A Perfect Ten (Months)

Ten months is a good time.

First, let's get the monthly update out of the way:

• At their 9 month appointment, Mira was 20 pounds and Ian was 25. That's right TWENTY-FIVE pounds of drooling, crawling joy. They are both in the 90-95% for length and weight. Shocking, I know.
• Mira can get herself from crawling to sitting and back. Ian can too, but as with most physical milestones Mira did it first. I note this not to give Mira fodder for sibling squabbles later, but because I am sure I won't remember if I don't write it down. They are both pulling themselves to standing and doing some "cruising" around furniture.
• Ian is still commando crawling. He continues to practice hands-and-knees wiggling, but when it comes time to move he goes back to the tried and true. This means he is S.L.O.W., which is only a problem when he and Mira are racing after the same toy. Thank goodness that only happens, oh, fifty million times a day. 
• Ian has been working on getting his top two front teeth for what seems like forever. Today I saw the first little white bits poking out. I'm thrilled, because while he's been teething we've seen a lot of this: 

or maybe he was just pissed off that Mira beat him to the toy he wanted

• Eating was going really well until they got sick. Now they are pickier, but hopefully as they feel better they will continue to expand their preferred foods. 
• The illness sucked. It started with conjunctivitis (how the rest of us managed to avoid getting it, I am still not sure) and moved into a fever/stuffed nose snot-fest. Chris and I both got the cold, but thankfully not at the same time. We are steaming the heck out of Ian and Mira while they sleep.

Speaking of kids with colds and humidifiers, you may want to know that Chris and I have officially learned NOTHING from parenting three kids. When Ada was a baby, we used a humidifier when she was plugged up. One of the first times we used it, we plugged it in to an outlet located between her crib and the door. About an hour after she had gone to bed, we heard a loud and horrible beeping. A "your house is burning down" beeping. Turns out that we'd put the humidifier right under the smoke detector, and the thing was working so well that the waves of condensation read to the smoke detector as fire-related heat, causing it to alert us to impending doom. We ran into Ada's room, flipped on the overhead light and generally added to the scene. Ada did not move a muscle during this whole thing.

Of course you know what is coming, right? Despite putting the humidifier across the room from the smoke detector, we failed to consider that once it really got going the machine could still trigger the smoke alarm. Which it did. Once again, the babies (and Ada) were unperturbed, but it rattled the crap out of me.

believe it or not, he is more smiley than not

My girls (with Mira trying out to be a cupie doll)