Catching up

As you might have noticed from the last post, Adi & Mae are 'playing' together a little more. They smile at each other now, and try to grab each other's hands, feet, hair and especially toys. Its amazing how much more interesting a toy is when someone else is holding it! And now that they're getting mobile enough to get to each other, I'm spending more and more time pulling one away from the other. "No, Adi is playing with that... No, don't roll over your sister... No, don't scratch her face... Gentle..."

Adi has (finally!) started to roll. Both tummy-to-back and back-to-tummy, although she still gets stuck sometimes. She's reaching for toys and I know she can roll either direction from her back. She slept on her stomach last night for the first time that we know of and didn't get scared or stuck or anything.

And Mae doesn't want to get left behind as Adi picks up "her" skill- so she laughed out loud yesterday for the first time. My mom was tickling her with a stuffed animal and her usual excited breath/snorting gave way to a tinkling laugh. It was so neat to hear what her laugh sounds like- different from Adi's, but beautiful- and of course hearing a baby laugh just makes you laugh.


It's been so interesting to see them develop in different ways-- Adi with laughing and babbling, Mae with rolling-- and now to see them pick up the other skills. And in a few weeks, I'm sure I will report some crawling: Mae is pushing up to her hands and knees and rocking back and forth, and yesterday she went from sitting to hands and knees 3 times while my parents were watching her. And with the ease that Adi has shown with rolling (Mae worked and worked at it, Adi makes it look easy) she'll probably be close behind. Yep, we're looking for gates!

Playing together

Where'd my sock go?


Not fair: hers don't come off!

So Big! Mae at 7 months

You know the game where you hold the baby's hands and ask "How big is (baby's name)" and then hold their hands up high, saying "Soooo big!". Well, Meredith knows it too:

A few weeks ago she just started sticking her hands up- or out, at first (so wide!- even more true). Now she does it spontaneously when she wants to play, or when anyone says "How big is Meredith" or "How big is Adeline" or "How big are Daddy's muscles." Just in the last two days, she also started to bring her hands together when we say the patty-cake rhyme, and has quickly become fond of banging two toys together.

Some of her play with toys is now 'metaplay'; instead of just sucking on/looking at the toys, she likes to throw them on the ground or take them out of the box. She still appreciates the finer culinary details of her teething rings and photo albums- we've watched her chew on a toy, get ready to drop it, reconsider and chew on it more several times. But most of the time in her high chair, the toys are tasted and then promptly dropped. Then she bangs on her tray for a new one. (Or to amuse herself?)

Mae likes rhythmic motions a lot. She turns her head back and forth rapidly before falling asleep and, when lying on her back, pounds the floor with one or both hands. One of the cutest ramifications of this occurs when we go in to get her after a nap in the pack-n-play: she is usually on her stomach and she looks up and wags her head back and forth with a huge grin.

Smiles are very common from Mae- especially to strangers. When we go out with her in the stroller or back pack, she attracts a lot of attention because she smiles and coos at anyone she can make eye contact with. I think her dark, defined eyebrows (I swear I'm not penciling them in!) help to make her expressions even more dramatic. She's not smiling here, but see what I mean:She's started blowing raspberries and when she's fussing, doing it to her is one of the few things that might quiet her down. Singing has lost its magic- in fact, I think she just complains louder. She's still screaming, piercingly, to get our attention. (This is really a pain because Adi startles at loud noises and erupts into crying, which makes Mae scream more, which makes Adi cry again,... if you have a suggestion on how to teach a 7-month old not to scream, please tell me!)

Sitting is old hat, now, although she hasn't figured out how to get in or out of the position. As far as eating, she's not very picky- sometimes a bite of pure peas will make her gag but for the most part she plows through her solids, with distinct "mmm's" after each bite. She's had a slight rash off and on for a few weeks now, which I was worried was caused by oatmeal, so we went back to a more simple diet. But I'm not sure it helped, and I'm so impatient to introduce more foods. Her skin is very fair and she flushes easily so I'm not sure if the rash is real or just from being warm or something. Her cheeks are often bright pink from sleeping on her face during naps. (After she learned to roll, she quickly started sleeping on her stomach. I guess it must be nice to have a choice after so long of being stuck on one's back!)

But her main development is rolling. She gets all over and is pushing back onto her knees a little bit, too. She rolls around the living room, rotating when necessary, and can get about anywhere. She likes the base of the exersaucer and the pink box under the end table:

will grab the sling or ergo or folded-up toy gym from under the couch:



and likes to pick through the laundry and play underneath the swing:



It's so much fun to watch her go after something, rolling one way, trying the other way, rotating and trying it again.



Well, as of yesterday we have a new "biggest" milestone: a tooth! Her lower right one is poking through. She had been a bit fussy the past few days but we've thought that for the last 5 months, so I'm not going to claim that was why.

