My non-whiny whiny post!

My dear sister recently reminded me that I haven't blogged since June 16th.

I informed her it's because I don't want to be a whiny blogger, and all I've got to say at the moment will sound whiny.

However, the sunshine we've been graced with of late has somewhat lifted the fog of extreme sleep deprivation that my hubby and I are currently enduring at the hands of our children, and allowed me to appreciate the parade of cuteness that they display every day.

Just a sampling:

Clapping...it's the new toy banging:
Avery has learned to clap. It's adorable. It makes her happy. It makes us smile until our cheeks hurt. It makes me forget that she wakes up at 3 a.m. every night, and on the worst nights, wakes her sister up too. Lauren, like with most everything else, is just a smidge behind her sister, she's working on figuring out how to clap too, but hasn't learned to unball her fists yet.

Video of Avery clapping (I can't figure out how to rotate it...sorry!)

Raised by wolves....er, I mean, dogs!

From snuggling in to dog bed, to growling, to picking up Bella's worst habit (chewing on rocks...yes, we had to remove 3 rocks from Avery's mouth yesterday), our dogs seem to have a mighty influence on the bubbas!

Snuggly girls:

We may finally be entering the cuddly stage...I've been dying for cuddly babies, and they're starting to give me a (teensy) little taste of it :-)

Movers and shakers:

Avery continues to work on her walking skills, she now makes laps around the entire family room just balancing on the walls. She's taken 5 steps in a row between us. Lauren is standing independently more and more, but still refuses to put a foot forward...we must remind ourselves, Lauren isn't behind, Avery's just ahead!

Lauren talks (as long as it starts with "B"!):

Lauren loves her blocks. If you show her a block and say "BLOCK", she'll say "BWAA" back. Sounds a mighty lot like BLOCK, dontcha think :-) And if you show her a ball and say "BALL", she'll say "BA" back. Doesn't that sound like ball? Sure does! Same with Book, Bath, Blue, Bella, etc...Yes, we know she probably is stuck on the B sound currently, but that is not going to stop us from telling ourselves that Lauren can talk at nine months, thank you very much!

Clubhouses:

Any little space they can get their little bodies into, that's where they want to be. The current fave is the lower shelf of our desk. There's room for both of them, and they just think it's the coolest. Avery has ventured into a few more daring spaces on her own too - I'm sure Lauren will follow shortly!

Hair-do's:

Now that their hair is growing a little longer, I get to have a little fun (particularly at bathtime, teehee!).

So, when things get a little rough at night, at least I know that I've got a day chock full of cuteness to restore my sanity :-)

My Housewifely Duties

When the babies were brand new, and had no semblance of a predictable routine, I used to daydream about when they were on an actual schedule, with naptimes and bedtimes that went off without a hitch every time. I thought about all the things I could get done during their multiple daily naps - why, that would be hours and hours of free time...right?

Fast forward to today. A week away from 9 months, and little miss Avery Cays still only naps for 30 minutes at a time on most occasions. Oh sure, I can get lucky with a 2 hour nap every once in a while - but those are few and far between, and there's no way to predict when and where they'll strike. So I've come to terms with the fact that I have to squeeze all of my chores into 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. It's made me very aware of the priority of chores - bottles first, floors second, dishes third, laundry fourth. Everything else is on a "when it gets to the point I can no longer ignore it" basis :-) No matter how tempted I am to fold laundry on the couch while Regis & Kelly keep me company, if the top 3 choices are not done, it cannot be so.

I do sometimes try to get my chores done while the girlies are awake. It just means that I have little helpers... or little leg-clingers, whatever you want to call them. The dishes are a particularly fun chore to attempt. Unloading is usually fine, as long as I remove the silverware basket as soon as I open the door. Loading, well, that's another game altogether. The gist of it is me, removing babies from their station at the dishwasher door, putting them back in the center of the playmat, running back to the dishwasher, and loading as much as I can before they're back on top of me. It's super fun. Laundry is another fave - I fold, they unfold...it's a riot! I don't try sweeping and mopping as much when they're awake anymore, Avery likes to chase the broom and/or mop, making it nearly impossible. Vacuuming makes Lauren cry, but also wakes them up if they're sleeping - so I choose the lesser of the two evils and let her face her fear (builds character, right?).

