Every time I talk about the babies I try very hard to be even. Like when I write a milestone post I'll talk about Nora first and then Milo next, and then I'll reverse it the next month. But I can't remember who I talked about first last month, and I'm too lazy to look it up, so fuck it, I'll just pick somebody. "Fuck it" is sort of my parenting motto of the moment.Milo has learned to sit very well in this past month. He can sit by himself for a long time. Recently the Twin Whisperer clocked him at 7 minutes and told me that he would have gone longer except she had to go upstairs to get Nora and she didn't want to leave him sitting without a spotter. I understand that perfectly because even if Milo gently drifts forward so that his head softly lands on the carpet, he still sputters in outrage and usually escalates to a scream, demanding to be held and comforted. I keep trying the lame, fake-cheerful "Whoops! You're okay!" because I had this idea that kids will often look to their parents to see how serious their injury really was. So I'll give him a big grin and tell him he's okay, and then Milo will look at me like I'm a total ass and start to cry anyway.
Speaking of crying, I seem to recall that 7-month old Milo was a pretty cheerful guy. 8-month old Milo is Cranky McCrankerson. He is always cranky. If you look at him cross-eyed, he'll start crying. If you make a funny face, he'll cry. He'll even cry if you cough too loudly. Recently one of my former grad students came to visit and he gave Nora his giant leather hat, which she happily started gnawing on like a dog with a rawhide. He then grinned a goofy grin at Milo, and Milo proceeded to turn red and start screaming. Way to impress, little guy.
I've been blaming the cranky behavior on teething, but frankly the teething excuse is getting a little old. I've been claiming that the kids have been teething for oh, the past 2 or 3 months now, but we have yet to see any evidence of a tooth. My other theory is that Milo is getting frustrated about his lack of mobility. He can see Nora motering around, not exactly crawling mind you, but she gets the job done, and Milo can't quite deliberately propel himself forward in the same way. I can tell he wants to, especially when he sees something he wants (i.e. something Nora has, no matter what it is) just out of reach. So I'm chalking some of his cranky ways up to frustration.
Speaking of which, this stealing toys thing? It's hilarious. Milo wants whatever Nora has, Nora wants whatever Milo has. They steal toys right and left, back and forth. Right now my parental intervention into these sibling rivalries is limited to offering the offended party a new toy, or sometimes returning the stolen toy back to its rightful owner and offering the thief a new toy. If only all parental mediations between siblings were this easy.
Milo can do a lot of cool things now. He can imitate pretty well, so when I pat something a number of times he'll pat it the same number of times. When I say "Can you say da da?" he'll say "da da". When I say "Can you say ma ma?" he'll still say "da da". Oh well, we're making progress. Milo is very good at jumping in his jumper, which he absolutely loves, and he also enjoys playing in the exersaucer. I don't really let him do those things very much, as my theory is that he needs to spend most of his free time exercising on the floor, which basically pisses him off on a daily basis. If Milo had his way he'd just jump all day long in his jumper.
That second photo shows Milo smiling at the Twin Whisperer. He loves her. Nora does too, but it's especially noticeable with Milo as Nora loves basically everybody and you have to be pretty special for Milo to deign to put up with you. Every time I come home from work, Milo is grinning up a storm, cheerful and happy as he demonstrates whatever new skill he learned that day. It warms my heart to see the kids so happy with her, it makes it a little easier to trudge off to work in the morning.Tonight Jake and I were eating Indian food, a pretty spicy curry, and I gave Milo a little bit off my spoon. He loved it and opened his mouth like a little bird for another taste. Nora turned red, shuddered a whole-body shudder, and made a face so foul that I was pretty sure that my own face was melting off in the heat of her glare. But Milo, he loves adult food, as long as it's hot and salty.
Recently we all had colds. I got it first, then Nora and Jake, and then Milo. Milo seems to have it the worst. He's been stuffed up for a week and it's interfered with his ability to eat and sleep. The last couple of nights were pretty terrible. He refused his bedtime bottle both nights, and we spent ages trying to convince him to just drink something, anything. I poured saline down his nose and endured his screams as I then tried to suck the snot out with those nozzle baby torture devices. It didn't work all that well, he was still stuffed up, just mad and stuffed up, and he lost all trust in me. Milo wouldn't even look at me after that for a long while. Last night Milo cried for 2 hours past his bedtime, and we held him and rocked him and did everything we could think of to help him go to sleep. I thought he must have had an ear infection for sure, since usually he's the guy who will lie down in his crib, turn over, and go to sleep in approximately 3 nanoseconds. But the doctor said he was fine.I found myself getting really mad after listening to 2 hours of crying. I need that time after the babies go to sleep. Frankly I'm just barely holding it together on any given day, and without my wind down time in the evening I'm pretty sure I'd lose it. Which I just about did after holding, rocking, and jiggling an angry, wiggling Milo for most of the evening. To be honest I think that my impatience makes me a pretty shitty parent sometimes. I can see that same impatience in Milo when he wants to do something but can't quite figure out how to do it yet. So he gets mad and he yells, just like me. I have a lot of empathy for Milo's plight, so I guess that is the one silver lining to the dark cloud that is my impatience/anger spiral. I'm trying to get better all the time, and can only hope that on some days when I've done a crappy parenting job, it doesn't mean I have to turn around and behave the same way the next day. For Milo's sake, I'll do better.
