15 lbs 7 oz

Violet had her six month well child check last week. This went mostly well, she is developmentally on track and she is healthy. However, she weighed in at 15 lbs 7 oz. She has not doubled her birth weight, and her weight has dropped down a curve since her four month check. So we are going back in six weeks for a weight check.

This is a little crazy to me, because my darling Vi has such adorable little fat rolls on her legs and her cheeks are just as squishy as can be. Eden and Sebastien were born so little and I was always so worried about them gaining weight. It has not occurred to me to worry about Violet's weight.

Dr. Warmoth, our pediatrician who I actually like a lot, is not an alarmist. I appreciate this about him because as a mom, I do tend to worry. He explained that it very well could just be Violet falling into the percentile that she "genetically" is meant to be in. Some babies, he told me, are born heavier than they are genetically meant to be. He would not go down the road of "what else might be going on" because he's just not like that. He's calm and optimistic.

If Violet continues to drop in percentiles, the first step will be to supplement her feedings. Which is not a terrible thing. I had not intended to wean her until much closer to her first birthday, but of course, bottle feeding her, or supplementing is far from the worst thing in the world. In fact, I already supplement her last feeding of the day with some formula. So there is a part of me that wants to rush to that point and say, well, let's just supplement all feedings now! Let's fatten this baby up. But Dr. Warmoth did not want me to change anything at this point, so I will be patient and wait six weeks.

Violet is 5 months old

Within one week of turning 5 months old, Violet cut her first tooth and dropped her third nap. These two things have changed a big portion of our day. Vi used to take 3 naps averaging anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 3 hours each, with the longer ones earlier in the day. But suddenly she decided that she didn't want to sleep at all for a third nap. And now we are all learning how to have her awake for a very long stretch from about 2:00 until she goes to bed between 7 and 8:00. She doesn't want to sleep, but she isn't necessarily super happy to be awake. She seems to be getting enough sleep over all, since she sleeps 11 hours, sometimes 12 at night, and her two naps easily give her another 5 or 6 hours total. But yes, having her awake from 2:00 until bedtime presents some challenges. Couple this with teething, and you can see how things are a little different around here.

Of course, she is still the baby champ, as her "fussiness" is really just mild complaining. She loves to giggle and squeal, loves to watch her brother and sister, greets daddy and mommy with big smiles, and grabs at what she wants. Her favorite toys are actually her toes currently, but she also loves her lion and her butterfly/bee. (We aren't sure what it's supposed to be, but she loves it.) She also rolls way onto her side, but has not rolled all the way over yet.

Eden's World

Lately, Eden and Sebastien have been very into pretending. Mostly they pretend to be characters from their favorite shows. It is great fun to listen to them recite scenes, pretty close to word for word.

When Eden does this, she is all in. For about a week straight she referred to me only as "Isa the Iguana." I really do mean only, at night she would say "Good night, Isa the Iguana." When I came home, she'd greet me with "Isa the Iguana, you are back!" When she sat in timeout, and I gave her the "You are in time-out because...." she would reply with "Sorry Isa the Iguana." It wasn't just me. Sebastien was always Dora, she (Eden) was Boots, and Daddy was Benny. One day when we were home, the phone rang and she said, "You better get that, Isa the Iguana, it might be Benny." Even Violet had a role, Eden called her "Baby Swiper."

Well, now the game shifted, and I became Mrs. Sparklenose. Eden is Goneagain. Sebastien is now Blog, Adam is Niblet, and Violet is Baby Abby. (Not to be confused with Eden's big cousin Abby, who is an actual person. Not a puppet or a cartoon.)

Sometimes at night when I am kissing her goodnight, she starts to say "Mommy" and then she quick switches to Mrs. Sparklenose. And sometimes I long to be called Mommy again. But I do appreciate the sweetness of getting to be involved in her play, and taking on such an important role as being the Mrs. Sparklenose to her Goneagain, and the Isa to her Boots.

Who will I be next week? Who's to say. I can't wait to find out!

Spiders

Did you know that I'm afraid of spiders? It's a true phobia. I know it's completely irrational, but I am afraid. I have realized that my fear is in direct proportion to a) size b) movement c) positioning of said spider. Bigger is worse. Creeping or (YIKES) climbing down a strand of web in the middle of a room is awful. (I'm breaking into a sweat right now, I kid you not.) As far as positioning, the ceiling is worse than on the floor. The top part of the wall is worse than the bottom.

Two spider related stories. In one, I am a conquering hero, in the other, a scared wimp.

Let's start with the conquering hero. There was a huge disgusting spider (more sweat) crawling toward Violet's play mat. I could not stand the thought of that thing crawling onto such a safe and sweet place, and certainly could not stand the thought of it being there when Violet was playing there. (She wasn't at the moment.) So, I took a lot of deep breaths, rolled about approximately one whole roll of toilet paper, and said the following mantra to myself "It's for Violet, for the kids, I can do this for the kids. I am saving the kids. I can SAVE my KIDS!" (Overly dramatic? Yes. Effective....YES!) Quickly I smooshed that spider and even more quickly ran it to the toilet. Shaking, I flushed the toilet, knowing that I had done what a good and courageous mother does for the sake of her children.

Note the big and disgusting spider was on the lower part of the wall.

Then comes two days later. Yes, the scared wimp story. I am reaching for the peanut butter, which means that I am straddling a baby gate and reaching over some steps into our pantry, perpendicular to the back door and sharing a space with the only way to get down to the basement. Suddenly, to my horror, I notice a spider in my eyeline. No, NOT on the wall. (Sweating again!) But hanging from it's stupid scary single strand of web right in the middle of the entry way. AGH!! Heart pounding I take the peanut butter (which is needed for the sustenance of the children) and back away.