American Baby magazine assures me that around my babies first birthday, they will switch to taking one "gloriously long" nap after lunch that lasts anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 hours. All I have to say is, I'll believe it when I see it.

My Little Helpers:



I'm a Physical Therapist!

Ever wondered what having an 8-month-old in physical therapy is like? Let me enlighten you :)

For an hour every other week, Avery gets to play with new toys, but has to allow a strange lady to knock her off balance, stretch her neck, hold her in positions she hates, and just generally annoy her in exchange.

Then, mommy gets to continue the fun at home and annoy / piss her off 3 times each day - it's so much fun!

My repertoire of PT moves so far:

The Claw - Avery's least favorite, where I hold down her left shoulder with 3 fingers while pushing her neck into a straight(er) position with the other two. She does evasive maneuvers to try and escape.

The Tipsy Kiddo - When she's sitting, I tip her over to the left so she has to use the muscles on the right side of her body to sit back up. She also hates this one.

The One Legged Baby - When she's standing, I lift her right leg so she's standing on her left - this one is pretty much a joke - she usually just sits down when I try this one (since, shocker, she hates this one too!).

The Look-At-Silly-Daddy Stretch - This one requires the assistance of dear old dad, and he must perform whatever silliness is takes to get her to look all the way over to him over her left shoulder while I hold her chest so she can only turn her neck, not her body. If there is no daddy to look at, this one doesn't work!

The Office Max Special - This one we like! All it involves is sitting Avery on a binder, with her left side on the low side, so that she has to work with her right side to stay balanced. Usually drama free!

So what's the goal of all of these lovely annoyances? To correct an ever-so-slight tilt of her lovely head to the left. They were calling it Torticollis, but it's so mild, it really doesn't even count. The therapy is mostly a precaution, so that she doesn't develop a permanent preference to always tip to the left. I am doubtful of the need - it certainly hasn't hampered her mobility in the slightest - but the therapy was recommended, so to therapy we go :)



The Office Max Special



P.S. Lauren loves going to physical therapy - to her, it's a torture-free wonderland of new and fantastic toys to play with for an hour :)

Cousins

Owen Anthony Spagnolo

As I held my brand new, teeny-tiny, oh-so-cute, Jake-look-alike nephew this afternoon, I couldn't help but take a little stroll down memory lane. The first lane I went down I am sure you can predict...to 8 months ago when my own little angels were themselves teeny-tiny, itty-bitty little creatures. Seeing Owen Anthony in all his tiny perfection really hammered home how incredibly fast baby-hood goes. The past 8-months seem both like an eternity, and like the blink of an eye. I miss how miniature and precious my girls were when they were born, and at the same time cannot wait for every new milestone. Maybe that's why I am so persistant with the camera...it gives me a way to freeze time, while celebrating all their changes too. Now J & L are embarking on the same journey, and I could not be happier for them (I'll just keep reminding them that "it goes so fast" over and over like a broken record!).

Then, once I stopped feeling weepy about my rapidly aging 8-month-olds, I thought about Owen in a different light...as A & L's cousin. I think that the cousin relationship is one of the best ever. To me, having cousins my age made family vacations feel like summer camp, and made holiday gatherings feel magical. Some of my very best memories are of times spent with cousins, on both sides of the family. Almost every trip as a child involved cousins...a trip to Priest Lake meant Mary, Lisa, and Jenny. A trip to Sacramento meant Tara, Mark, and Rachel. Seeing Uncle Bob meant Kim and Melanie. And those were just the cousins that were the same age! It seems like there was a never-ending supply of cousins to hang with - the benefit of being from a large family on both sides. And while I know that my girls will never have the chance of even getting near the number of cousins that we've been blessed with, I am so extremely excited to watch them grown up with Owen, and I hope that all of them will make some of their own "best" memories with each other.  So, to ALL of my many many cousins, I say thanks for the memories!! Love you all.


