going vertical and other stories

Wow, it's been a long time since I set out to update the blog! It's been Since my summer vacation started five weeks ago, in fact. One might assume (rather naturally) that since I was home nonstop, that would give me ample time to chronicle our family's happenings. And that does seem to make sense, and I'm really kind of shocked that I've gone SO long without updating. But being home all the time with two baby-toddlers does weird things to your sense of time and accomplishment. One one hand, they do cute/new/funny/horrifying things all the time, so there's lots to remember and write about. On the other hand, our day is broken up into about a million tiny segments. So by the time the 10 interesting little segments are mixed in with the 999,990 completely mundane segments, the days tend to feel pretty routine and unremarkable overall.

I recently ran across a funny column someone had re-posted on facebook. For those of you who don't have kids, and even for those who do, it's a pretty concise description of what mommies spend their days doing. Here it is. I'm going to keep it handy to read at the end of the days when I feel exhausted and yet can't quite exactly remember what I've done all day.


In the interest of everyone's time (mostly mine), I'm going to summarize our recent happenings and accomplishments...

• We didn't do a real "vacation" this year, but we visited Gemma and Granddad in Bastrop and at their house (we're there right now) and hosted a week-long visit from Grandma, which was very fun. I'm missing some pictures, but here is one with Grandma about a week ago:

• Both babies are walking, in a sense. Noah took steps almost a month ago, but has just recently gotten independent enough to walk across the room. Not to be outdone, Lily has decided she needs to walk as well. She's not very strong or coordinated, but has managed to toddle a couple steps out of sheer willpower. I think it'll be a while before I have two true toddlers, but it's not too far off.
• Lily has continued to impress us with her determination and concentration. Lately, both babies are infatuated with clothes, especially putting on their pants. One day she sat down with a pair of shorts. I saw her get one leg in, and then I got distracted with something else. Next thing I knew, I heard her clapping for herself--she'd gotten both her legs in her shorts and was apparently very proud!

• With the new walking skills, the babies have begun to discover the possibilities of climbing. We hijacked our neighbor's plastic kiddie slide while they were on vacation, and then got one for our own backyard. It is most enjoyable when mixed with suckers and hose-spraying.

Noah was determined to climb up the slide, even though it was slippery and soaking wet.

• Neither of the babies has said much yet beyond a couple of words, but their sign language is taking off like crazy. In the past two months, they've gone from using the sign for "more" sporadically to using about 30 signs... and new ones still show up every couple of days. They tell us when they see a hat or ball, or when they want their milk or water, or get hungry and want to eat. They sign for several animals--dogs, bears, frogs, ducks, fish... and for a lot of daily routine things like washing hands, bath, blanket, and sleep. It's truly incredible, and much more fun than I ever thought it would be. I'm amazed to learn what they're thinking about and what they remember--it's a lot!

Okay, I think that's most of the notable notes. We did have a couple of play dates and zoo trips, though I'm not sure whether I have many good pictures to post. Perhaps I'll tell about those later...

...and, AHA! I just found a post from Page with some more pictures. We went to visit her family last Monday and Tuesday, and it was a lot of wild and crazy fun. Mostly crazy. Here's her summary of events:

The Boyd Gang

pincer grasp

grasp, pincer

n. the grasping of an object between the thumb and forefinger. The ability to perform this task is a milestone of fine motor development in infants, usually occurring between 9 and 12 months of age.



"Um. I don't think you're doing it right."

"You also have a large piece of spinach next to your ear. Ew, boys."

"My bad. Here, let me try again..."

who are these short people living in my house?

Remember all those times when I thought Noah and Lily were changing and growing quickly? I was wrong. Absolutely wrong.



Well not wrong, per se, but the amount of changing they've been doing lately puts all those other times to shame. I literally have different beings in my house than I did last month.



And no, they haven't started walking (although Noah is absolutely capable) or talking. But they are definitely different. For one thing, all of a sudden they show preferences, make choices, and communicate those desires. Gone are the days when I could just plunk any food in front of them at lunchtime and expect them to unquestioningly accept it. They make point and grab gestures to everything else on the table, especially Mommy's food and drink. And after a few repetitions, they usually seem to understand that they can't have it. (And then I hide it. Because understanding doesn't mean accepting.)



