Before the mobile broke, the sight of the fish swimming round and round would send the babies into pure bliss. Smiling, eyes upward, and hands clasped in delight under their chins, they would coo and laugh as the fish swam round and round and round.
But everybody knows that fish don't make the best pets. One morning you wake up and poof, somebody's belly up. Well, one morning this week--or maybe last--Carmen asked for the mobile, and, well, we discovered it's not a very mobile mobile anymore. It just burnt out, I guess. The Ocean Wonders swing was clearly designed for singletons.
So now C&D just watch the fish bob and jiggle to the rhythm of the swing.
The white noise of the waterfall comes from my MP3 player, which plays the same track twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Whenever somebody is asleep--or falling asleep--the waterfall comes on over the living room stereo. The sound of the dishwasher, the creaks in the floor, the complaints of a sibling--are all muffled under the sound of water gurgling. The track plays all night, and every naptime. When I hear it I sometimes remember different campsites I've used that were close to running water. There was the National Forest in Arizona, for instance, in March of 1998. The spot between the rocks in Yosemite in June of 2001. The mossy patch under the great trees in the Olympic Peninsula, 2003. The hidden canyon in New Mexico during the Memorial Day weekend 2004. I liked that campsite so much that we stayed there the entire trip.
So the waterfall track keeps the babies sleeping, and my dreams sweet. Once I dreamed that water was rushing down the hallway and into the bedroom (entirely possible, because this is Houston), but even then, that wasn't such a bad dream. After a while in Houston you learn to keep everything you love off the floor and the flood insurance paid for.
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There are no pictures lately. Blame C&D. They keep doing their cute baby things when I don't have my camera at the ready. Today I left them with Matt while I went out for a doctor's appointment. To keep them busy he heated two ounces of sweet potato, gave each babe a spoon, and told them to have at it. When I came home, they had all gotten a bath, but Carmen still had a little sweet potato in her nose, and David had a bit in his ear. They apparently enjoyed using the spoon to get the sweet potato in their mouth and other places, and I wished I had been there to see it and take a picture.
But that's what Matt feels like every day. He misses out on the board books with the finger puppets inside, and the Wocket in the Pocket, and Cowboy the Flying Crazy-Colored Pegasus (a Fiona trick), and The Wheels on the Bus (another Fiona trick), and the morning swim sessions in the front yard with all the neighborhood folks coming by to chat. So many little moments that we don't want to miss, that we wish we could capture to enjoy again, and again, and again.
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I also wished for the camera at Panera Bread today. At the restaurant we found a cozy leather loveseat and chairs clustered together. As we ate our dinner Matt sat in one chair while I lounged in the loveseat feeding Carmen. David sat on the loveseat to my right, quite comfy and happy. I wedged him into the corner to make sure he wouldn't tip over. Because he is a bit too small for a latte, I gave him a plastic cup to play with so he would stop making eyes at my food (Panera Bread is not on the list of solids we will be attempting anytime too soon!) . He tried to drink out of it, but it was empty, so he tried drinking out of it backwards, as if he was trying to cure a case of the hiccups. When no water came out that way, either, he just decided to smush and gnaw the cup any old way. In a month he will be crawling fast enough that plopping him on a couch in a restaurant and leaving him there will be impossible. But we are glad to have had the experience, however temporary.
While we were out I talked to Matt about a medical study published several weeks ago, and the reasons why we are approaching solids so slowly. In the study, wheat allergy-prone babies introduced to wheat before seven months or after nine months had a significantly higher rate of wheat allergy than those introduced during the seven-to-nine-month window. One theory for the phenomenon was that GI tracts of the babies introduced to wheat before seven months were not quite ready and still vulnerable to allergy. But if the babes were introduced to wheat too late, they ate perhaps too much at once, and the system overload on the tract triggered the allergy. So on the one hand, while a baby may need a significant amount of a food (say, once a day over a course of days) to reach a biochemical threshold before a parent may be able to see a reaction and know if the baby should continue to eat it, too much of that food can put the baby at risk, anyway. And this reinforces other findings that while it is best to refrain from feeding solid foods Baby early, waiting too long can cause a problem, too! Milk, nuts, and a few other foods are proven, notable exceptions to this finding--the allergenicity of those foods suggest an even longer wait.
Whew.
After I gave Matt the rundown from all that journal reading I've been doing for the past couple of months, I felt like . . . taking a Benadryl.
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If C&D give us a good window of opportunity at noon tomorrow, we will go swimming at the Wellness Center. Matt's been kind of dragging his feet about it, because he knows we'll be quite the spectacle, but he should be used to that by now. I wonder when the "Look, twins!" stuff will stop. Sometimes I'm a little embarrassed (in that aw, shucks kind of way), but babies bring such joy to so many people (and you know I'll talk to anybody) that I'll be sad when nobody notices the twinniness anymore.
Anyway, I bought a new swimsuit on clearance last week, and Matt found his swim trunks, so we are mostly out of excuses. We won't be taking any pictures, though, out of respect to the other guests who may not feel so svelte in their suits, and don't want to worry about their photos being published.
Anyway, I bought a new swimsuit on clearance last week, and Matt found his swim trunks, so we are mostly out of excuses. We won't be taking any pictures, though, out of respect to the other guests who may not feel so svelte in their suits, and don't want to worry about their photos being published.
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I bought a Melissa and Doug ring stacker on eBay last week. Carmen was awake and playing in the high chair when I opened the package yesterday. She marveled at the colors, and enjoyed gumming the round red top. This morning David found the stacker, and took the top and first few rings right off. Then he proceeded to suck on the center post that held everything together. Well, I thought, that's one way of playing with it!
They'll figure out the stacking trick later.
They'll figure out the stacking trick later.
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