P.S. One of my all-time favorite cousin memories is being in the little upstairs playroom at Grandpa Frank's house, with the Benutty kids, when we were calling everyone by their backwards name and giving them little characters. I was Airda, which is atrocious, but the game was fun. I don't know why, but that memory pops in to my head quite a bit, and it makes me smile without fail.

Team Bubba

Over the last couple of weeks, the girls really seem to have bonded. I think they're BFF's now. They go on little mischievous missions together...dog hunting is a favorite, as is peeking into the laundry room when I accidentally leave that door open for longer than 5 seconds (same goes for the pantry...and the dishwasher, come to think of it!). Whenever one appears to have come across something interesting, the other is sure to come investigate (and steal, if appropriate). It's quite cute.

Now that they're into EVERYTHING, and together all the time, we've all taken to calling them "bubba's" when we need to address them as a unit. Which I started, and am ok with. But I think maybe we need something more creative, like one of those clever celebrity-type mashup names for them - you know, just so we're not so generic.

Auren?
Avren?
Lavery?
Laurery?

Hmmm. Those don't exactly roll of the tongue like I'd hoped. Maybe I'll go even simpler.

AL.

It's good, right?

"AL! Stop eating the dog toys!"
"AL! Stop standing up in the bath!"
"AL! PLEASE stop throwing your sippy cups on the floor!"

Why yes, I think that'll work. (And don't worry, I'm not ignoring their individuality. There will still be plenty of times to use their own names. "Avery, stop pulling your sisters hair." "Lauren, stop stealing your sisters binky." See?)

A few of their favorite activities:


Doorstop doinging






Kissing



Dog Hunting



Wrestling (Ok, this is a favorite of Avery's...Lauren's not really a fan!)




Hangin' out at the activity table




Visiting the dogs in jail



Standing by the chair (that they REFUSE to sit in, but LOVE to stand on!)



Hanging out by the back door together



Climbing the stairs



Miss Piggy

As I wiped off the prune-unibrow off of Lauren's face today, I paused for a moment for a quick comparison.

Lauren:
Oatmeal in both nostrils
Prunes in her eyebrows
Applesauce spread from cheek to cheek
Both hands covered in goo
High chair slimed
Bib coated in lunch

Avery:
Several small food smears where the spoon caught some drips
Almost clean bib
Clean high chair
Hands untouched by food

Although this is a thrice-daily demonstration of one of their many differences, it still amuses me to no end that I've got a Miss Piggy and a neatnik.

In other developments this week:

- Both of the bubba's can now climb all the way to the top of the stairs, which they would do all day if I'd let them! It's cute, in a very scary way :)

- Lauren has decided that, at least sometimes, crawling the normal way is more advantageous than her usual butt-scoot, and employs it when speed is of the essence (like when a particularly tantalizing toy is brought out!).

- Lauren has also started handing out b's and g's, and although her usage of consonants is still minimal, I am happy with anything at this point that's not a vowel!

- I've resorted to purchasing a baby-sleep book in the hopes of finding some answers to Avery's current non-sleeping issue. Having been spoiled by the girls sleeping for 8-10 hours at night for a few months, having a relapse to terrible sleeping is quite a shock to the system, and we're into our 2nd month of it with no improvement on our own, so let's hope the "experts" can give us some good advice! 

Never a dull moment in the Cays household!

Milestones

If separation anxiety is a milestone, then I've been misled. I thought all milestones were cute.

According to my weekly development email, Lauren has made a "big cognitive step" this week. I guess that's the nicest way to describe a phase that is not exactly pleasant. I'm diagnosing Lauren with an early-ish case of separation anxiety, which considering the amount of time I spend with her, is really quite silly! For her, the "symptoms" are sobbing every time I leave the room, and (slowly) following me around to cling at my legs and cry. 

I guess I should just feel lucky that only Lauren appears to have entered this stage, and not Avery too. I'm sure she'll follow soon enough, and then I'll have two babies who protest any time I dare walk to the far side of the kitchen island, so I should just enjoy Avery's indifference while it lasts!