Good-bye liquid vitamin in a bottle. Hello chewable vitamins for Angel and Maddie! The loved it. Maddie keeps asking for more.
Archive for the 'Firsts' Category
Today started a new chapter for the twins. Instead of Jubilee getting to spend the afternoon with Pau-Pau and Gaun-Gaun, it was Angelina!
In the morning, I tried to be careful with my words. I said to Angelina and Madeleine, “You two are going to start taking turns spending the day with Pau-Pau and Gaun-Gaun. Today it’s Angelina’s turn.”
Maddie was perfectly happy and not jealous. Whew! Angel was excited.
We all had lunch together before they took Angel. When Pau-Pau told Angel she was going to be with them, Angel said, “Not Jubilee?”
They spent the day in San Francisco. Pau-Pau and Gaun-Gaun said Angel talked the entire drive up. They attempted to go on three merry-go-rounds. The first one was closed, the second one was broken, and the third one was working…except Angel freaked out and they had to get off. According to Pau-Pau, Angel said she would go on it when she’s bigger. Or maybe with her Daddy.
They walked in Chinatown, bought Chinese bakery goodies, and she got to eat a Chinese sponge cake. She fell asleep on the drive home, so they stopped in Mountain View for dinner.
When Angel got home, Maddie announced that Angel was home. I told Maddie to go say hi. Maddie ran to her twin sister and gave her a hug.
For me, the day went well. I couldn’t believe how much easier it was to take care of two children who are of different ages! They played together very well, put on a Spring Performance, did arts and crafts without creating a disaster. The most bittersweet moment came at dinner time. The four of us sat together at the table and we fit so perfectly. But it wasn’t perfect. When I said, “It felt weird,” David replied, “It’s very American.”
My life is crazy, messy, stressful, and difficult. I like even numbers and symmetry. In spite of the odds (pun intended), a family of five and raising three little girls brings a harmony that has no parallel to this world.
I don’t want to jinx this, but I was very excited that Maddie had dry underwear and pull-ups all day. She still rarely tells us that she has to go, but she did something in the toilet almost every time I had her sit down. She was even dry during her nap. Yay!
To celebrate, we told her she could have ONE prize for having dry underwear all day. We gave her a single M&M. She was tickled pink! I know this doesn’t sound like a big prize, but we don’t want to set up huge expectations and have to meet them every time. And at what point do we stop with the M&M’s? Maybe we’ll take her to ice cream or something as the final prize.
What are we going to do for Angel? She’s not big on sweets. We’re considering renting an inflatable jump house (her favorite thing to do) and let her jump around for a few minutes at the end of a successful potty training day. (=
Angelina peeled her first orange today, and then she promptly peeled another!
We’re in a new life stage for attending Bible Study Fellowship. Now I have the privilege of attending with all three of my daughters! Now that the twins are 3 days into their Two’s, they can attend. Jubilee was very excited that her sisters could come with us.
When we got there, we all held hands and walked to the Children’s building. I was able to walk with Angelina to the door. Madeleine didn’t make it that far. She froze and started crying. Jubilee tried very hard to encourage her and gently bring her to the door, but she refused.
I had to leave Angelina at the door to go get Madeleine. So Angelina started crying, of course. Not the best way to start off the first day of a new program. I had a feeling this would happen because when we visited a church while in Seattle, they had to be taken out of the nursery.
Regardless, do you know what I love the most about BSF? When I came to pick up the children, the children’s director said to me, “Maddie was fine, but Angel cried on and off the entire time. So we will really be praying for her.” BSF does not focus on helping the children adjust to the program. They depend upon the Holy Spirit as the child’s Comforter and Teacher.
“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor (i.e. Comforter, Encourager, Advocate), who will never leave you…But when the Father sends the Counselor as my representative - and by the Counselor I mean the Holy Spirit - He will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I myself have told You.” -John 14:16, 26
How fitting that we are studying the Gospel according to John this year.
Of course I’m being facetious, but who knows?