Just a few minutes ago, I was cleaning up the kitchen when I realized I couldn't hear the TV anymore. (We don't usually keep it on when the babies are awake, but Daddy had been catching up on soccer.) I looked into the living room to see the TV blank with some unrecognizable setting on the screen. And Noah looked at me innocently, holding the remote to his ear as if it was a telephone. It was too cute for me to get upset, even though remotes are off-limits. So then I took the remote and proceeded to get the TV back from never-never land. When I finished and looked up, Noah was sitting patiently on the floor and watching the TV. He then pointed at it, grunted, and looked at me. And then I realized that he thought, since I was doing things with the remote, that it was "movie time"--and he was all set! Again, too cute for me to resist, so they're now watching a sign language DVD.



Speaking of sign language, there's another area where the twins have exploded. Before their birthday a month ago, they could sign "more", and Lily was beginning to pick up "milk". Now, they also do eat, bath, please, hat, dog, ball, and baby. A lot of these are not super consistent, and there are a couple that they don't both do. But they're beginning to generalize and use them out of context, which is really exciting. They've also learned several body parts in the past month: they now know tongue, hair, head, nose, ear, and bellybutton. It's ridiculous.

I have a couple videos I want to put up, but I think I'll do them a little later...

the wild jungles of suburbia

I may never go out in the backyard at night again. A couple hours ago I found a (small) snake eating a (huge) toad. There was blood. It was very ick.

A few minutes ago I went out with the flashlight to make sure the snake-toad ensemble had cleared out before I let the dogs have access to the yard again. During my (squeamish) search, I inadvertently rediscovered a trick they taught me in third grade. Namely, how to use a flashlight to find spiders. The light reflects back off their spidery eyes as bright blue little glints of light.

There were a LOT of little blue glints. I tracked down a couple of the closest ones, and they belonged to massive wolf spiders. They tried to eat my toes, but I was already running away from the snake and the bloody toad, so they didn't catch me.

hair and side effects

As the baby-toddlers' hair has gotten longer, we have had to figure out things to do with it. For those of you tuning in via pictures only, it probably looks like they both have the same type of hair. Au contraire, my friends. While they do seem to sport almost identical hair colors (Lily's is a touch darker), everything else is different. Noah's hair has curls; Lily's is straight (though it is beginning to curl at the ends). Noah's is sikly and shiny; Lily's is fuzzy and wispy. And though it is less obvious now, Noah's hair grew in mohawk-first, and Lily's was an even length all over her head.


Anyway, despite his curls, Noah's hair had been getting on my nerves for some time now. It was just a little too shaggy. But I was afraid of him looking too grown up too early, so we waited until recently to cut it. And so, just after the birthday party a couple weeks ago, with both grandmothers on hand (both experienced hair-cutters), Noah got his ears lowered. He did pretty well--sat fairly still and endured quite a bit of head-handling. (Thank goodness for Baby Einstein videos...)



And here's my big boy with his new grown-up haircut!


Not to be outdone, Lily is also changing up her 'do. She finally has long enough hair to manage vague impressions of ponytails. She HATES me messing with her hair, as I have to pull it a bit to keep it together. And it's all for nothing, because the ponytails stay in for approximately 8 seconds. Long enough to snap a couple pictures, anyway...

In other news, my children are gaining skills by leaps and bounds. They've gotten to the point where they can imitate me (and each other) fairly easily, which is fun. They point to some body parts and to several other objects. Unfortunately, this new awareness and skill acquisition has some unfortunate side effects. Cases in point:

