18 Months

Somehow, my girls aren't the littlest babies on the block anymore! Today they are 18 months old and I am dedicating this posting to the little things they've been up to lately, so I won't forget.

This week, Carmen climbed up onto the structure at the park all by herself. There's three steps up to the top, one about knee high (my knees, not theirs!), one about waist-high and the last about shoulder-high. Carmen wriggled and pulled herself up, up, up and with the biggest, proudest smile, she toddled over, sat down and went down the slide. All by herself. She ran around and did it all again and again.

Lena's vocabulary expands every single day. We have a huge picture book and she says the words for all the pictures as we flip through. Bike. Grapes (gapes). Apple (bapple). Banana. Baby. Clock. Car. Pig. Kitty (ditty). Doggie. I can't believe how many words she knows. She loves doing puzzles too, and is incredibly curious about everything. She takes things apart, tries to zip things, buckle things, open and close things. She likes trying to figure out how everything works.

As I was cleaning the kitchen after dinner the other night, Carmen tore through and, to keep her busy, I asked her to put all her blocks back in the bag. I didn't pay much attention, but five minutes later when I looked up, she was scooting around filling the bag up with all the blocks! Lena was "sweeping" with her little broom and Carmy was picking up her toys. My little helpers!

They've also been playing together more and more. Giggling, running, chasing, screaming. Holding hands, pulling each other around. Sitting and playing with their blocks, making (or taking apart) a tower together. Talking to each other, giving kisses and squeezes. It's a really fun age right now. I am so honoured to be able to watch them grow up together. <3

Happy Valentine's Day!

To celebrate Valentine's Day, just for fun, we did some finger painting for the first time. I bought heart-shaped paper from the dollar store, finger paints, and then covered my entire dining area with drop-sheets. I did my best to let the girls go wild with the paint, only a few times saying "not in your mouth" but mostly encouraging them and admiring their beautiful little paintings. It was quite a mess, I'm definitely not used to getting messy! They had fun and I was so proud of their first art projects. Lena mostly mashed all the colours together, and Carmen meticulously pushed each colour around on the paper with careful little fingers. Here are some pictures. Happy Valentine's Day!

Toddler Beds... *insert ominous music here*

 Sharing a crib for the first month.

When we found out we were having twins, we came back to our one bedroom apartment and looked around trying to imagine where we were going to fit two cribs (and everything else...). After a lot of online research, we found the "mini cribs" by DaVinci, a popular crib manufacturer. They are just a couple inches slimmer and quite a few inches shorter than standard cribs, and they fit perfectly side-by-side in our bedroom window alcove. When the babies were first born, they slept together in the same crib for the first month.
After about a month, we discovered that Lena was crying and was generally unsettled a lot more often than Carmen and it was easier to have them in separate cribs so Carmen could sleep undisturbed by herself. Although I will say one babies crying never seemed to wake the other baby, or even make them flinch for that matter! Thank goodness. When we first moved them into their own cribs in our bedroom, Carmen seemed so happy to have her own space. She excitedly waved her arms around and smiled.

So now, at 18 months old, they're growing out of their mini cribs. I ordered their toddler beds online and they've come in; we're going to pick them up from the States on Saturday. After that, I'm going to wait until the very last moment when their heads and toes are literally touching the ends of their crib. I've literally read nothing but terrible stories about the transition out of cribs. What I've read a lot of is toddlers simply giving up their naps and playing in their room instead, and I can totally see that happening. So I ask of you, dear readers, if you have any stories of encouragement or advice for this transition. Did you transfer your toddler/twins before 2 years old? If so, please share!

I just didn't think it would be this hard...

My girlfriend was over the other day with her (very adorable) two week old baby. The day before, on the phone, in a wave of hormones, she broke down with, "I just didn't think it would be this hard". My heart broke, because I knew exactly how she felt. Old feelings of intense sleep deprivation, confusion, hormonal crying and utter despair, feelings I'd locked up in an attempt to forget, suddenly came over me like they'd never left. I didn't know what to say. "Yeah".


So when she came over the next day, I asked her how she thought she could have been better prepared for what it's like to care for an infant. She took prenatal classes and learned about pregnancy, labour and delivery... but there's not really any "class" out there that prepares you for actually having an infant (not one that I'm aware of anyways), and if there were I imagine it should be something like army training where you live in barracks with colicky infants for a month. Even then, you wouldn't have the intense hormonal response that occurs from the moment you give birth and goes on for weeks, sometimes months. Nor would you experience the physiological response of spiked blood pressure, anxiety and broken heartedness you get when your own baby is crying.

I thought I'd been pretty honest with her about how hard a time I had, and she came over once a week in the evening starting when the babies were a few months old. But no one saw what I did every day and night. Only glimpses, and then they could leave, go home and sleep all night long. When I would say to her, "Last night was terrible. I finally was able to fall asleep around 9 and then was up from 11-1 and then again from 3-6 and then the babies woke up at 7" I'm sure she thought that sounded awful. But when you've experienced it, you truly get just how terrible it is. Because it happens over and over, day in and out, night in and out. She now knows what it means to count down hours, minutes, seconds. Looking at the clock the moment the baby cries, waking you up, and then trying to get her to go back to sleep and continuing to look at the clock as hours and hours go by in the middle of the night. Desperate for sleep. Desperate for you baby to stop crying. Frustration, exhaustion. "WHAT DID I DO TO MY LIFE?" I had it so good... why did I do this to myself?

No matter how honest I was about how difficult my first year was, I don't want to assume that other people will have a difficult time. And so, you can't really tell a person, it's going to be hard. REALLY HARD. Harder than you can even imagine. Because you don't know for sure. I've heard some babies are easy and sleep through the night from the moment they're born. This could be mythical, but I can't know for sure.

Point is, I have come to the conclusion that I just don't think it's possible to actually do anything to prepare for having a baby. The best advice I have for a woman nearing the end of her first pregnancy is to rest. Just relax. Lay down. Sleep. Listen to the silence in the air. Listen to no-one interrupting you. Be present. A shit storm's coming your way! But it does get better, and it keeps getting better. Remember that every day and you'll get through.