Then it occurs to me: MY DIET COKE! It's in the basement. I have none upstairs. It's before 9:00am, and it's about prime Diet Coke time. Cautiously, I look for the stupid spider. I don't see it. Where is it? This is terrible. I know it's there. I just saw it. It's a bold, unflinching, out-to-get-me kind of spider. Now it's hiding somewhere waiting for me to venture down the stairs to get my Diet Coke. Well, I'm not that stupid.

I didn't get my Diet Coke that day, my friends. I waited until Adam came home, and I texted him to pick me up a fountain Diet Coke, which is really the best kind of Diet Coke there is, anyway.

I am scared of spiders. Now you know.

A Great Day

On Tuesday we had a really great day. Not because the kids slept in. Not because we left the house. Not because no one cried. Not because everyone had great naps. In fact, none of those things happened.

But it was a great day.

It started as many days do. Sebastien was up too early, and I pulled him into bed with me. I often do that. I do that almost every day. Adam leaves for work around 6:00am so his side of the bed is empty. Not being much of a morning person myself, I don't love it that Sebastien follows in his daddy's footsteps and wants to get the day started as early as possible. But, I do like cuddling with my son for about a half-ho ur before the girls wake up. And on this day, he and I got up and the girls kept sleeping, so not only did we get to cuddle, but we got to play for awhile. Just us.

Later that day, Eden and Sebastien were just drifting off to sleep at naptime, when Violet woke up, ready to eat. After she ate, the kids were still asleep. So she and I oohed, cooed and laughed at each other for about 45 minutes. Just us.

Just as she was going down for a nap, Eden woke up from hers. Yes, it was earlier than usual, she had only been asleep for just over an hour. But she was awake and smiley, so I let her get up. She and I played together for almost an hour. Just us.

So, why was this a really great day?

I was able to spend one on one time with each of my kids, all in the same day. Do you know how rare that is? Very.

p.s. The following pictures have nothing to do with this post. They're just cute.

Little bits of twin stuff

I have started to write down stuff that Eden and Sebastien say and do. But before I started keeping track on paper, I jotted some down here in a draft, intending to create this post, but I never did. So, just for fun, here's stuff that happens in my house, some of them recently, some of them quite some time ago....

Eden falls, hurt her bum, asks for a kiss. Adam says "Oh, honey, Daddy isn't going to kiss your bum" and Eden start crying loudly and yelling "Kiss my BUM!!! Daddy, KISS MY BUM!!"

Eden: "Violet has tiny little ears...and a big BIG face!"

Putting Eden to bed, my stomach growls. "Mommy, you tooted." Me: "No, mommy's tummy just made a noise." Eden: "Sounds like a monkey toot."

Eden and Bash are playing Baby Eden and Baby Sebastien a lot. When they do this, they call me "Baby Momma."

Eden looks at my arms, which is covered in freckles. She says, "Mommy! You have nipples all over your arm!"

(There really isn't a picture to represent Eden saying funny things.)

Sebastien is the king of creativity. Taking toys away from his is futile, because he just uses his fingers, or any thing around him. Examples:

Cheerios on his finger become the peddler selling caps (from the book "Caps for Sale") but his finger with a raisin on the side, suddenly it is Rudolf with a red nose.

At supper, his bowl is a boat, but with the fork in it, it's now a sailboat. But his fork is also Super Grover.

Pretzels are a lot of fun. Sometimes they are people, just they quickly can become horses, cows, dinosaurs. Train tracks held just right in his hand are T-Rex's.

He plays different characters from TV shows, mostly Dora shows. For a long time he was Baby Dino. Late ly he is Dora and he makes Eden be Boots.

His toast bitten in certain ways becomes monkeys, dinosaurs, humming birds.

(Bash repeatedly put together blocks like this over the period of a couple weeks, and every time, it was a cow.)

There are a million examples of things like this. This is really just a taste.

Violet, 3 1/2 months

Time for an update!

Oh, our little Violet. Violet has acquired several different nicknames in the last couple of months. They include the Baby Champ (or the Champ), Peach (or Peachy-Keen, as Eden and Sebastien call her), and Angel Baby. From these alias', you can guess what we think of this little Peanut. She is fantastic.

Violet started solidly doing 12 hour nights at 10 weeks, and had been doing 10 hours nights for several weeks before that. Not only this, but also Violet is a great little napper. A typical day with the Champ falls perfectly into the routine of eat, be awake for about an hour, then nap for anywhere from 2 to 3 hours. Then she wakes up and repeats this cycle. When it's time for a nap, I can tell by her yawning or just sort of squirming a bit. At that point I can swaddle her, put a paci in her mouth, rock her for a verse of "Be Still and Know," put her in her crib with some white noise and she's off to sleep. It's amazing. We are constantly shaking our heads and marveling at her.

Violet is turning into quite a talker, as well. She loves to coo and talk. Sometimes she sounds like she's reading a novel to us, she'll go on so long. She wakes up talking in the morning, and she greets me with a smile when I go into get her up. Violet was doing social smiles by four weeks, and it is a beautiful thing to see her smile. She also recently started to laugh, which has brought even more joy to our days. Violet is getting very interested in watching her brother and sister run around, and she often can be found smiling in their direction.

This all being said, the girl is of course not perfect. She has off days, she has gas like any other baby. But the majority of days she is just so content. We are so eager to watch her grow and continue to show us what she can do.