David once told me that you can recognize a potential piano prodigy (try saying that three times fast) by the way they play the piano. Are they drawn to the piano? Do they enjoy sitting there? What does their “music” sound like?
All my kids love playing on the piano. In particular, they like it when we’re playing it. They beg to be helped up onto the piano bench - all at the same time. It makes practicing the piano difficult when your children are also banging on the piano.
Today, Angelina was at the piano. But instead of banging like all three kids usually do, she was playing very gently. I think she was paying attention to how she was playing and what the notes sounded like.
Or I could just be imagining things.
Angelina’s speaking vocabulary is growing. Often she is heard mimicking us, that is, immediately repeating the word we just said. In these cases, it’s a little difficult to know if she’s actually learned the word. In the past couple of days she’s been saying some things that are on her own accord.
If she wants to show you a toy, she will bring it to you and say, “Look.”
If she wants to perform a trick or stunt for you, she will say, “Watch.”
And my personal favorite, if she’s giving something to you, she will say, “Here you go, Mom.” It took me a long time to decipher this phrase.
Reflecting on these words, I’m pretty sure she learned them from her older sister Jubilee.
After monitoring enough of Maddie’s attempts, we think we finally identified exactly how she was able to climb out. She would get into a corner and reach out her arms over the crib up to her armpits. Then she was strong enough to pull down her arms and thus “lever” her body up a little bit, feet off the crib mattress. Once up this little bit she would wedge her feet against the two vertical corner slats where they formed an angle. From there all it required was sheer determination to climb up a little further. We never witnessed what happens next, and we don’t plan to either because we don’t want to let it happen again.. all I can picture are some pretty scary looking falls.
So.. in the end, we simply swapped cribs because the other crib has sides and ends of uneven height such that Maddie can’t stick her arms out over the rails at a corner. Also, there is no corner angle where vertical slats meet together at the side and end. (It’s hard to explain with words.)
We are relieved to observe that she hasn’t tried to climb out again since her initial attempts were thwarted in this new crib.
I came home late Tuesday night. When I got into the bedroom, David and I began talking. Our noise probably woke Madeleine up. She would not go back to sleep. From 11:00pm to 1:00am we did everything: changed her diaper, held her, gave her water, gave her milk, gave her gripe water, showed her our bed and that we wanted to be asleep in it, ignored her, prayed for her, who knows what else.
At 1:00am, when we thought the gripe water would do the trick, we told her we weren’t going to come in again. We went to bed and turned off the lights. After a few minutes, yes, she began crying again. Every time we thought she was slowing down, she started crying more. There were times when the crying sounded belligerent.
We heard her flop down on her bed ready to sleep, but she kept crying. We heard a flick of the door handle and that shocked us. Did she throw a book from her crib to the door? Then we heard knocking! Oh no!
We rushed into the bedroom. Sure enough, she had climbed out of her crib, determined to get out of the room to run to us. Oh no!
Madeleine had won the battle! We put her in our bed. She was calm until I turned out the light. Then she started crying again! So David pondered that maybe she was becoming afraid of the dark. He found a night light, plugged it in the bedroom, put Madeleine in the crib, and closed the door.
We didn’t hear a peep for the rest of the night. That is, for the next 5 1/2 hours because it was now 2:00am!
(And if you’re wondering, yes, Angelina slept through the entire ordeal.)
Here’s a couple fun stories about cleaning:
Angel and Maddie are getting better at helping to clean up. Today, after helping me stack the cardboard bricks, they didn’t merely knock them back down again. They actually helped to stack the bricks a second time.
After lunch I put Maddie on the Baby Bjorn toilet. I had a feeling she went pee, which in it of itself is amazing. I was busy trying to get Angel out of the highchair so I couldn’t go and look at the potty. Well, I didn’t need to. First, Maddie started to lift the potty out of the Bjorn to show me. (I was able to convince her to put it back before anything spilled.) Second, she walked over to where I stack the baby cloths (for wiping hands, etc.), grabbed one, and began wiping herself with it!