Halfway to Where?

I can not believe it has been six months already. This month I have been marveling that my level of frustration is so much less than it was with Ada at this age. At six months I was still crying a lot. Ada was just emerging from her colicky infancy into what thankfully turned out to be a happy, charming babyhood. Ian and Mira have been happy and mostly adorable for a while already. I know I say some version of this every month, but it is just so amazing to me.

Can you tell which child is working on week 2 of a stuffed up nose?

For comparison, this was Ada at 6 months

I also see the passage of time as a bit of a trick. Like many parents of babies under one, I think in terms of surviving that first year. At six months with Ian and Mira, I've gotten through half of that, but it isn't as if there is an "end" in six months. The next six months, and all the months and years after that, will bring change and growth for all three kids. As certainly as we are on a road with our children, it is surely not a road to somewhere. The journey is the destination, and all that.

Meet my children: Bewildered, Pouty and Distracted
NB: Mira is not half Ian's size. She's being pushed down.

S'not No(se) Big Thing
Right now our journey is on a road paved with snot. (Wait, can snot pave something? Maybe I should just say that we are on a snot-slicked road. No, too evocative.)

The past few weeks have been illness-heavy. Chris, Ada and I got the H1N1 vaccine, and quickly got sick. Other than a fever, I had pretty much all the symptoms the CDC lists for the flu, while Ada, Mira and Ian all had fevers but not much else. That said, I am not sure what we had wasn't just a cold, and in any case the bad part passed fairly quickly. (And thank goodness for that - the five days Ada was at home with us without the distraction of play dates was fairly hard on all of us.) Mira seems to have inherited my tendency to end colds with a lingering runny nose, and she is not happy about it. Unlike Ian, she loves sleeping with a pacifier, which is hard to do when you can't breathe out of your nose. Needless to say, Chris and I have been up a lot at night to soothe her. And then just as Mira and Ian appeared to be leaving one cold behind, another one is starting up. I can tell because a new cold brings with it a day or two of heavy napping, which would be a blessing if it wasn't tied to crankiness, a reduction in good night-sleeping and the inevitable drippy yet plugged nose. Mira slept for 3.5 hours on Thursday. This was after an hour nap and a mere hour up between naps. Wow.

Even when she's stuffy, who could resist this face?

Physically, Ian and Mira are still not showing a lot of interest in movement. Ian scootches around in circles, and Mira will pivot while on her belly when she's motivated by a toy, but neither consistently flips over much. Except in their cribs, where Ian occasionally and Mira consistently flips over. While Ian is a little ahead of Mira in sitting, neither can really sit up for more than a couple of seconds. Based on my perusal of photographs from her six month mark, Ada was sitting up alone by this point. What is weird is I remember wanting Ada to meet each milestone and doing a lot to "help" her along toward those stages. With Mira and Ian, I am not at all worried about them getting new skills on any timeline. I know they'll get there at some point, and I have a lot less energy for trying to make it happen. (Plus, as I have mentioned before, WHY would I want to encourage things like crawling? It is going to be a lot of work for the rest of us when Ian and Mira decide to get mobile.)

Mira, for her part, has won the "first tooth" contest. I'm glad it Ian is still toothless, as he's been nipping at me while nursing. So far I've just used it as a signal that I am out of milk, and taken him off the breast when it happens. Once he gets a tooth or three this will be a lot more painful, so I'm hoping he doesn't get any soon.

Ian, looking very High Fidelity

I am going back to work in about a week, and the babies will be spending my work days with a nanny. We found someone with a good about of twin and infant experience, and I have high hopes. Hopefully she won't be too horrified by our messy lives and home.