I tried to write the above tribute to the wee ones, my mean-spirited daughter bit me while nursing. I think she's an early teether - she's been drooling already and fussy as hell. My least favorite manifestation of this teething is the biting. She wants to nurse all the time, but when she's not really in it for the food, she opts for chomping over sucking. Not fun. Is she too young for a time out?

I was going to go on to say that she's joining her brother in cooing. He's been making deliberate, interactive noises for a couple weeks, but she's more of a one-note song (and that note is loud, angry-sounding crying, though mercifully not too often). Tonight, though, she spent a good 10 minutes working out vowel sounds. It's so funny to see how hard they work on these first noises. You can almost see the nerve impulses lumbering their way from brain to mouth. It's similar to how they slowly turn their heads, then eyes, to focus on you when they hear your voice. Somehow the things they struggle to do seem more impressive for all the effort they take.

None of this was twin-specific, but babies are strange and wonderful, and watching two at once is even more so.

Playing with dolls and CSS

Today is Owen's 3rd birthday, and I'm using it as an opportunity to get the twins all gussied up. I'll have to post pictures after I upload them, because they really are ridiculously cute. I actually would love a grown-up version of Sabrina's outfit myself. Is it wrong to take this much joy in dressing the babies? I think maybe I should have played more with dolls as a little girl.

I'm dropping with exhaustion today, courtesy of the aforementioned 3 year old (not, as one might expect, due to the infant twins). We moved his bedtime up to 7pm a couple nights ago because he's been inhumanly tired lately. It seems to be helping, and he's getting a lot more sleep, but he's also still adjusting and getting up a couple times a night. Add that to Simon's 1-2 feedings a night and I'm one tired puppy. Thank goodness Sabrina's such a good sleeper.

Despite the tired, I'm expecting a great day. Justin (my five year old) has his first soccer game this morning, and mercifully it's not hot out. We have a party for Owen this afternoon. Best of all, I finally got the header on this blog's template sorted out. Yay me! If I weren't so scatterbrained, I could read a CSS tutorial, but I prefer to backwards-engineer stock templates. Not that efficient a method, actually, but it's such a satisfying feeling when it works out (mostly because it usually works out just when I've given it up).