Growing Pains - for Mommy

Lately, the twins have been growing & developing at a rapid pace...

They've become more mobile...they push themsleves around - never far, but not where I put them. Allie especially loves doing this in her crib...I go in to get her and discover that she started out in the lower middle of her crib and somehow ended in the far upper corner. They are also rolling - not continuously, but each of them rolls over at least once a day. Ryan has tended to be especially proficient at this - which seems odd since Allie was the first one to start trying. However, Ryan rolls from the stomach to his back and Allie always tries rolling from back to stomach (she's too content where she is on her stomach). It seems as though Ryan may have chosen the easier way.

They are eating solid foods. Rice cereal to be exact (although I'm looking forward to introducing yummy foods like bananas). They actually picked up the art of eating from a spoon quite well. Ryan (my foodie) eats from a spoon as though he has been doing it all his life. He gets very little on his face, sometimes slurps from the spoon before I can even get it all the way in his mouth, and smacks his lips after almost every bite. Although, he also fusses now when he sees me eat my cereal in the morning...he thinks all food should be his! Allie thinks that eating from the spoon is a very funny game. She smiles and giggles whenever I bring the spoon to her mouth. She eventually takes the bite, but she gets more on her face because she is so tickled by the apparent humor of the event that she sometimes laughs with food in her mouth...we'll have to work on her manners. The other thing is that they love the new wipe off bibs...so much so that they are always crunching them up and pressing them against their face. This means that I'm not just wiping mouth and hands when they eat, but nose, forehead, and (somehow) ears! But we love the mess - that's what being a kid is all about after all - and they are, thankfully, washable.

They are reaching and grabbing for everything (toys, books, hair, glasses). They have an incredible grip once they have grabbed onto something, and then everything goes into their mouth. This recently acquired talent is displayed in the above photo. Now I have to keep an eye out for those things that they somehow find that are not supposed to make it into their mouths (usually my hair, which no matter what I do seems to be everywhere...).

They are "talking." They love the sound of their voices, and 1 or both of them babbles from the time they wake up until the last shred of consciousness before they go to sleep. I have literally seen Allie with her eyes closed and her body limp still making the effort to push out sound. While I love hearing them talk, and I especially love our "conversations" - where they babble something and then look at me and wait for my response - this is less adorable at 5 am when their eyes pop open and they begin to talk louder, and Louder, and LOUDER...and I just want to sleep a little longer.

And, they have graduated from the bassinette to their cribs. While they have made the transition relatively well (at least for the few nights they have been in them), this has been a tough transition for mommy. I'm not exactly sure why this has been so difficult for me. The only thing I can think of is that we brought them home from the hospital and the first place we put them was in the little bassinette. I watched them sleep in there, side by side so often. In the mornings I loved going in and seeing them both look up at me and smile. Sometimes they would talk to each other through the thin fabric that separated them. And I think that, somehow, when they were in there it was more difficult for me to see the changes. It didn'ts seem like they were that much different from the babies that we brought home from the hospital - they couldn't be because they were sleeping in the same small place. But now that they are in the cribs they are obviously moving into the "older" baby world. They are no longer newborns. They are developing rapidly and changing daily, and I feel so very aware that this phase is going by quickly and it won't be longer before they are toddlers and not babies.

I love each change, each development, each milestone reached. These are the things I watch and wait for. At the same time...each newly acquired talent moves them into another phase of babyhood. And each new phase of babyhood moves them closer to no longer being babies. And it's going so quickly, I have to remind myself to stop and really enjoy each moment because it won't be long before the moments are gone.