• I lay the babies on their backs in the bathtub to wash their hair. When I lay Lily down, Noah immediately points out her bellybutton. He does so by grabbing a fistful of her belly skin and squeezing it as hard as he can. Every time. Sadly, I am not a fast learner and I generally realize he has done this when Lily screams in anguish.
• When the table is turned and I lay Noah down, Lily thinks it's great fun to yank a handful of his hair. Not sure if it's retaliatory or not, but there's no doubt he's earned it.
• The other day I gave the babies each a graham cracker as an appetizer while I finished heating up their dinner. Noah finished his while Lily nibbled slowly on hers. When I then crammed a spoonful of spinach and mashed potatoes into Noah's gaping, graham-cracker-anticipating maw, he was most offended. He spit it out, looked at Lily, and pointed insistently at her half-eaten cracker. "EEEHHH!!!" She looked at him cooly (and, may I say, a little exultantly?) and continued munching. As if this wasn't maddening enough, his mommy then proceeded to stuff another spoonful of potatoes into his mouth. And then we had Noah's First Temper Tantrum.
• While in the bathtub (are you gathering that bath time can be a bit trying?), Noah tries to stand up about three times per second. Since I like to minimize the opportunity for concussions, drowning, and other festivities while I bathe two slippery kiddos, I enforce a sitting-only policy in the tub. Which means I tell him "No", "Sit down", "I said SIT DOWN", and other such things about 37,000 times per bath. This hasn't been an issue for Lily, who's not good at pulling up yet. But lately, in the middle of Noah's up-down routine, Lily grabs the edge of the tub and pulls as if she's about to stand, and looks at me expectantly. Seriously? Can't we just learn the GOOD behaviors from each other and save Mommy a LITTLE time?

the birthday bash

And finally, Mommy is getting around to recording the events of our birthday party a couple weeks ago.

Although this wasn't actually AT the party, Daddy spent quite a bit of time making blocks for Noah and Lily. It'll be a while before they can fully appreciate all the construction capabilities, but they already enjoy knocking them down!

I went and picked up the balloons for the party while the babies were napping, and they were quite impressed when they woke up:

In case you can't tell, the big balloons are a dragonfly (I thought it was a butterfly when I ordered it) and an elephant. They have been quite fun. They're still "alive", though they are quickly dying, and the babies are still fascinated by them.

And, since it wouldn't be a birthday without cake... The small cakes were for Noah and Lily, the big cake was for most of the rest of us, and the cupcakes were for any small dairy-allergic partygoers.

They didn't need a lot of explanation on what to do with their cakes:

Noah pursues star power:

"Oh, uh-oh, I think I got a little something on my hand..."

Noah was the most talented at making an incredible mess.

Even Lily can't quite understand quite how he got THAT messy.

After the cake and a lengthy clean-up, it was on to presents! There were a LOT of them. The kiddos didn't quite have the expertise or the stamina to stay focused to get through them all:

Luckily, they had a couple of professional present-openers to help out. Jenna was very excited to help Noah open the present she and her mommy brought:

And Dylan was happy to demonstrate how this EXTREMELY loud toy worked. Notice the shocked looks on everybody's faces!

I was very proud of the cute plushy doll I found for Lily. She liked it too, and immediately gave it a big kiss:

By the end of the presents, our living room looked like the toy section of Wal-Mart had exploded. There were like 10 other people there, but it was standing room only for the rest of the crowd.

Other pictures of birthday party fun:

Okay, this one isn't from the actual party--it's not even from the visit. But I realized I didn't take any good pictures of Michael and his fiancee Danielle. So I stole a picture from facebook:

no more babies

One year ago at this moment, we were on our way to the hospital for what I had convinced myself was a false alarm. After all, I couldn't be in labor--they had just scheduled my induction for the following week. About 12 hours later, these guys proved me wrong:


And today was the last day I held my babies, and the last night I kissed them goodnight. The last time I nursed my babies and fed them. The last time I heaved myself off the floor holding two babies.

Because tomorrow, despite the lack of any two-legged ambulation, they are officially toddlers. I guess. (There needs to be some sort of in-between word for my poor mobility-challenged younguns.)

I can't decide if it feels like it has been a year, or whether it feels like only a few days, or like a lifetime. I was so afraid of having children because I knew they would take over my life. Little did I know the extent to which they would consume me. And I was absolutely ignorant of just how thrilled I would be to hand my life over to them, gift-wrapped. (Babies love wrapping paper, you know.)

Speaking of wrapping paper, the birthday party last week went just swimmingly. Of course, I was too busy being Party Referee to manage to take any pictures. So as soon as all the folks who took pictures manage to email those to me, I will make a birthday party post. (Hint-hint...)

Until then, here's a little picture tribute to my kiddos and their first year...

Newborn

1 Month

2 Months

3 Months

4 Months

5 Months

6 Months

7 Months

8 Months

9 Months

10 Months

11 Months

12 Months