Adi addendum

Adi has a tooth!

Dave discovered it yesterday when she was trying to chew on his arm. "There's definitely something sharp in there." After some exploration we could see it: her bottom left front tooth has broken through. No pictures yet (trust me, it's hard enough to see in person)!

Picture perfect: Adi at 7 months

Adi has just started to babble; she really likes "b" and "v" sounds that she can make with her lips sucked in. She loves it when I make nonsense noises to her: "ga ga ga ga" or "golly golly golly" and so it seems that she can tell when we make sounds that are different than normal speaking. When someone sings to her, she stops whatever she is doing to look around and give a big smile; it is still possible to calm her down in the stroller or the car with a simple song. (Itsy-bitsy spider has been a favorite since early on, when Dave made up some spider-crawling, head-rubbing motions for them). She's been responding to her name for a few weeks now, which is both useful and delightful- to know that she is starting to understand us.

Her feet rank as a favorite toy, especially without socks. She will put her foot into her mouth all the way up the arch . All toys still go in the mouth; sometimes it seems she spends all of her energy trying to chew on our fingers. She often sticks her own hand in far enough to make herself gag. No signs of teeth, still (we're not in any hurry!). Favorite toys right now include a soft, crinkly book and the slick baby photo albums from both sides of the family-- she isn't too much into looking at the pictures but they sure must taste good! She still likes the 'halloween bear' that our neighbors gave her; one of Dave's games is to balance him on top of her head-- her arms are too short to reach him:

In her crib, we have a Taggie stuffed animal (a brilliant concept) that she will talk to for up to half an hour when she wakes up in the morning, looking at it, licking a tag, looking, sucking on its nose, etc.

She often sleeps in what Dave dubbed the "inverse fetal position": starting out on her back, she looks sideways and then up, arching her back until her face is parallel with the headboard of the crib. It looks supremely uncomfortable but seems to work for her. We usually put her to bed with a burp cloth (as we're trying to follow Kara & Eric's lead and get her to 'attach' to something small, washable and replaceable); she'll suck on it a little but often ends up pulling it over her face to sleep which can be a little disconcerting! Maybe she's playing peek-a-boo: she'll initiate the game occasionally by pulling something over her face, and is now very quick at pulling it off when we do it.

She is still suspicious of strangers (=anyone who she doesn't see weekly) and might erupt in petrified screams if I put her in someone's arms. Loud noises get the same reaction (the house hasn't been vacuumed in months). Dave was trying to get her to bond with the electric drill when he was installing a gate at the top of the stairs; maybe it would have worked if he had let her put it in her mouth:


And she's fairly good at sitting but I usually put a pillow behind her. Here's how our photo shoot progressed. Thanks to Regan and Travis for the adorable dress !

Expressions

Sometimes its hard to think of what has changed since the last post- even though every day there seems to be something new. For a few days, Adi adapted her bottom-lip-sucked-in expression to a frown (as captured in this photo). Mae's latest 'development' is screaming: sometimes in (apparent) joy, sometimes in obvious displeasure. We are trying to avoid encouraging her by not responding, but it sure does get our attention!

It is getting warm enough that I've been thinking of summer clothes; here the girls are wearing dresses for the first time (thanks to Kara for Mae's and Regan and Travis for Adi's!). Last weekend, the twins club had a used-clothing sale so I got lots of onesies and dresses that I'm looking forward to putting them in; I just love seeing the fat little arms, legs and feet that have been hidden all winter.

Adi just woke up from her afternoon nap so I better pay attention to her instead of just writing about her. Although she is currently occupied trying to lick the rolling barrel on her Exersaucer.
(here:)

Our little roller

Mae is now an accomplished roller. For a long time her nickname was Flip-flop, because she would roll tummy-to-back and back-to-tummy but only over the same side. Which was convenient for us, as she didn't travel very far. But now she has connected the rolls and can actually travel. It's quite a surprise to find her several feet from where we left her, and quite an adjustment to have to watch where we put things on the floor. We are still working on babyproofing, trying to figure out how to set up the house so I can leave the room, for instance, to put one girl to bed, with some easy way to secure the other one.

But for now, we're just excited that she can move around. It has made her a more frustrated baby in a way. From minutes after her birth, Mae has been laid back, often happy to watch the world go by and not demanding too much attention. But now that she has had a taste of wanting & getting something (for instance, a toy that she sees and rolls over to get) she gets frustrated when she can't get something, or when she is on her stomach and can't seem to remember or is too tired to roll over. But she is quite resourceful in her movements: by just rolling and rotating she can get to an awful lot of things. And she is still a very happy baby, liberal with her smiles and coos, who seems like she can't contain her excitement when we come into the room.