Joy to the World

After the girls were born our biggest concerns were health. Can they breath, is that jaundice, how bad is the cold, are they eating. Things related to their simple survival on this planet. Now, 4 days from the 8 month mark, the checklist has grown quite a bit, but not exclusivly in the health department. There are questions of are they smart for their age, are they social, are they to rough on the dog. You relax quite a bit on the bumps and bruises after the 20th face plant and focus more on these other, more difficult to measure concerns. My biggest concern after health is happiness. I take solace in the knowledge that my girls are so incredibly full of joy. I think that has such a direct effect on everything else and is too often over looked. A lot of people try and force joy by creating false situations and spoiling their children. They give them anything they want so that the child feels they are happy, they must be! They've got a happy meal, a go cart and a pony, what could be lacking? But I think true joy is at the same time easier and harder to obtain. It comes from the environment around them. Not they physical but the emotional. Is there happiness in the home? Is their laughter? Is there tension? These things bring out the joy, and I can see it in my girls. They aren't old enough yet to "want" anything. They need food and an occasional nap, other than that they're happier with the dogs toys then their own, and probably prefer to go with out cloths and jewelery. And despite the lack of "wants" they are so freakin' happy all the time. They laugh at us, they laugh at each other, they laugh at the cat, the dog, even the ceiling fan. If you are playing with one you can almost always look over and see the other watching you play and laughing right along with you. I don't know if all babies are this way, I'm limited in my few experiences. But this brings me joy. And I'm sure that becomes cyclical, my joy feeding theirs feeding mine. I hope this joy continues, because this is the one thing I truly wish on them in life. To be genuinaly happy for what ever amount of time God decides to give us on this rock. The rest of the needs and wants will follow.

Sushi

We're so trendy, we don't even wait for tables anymore. We just belly on up to the sushi bar. Genevieve made friends with the sushi chefs, Arianna made friends with her neighbor. All around a wonderful Friday night out. Who says kids limit you?! If anything they force you to go early and take advantage of happy hour! $3 rolls. Cha-Ching!

Dad's don't know $h!t about earings

I found my kryptonite. My Achilles Heel. The weak spot in my armor. Earrings. Decorative items worn by women. They are my ruin. Allow me to explain. After Gina had left for class last night, we were in the process of finishing up our dinner. We made our way through avocado, sweet potato, bread and a little homemade yogurt with pears. Literally 2 bites away from completion Arianna gets a look on her face. Before I could ask "what's wrong" the child from the Exorcist showed up and a fire hose of avocado colored, homemade yogurt textured and sweet potato spotted discharge spewed from the mouth of my 7 month old. Three separate heaves in total, each more voluminous then the last. The floor was covered, my child was covered, I was covered. I sat for what seemed like minutes in total shock (Genevieve laughing in the background) until I snapped too. I unbuckled her from her high chair - no way to avoid plunging my hands into the pile to find the buckles, that was lovely - and rushed her to the sink. Karma followed in hot pursuit trying to clean the floor like it was mana from above. I got her shorts off, and was working on the shirt - now I can't tell you why but I was trying to avoid getting it in her hair. As Gina scolded me later, she needed a bath anyway after that why would you care if it's in her hair at this point?! I don't know. I'm a guy. We don't think, we do. 20,000 Nazi's over that hill? Charge! What's this button do? Push it! I won a hand of blackjack? Let it ride! So as I'm navigating the shirt over her head I feel tension, release and then hear the god awful sound of metal dropping. Arianna starts to wail, I get the shirt over her melon and. ... only one earring. A trace of blood where the other was. Oh. ... dear. ... god. Now I've never had my ears pierced. Never studied up on earrings. Wasn't even there when my girls got theirs done. I've only picked up small amounts of info, like you have to clean them and turn them twice a day. You can't leave them out cause the holes can close. They shouldn't be swallowed - stuff like that. But the details are missing. In the moment, I'm operating under the impression that they close up in like 30 seconds. I'm freaking out. I'm now holding a naked baby, covered in puke, on my hands and knees looking for a small gold flower earring with rainbow petals. Where's the security video footage of this. I find the earring next to the dog bowl, but the back is no where to be found- now I have visions of Karma scarfing her food and a backing. I'm sifting through dog food with my free hand, earring in my mouth trying not to swallow - that rule was important to remember. I can't find it, but I'm totally afraid of this hole closing up. I run to the couch, steralize my hands and the earring, go to push it through the hole and the back pops off. ... it was stuck to the back of her earlobe the whole freakin' time. So I get the back, sterilize it, get the earring through the hole, Arianna wipes her head to the side and the earring goes flying. Now I've got the back in my mouth, naked vomit baby in one arm, on my hands and knees trying to grab an earring from beneath the entertainment stand. Back and forth like this. Lose earring, find earring, drop back, find back. I must have resterilized everything a dozen times. The problem was that I didn't know you had to push really hard to get those things in. I'm afraid too much force and I'll ripe her ear off. I'd rather have a cool '90's baby with one earring then a Van Gogh baby. But, somehow, I finally snapped the damn thing in. Drenched in sweat, covered in vomit and Genevieve still sitting in her highchair, laughing away.

