Mostly June, July & August 2010, Part II

Standing
Around the beginning of June the babies love to stand with assistance. In mid-August James and Julia like to stand while holding onto furniture. Once when Julia is holding the outside of James's crib while he's inside, they happily converse. On 8/19 James starts moving side to side (cruising) along the crib for the first time. Julia briefly stands by herself on 9/2 (no hands or furniture). While Skyping with Mark's parents on 9/5, James pulls himself to kneeling and then to standing to get to the laptop on a nearby chair. Both are firsts.


Julia's doing pretty good on this standing thing... Oops. (9 months)

Injuries
Added mobility comes with some injuries. The worst is when James falls off the bed and hit his head on the base of a desk chair. Exactly a month later while in a seated position, Julia falls forward hitting her head on the crib. She was seated so far away from the crib I still don't know how she was able to hit it! One day James gets his leg stuck hanging out of the crib and it takes three of us to pry him loose (Grandma and Mark hold the bars apart while I wiggle him free.)

Sociability
Julia is a big flirt - I'm told like her Mommy at that age - and once when we go out to lunch she smiles at anyone who smiles at her. (Mark, ever the proud Daddy, is outraged that no one at the table next to us smiled at her or said she was cute.) When Julia faces the wall during tummy time she always manages to turn 180 degrees to face the room. We wonder if it's because she's more sociable and wants to know what's going on. Julia squirms and smiles if you approach her so you'll pick her up. At times Mark is the only one who can amuse Julia, and when she's happy she bounces up and down.


Julia's two favorite things: looking at herself in the mirror and Daddy. (7 months)

Besides eating, the babies' other primary interaction involves taking toys from each other. Julia isn't happy about it when it happens to her but she has resigned herself to her fate of toy bully victim. Since James is bigger and thus doesn't often have toys taken from him, he cries on 6/23 for the first time (I think) when I have to take a toy away.


The twins interacting in their Bumbos. (6 months)

One day James woke from his nap first and we sat on the sofa and just smiled at each other for 10 minutes. It was a very sweet moment. James loves the mirror and will smile and smile at himself. He also tried to crawl into it once.


Push up competition with another baby! (8 1/2 months)

The babies continue to have stranger anxiety, particularly James, and it's at its peak when the babies are at the Google Picnic where there are about 200 people. James gets upset and Julia just stares. One day our friend Matthew talks sternly to one of his daughters while holding Julia and, not used to that tone, she starts crying.


Serious babies at the Google picnic. (8 1/2 months)


Matthew flirts with Julia before scaring her. (9 months)

Books
The babies really start to like books these months, especially James. At the end of June the babies will hit a book to indicate that the page should be turned or that a flap needs to be opened, and James can open some of the flaps himself in Where Is Baby's Belly Button? One day Grandma reads the cloth book, Hugs, to James and she said he looked back and forth repeatedly from the picture of a dog to his own Puppy Dog.

James cries when we stop reading to him and don't start a new book He clearly knows the word "book." Once he was nearly asleep when he heard me say "book" to Julia and he started fussing. While reading Who Loves You Baby? which has a mirror inside, James puts his nose against the mirror and looks behind the book as though to see if the other baby is there. (They also like to generally look at the back of books so it's hard to say if it was because of the mirror or not.)


James's two favorite things: books and food. (7 1/2 months)

Language
By mid-June we've thought that they've known their own names for awhile. In July, James put his lips up to our faces when we say "kiss." On 7/31 Julia says her first word: Dada (really it's "dadadadada") to Mark. The following day James kind of says "Dada." By mid-August Julia's utterances are sounding more like talking, though she's still babbling. At the end of July Bubby reported that she saw Julia "talking" to James and he took out his pacifier so he could answer.

Sleeping
The babies were sleeping from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. until the beginning of July. That's when Julia started waking for a bottle at 4:30 a.m. and going back to sleep. James begins waking between 4:30 and 6:00. Thankfully these phases only last a few weeks. I realize from talking to my new friend Kashi that when I dash into the babies' room at night that my comforting them when they're only fussing and not crying only disturbs them because they're trying to fall back asleep. Nights become quite a bit easier.

Naps are still tricky though. At the beginning of August, James fights naps and fusses when I do the usual stuff (rocking, singing a certain song), so I start singing to him a different song (Close to You) and sometimes laying him on the sofa next to me as though naps are the farthest thing from my mind. It's sweet the way he looks into my eyes until he falls asleep. By mid-August I'm able to put both babies down for naps and bedtime without a fight and without even rocking and singing (though later I bring that back for just a minute before I put them down - awake - into their cribs).

I returned home and had to piece together what happened with Mark and the babies. (Something like: they fell asleep on the sofa in the Boppies but Mark needed to leave the room and didn't want them to fall off the sofa.) (7 months)

James's "Grandma Loves Me" bib almost looks like a word balloon. Also I like James's pretzel legs. (6 months)

I notice that Julia's not actually napping in any of these pictures. (6 1/2 months)

Music
James really seems to like music by the end of July. He responds to musical toys and my singing (especially Danny's Song), which I like to subject them to when they drink their bottles. One day I sing You Raise Me Up and James in particular is absolutely enthralled! He keeps smiling and occasionally sighs. I show Grandma that I have a groupie. Julia smiles and bounces in the Exersaucer when music is played. I take them to a Musical Me demo class with interesting results.

Eating/Grabbing Feet
At the beginning of June, James starts holding his feet up by holding his ankles when he's changed. He also likes to put both feet in the air while in his crib and drop them (thud!). They both start "eating" their feet by early-mid July. Every single time I try to take a picture with his foot in his mouth James gets camera shy.


"You can hold your feet? Me too!" (7 months)


James tries to help us during diaper changes. (6 months)


Papa leads by example. (9 months)

Julia's pretty open about her foot eating habit... while James always reacts like we caught him in the act. (7 1/2 and 7 months)