And then there were teeth

As if one big milestone this week weren't enough, the following day brings the discover of teeth. .. and that's plural for more than one reason. Not only did Arianna and Genevieve both cut a pearly white - Genevieve cut two! They went to bed on Monday night toothless, and Tuesday morning there they are, like magic. Everyone said it would work like that, but let's be honest, so far most of what everyone has said has pretty much fallen short. But this topic they were spot on. ... on. I told the cats to watch out. Not only are these children becoming mobile, they can now leave bite marks as well.

Houston, we have lift-off

Arianna is officially crawling. She's been doing the army crawl for a few weeks, but she's quadrupedal, limbs moving independently crawling now. And the cat is rightfully terrified. Gina called me with the news yesterday but I finally got to see it for myself when they got home last night. Plopped her on the floor and she just kind of looked at me, then Fila strutted by and like a shot out of a canon she was off. ... cat couldn't believe her eyes. This display shows the vast personality differences in the girls too. Geneveive isn't really army crawling at this point - but not because she lacks the ability. Genevieve is the stronger of the two, she just isn't ready. See Arianna is the "leap before thinking" personality. She is constantly in motion and eventually she'll figure out something that makes sense. She started with flopping around, turned into spinning on her belly, progressed to army crawling and now she's mobile. She put the pieces together until she got something she liked. Genevieve is a very different bird. She thinks out her moves. She sits and she watches and she sees her sister rolling around and you can see the little wheels turning in her mind almost like "Ok, that doesn't look fun. There's got to be a better way!" So she digests it for a while. Now she's finally come to the determination that "moving is nice, but the floor is not. Mom and Dad seem to get around with out crawling so why don't I just do what they do?" Every time I try to put her down she straightens herself out to stand up. It's hard to get her to sit and if you lay her down she gets pissy so I let her stand and she holds on to my fingers and then starts to move her legs - it's like she just figures she'll skip the whole crawling thing and move straight to walking. So I have a "mover" and a "thinker" in my two kids. ... which is shaping up to be trouble. Because in the future I know that Genevieve will come up with some "brilliant" plan and Arianna will not hesitate to execute it. That spells trouble. But for the moment, the trouble is limited to dogs, cats and anything else that hangs out on the floor. I do, however, think that Genevieve might find inspiration to crawl when she suddenly sees her sister barreling toward her and she has no current mobility options. That'll get her going.

Genevieve "Greek Dancing"

Sometimes it takes a little Queen to put two princessess to bed

The last few weeks (pretty much since the festival season has started) Gina has fallen into a pattern of getting up to feed the girls around the midnight hour. The problem with this is that this doesn't then replace the 3 am feeding - it's in addition to. So now Gina is getting up twice a night for feeding, and I can assure you she was not happy about the arraignment. So last night, as she stormed toward their room muttering full force we decided instead to stop this madness cold turkey. I know, we've tried this before, and I wish we could say that this time we had more resolve to see it through but we've been pretty determined in the past too. Sometimes I feel like we're the children and we're throwing tantrums, stomping our feet with arms crossed screaming "noooooooooooo!" So we went for about 50 minutes, trying frozen binkies and repositioning. Finally, in desperation I suggested playing some music. We bought this CD player for them and we got all these great CDs - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, even some Green Day and Queen that have been turned into lullabies with harps and xylophones. And as the Bohemian Rhapsody melodically floated over the early morning air the screaming slowly subsided. Another One Bites the Dust ironically took us into sleep and Under Pressure put the final touches on, sealing the deal. We crept back into bed, feeling both proud and dismayed. Pride in accomplishment, dismay that we didn't come to their rescue. Sometimes doing the best thing doesn't always feel the best.