Nora's big achievement this month is her commando creep routine, in which she'll get up on her hands and knees, rock back and forth, nodding her head for emphasis (or perhaps she thinks the momentum will help her out), put one knee forward, and then collapse onto her belly and drag herself forward with her elbows. This doesn't sound like it would be very efficient but Nora can really move across the room a lot more quickly than you'd expect. One time I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water or something, I don't know, I was gone about 5 seconds, and when I returned she'd scooted across the room, off the rug, onto the hardwood floor, and was holding a giant cat toy above her head. This cat toy is a disk about a foot in diameter with a little ball trapped inside it. When I saw her holding that thing, surely about to let it drop and smash her in the face any minute, I realized that I can no longer leave the room even for a second until the area is completely babyproofed. And even then, I shouldn't really leave anyway because I'm sure she'd use that time to crawl into the chimney and start sweeping out dead bugs and spiders.
This kid can move. I'm not sure she is ever going to crawl because her belly creep is so effective, why bother learning to crawl? Sort of like how people don't bother to learn how to type in Dvorak because they can type just fine with the standard Qwerty keyboard. Sure, Dvorak is faster and easier, not to mention far more comfortable for the wrists and fingers, but Qwerty works just fine, so why switch? Under the same reasoning I don't see why Nora needs to crawl, but given her determined head bobbing attempts, I have a feeling it's going to happen anyway.
Nora doesn't sit as well as Milo. We practice at it every day, but she doesn't like to sit still. I give her many toy options but Nora will soon bore of them and fix her gaze on, oh I don't know, the hammer lying across the room. Just pick the most dangerous thing in the room, and that's what Nora will decide she wants. So she'll launch herself forward from a sitting position so that she basically does a face plant, and then start scooting towards the rat poison. These face plants don't seem to bother her. Nora rarely cries and I haven't yet seen her crying as a result of falling on her face.
I have, however, started noticing that Nora sometimes cries when I leave the room. I've gotten really careful at telling both Nora and Milo that I'll be right back, I'm just going off to prepare their meal, grab a diaper, pour a glass of wine, whatever motherly task needs doing, and I'll be RIGHT BACK, okay? Right back! Sometimes this works and I think they're getting the picture, and I can often nip Nora's tears in the bud with this cheery explanation. Nora doesn't want her social time to end, ever, and that's pretty much the one thing that will upset her. In fact, Nora is so smart that she has figured out that certain diaper changes, particularly the ones that happen at certain times of the day in a darkened room, typically precede naps. During those diaper changes only Nora will start to cry because she knows what's coming. She is going to be abandoned in her crib, no longer able to play with mama and daddy! The injustice of this gives Nora righteous anger indeed.
Nora is a mama's girl. The other day I took her to the coffee shop to lunch with a friend. The last time I went to the coffee shop to lunch, I took Milo. (See, must do everything evenly. Whoever I took out on a special one-on-one outing last time gets to stay home with daddy the next time). Milo grudgingly put up with my friend's attention for a few minutes, and then proceeded to start fussing because that man across the room looked at him. You know, intentionally. Right at him. Anyway, Nora had a blast at lunch, eagerly lapping up everybody's attention. She giggled and laughed at people, and then it was time for her to have some lunch of her own so I started feeding her. In the middle of her meal I was rather intently listening to my friend's dramatic story and so the rate at which I was spooning baby sludge into Nora's mouth slowed. As did the amount of adoring attention she was receiving from my friend. So Nora stopped eating and just turned her head and gazed up at me, smiling the sweetest smile I'd ever seen. "Excuse me?" she said. "You seem to have forgotten in the last 5 minutes that I am cute. Maybe this food-smeared smile will remind you of my cuteness. So that you can, you know, start honoring the cuteness once again."
Recently I have been giving the babies some cut up banana, some mushed up bread from my plate, or some Holier-Than-Thou-Hippy O's, or whatever the organic, whole-grain monstrosity is called that I bought in lieu of Cheerios. The first time, Nora was able to pick them up quite neatly between her thumb and her forefinger, so she seems to have the pincer grasp down. But she didn't seem to know what to do with them, and just fingered them endlessly before letting them fall to the floor like a gift from the gods in the eyes of the cats. The next time, she got one into her mouth, but immediately started gagging and coughing and gagging in agony so I swept it out. The next time, she got one into her mouth, gagged, kind of chewed it around, gagged a little bit, chewed it some more, gagged, and eventually swallowed it. She did this 3 or 4 more times, but she keeps gagging so I'm not sure if she's really ready for finger food. Thank goodness we took that infant CPR class. Nora is very, very suspicious of any food that goes into her mouth, and most of it fails to meet her standards. Non-food items, of course, are fair game, no matter how big or small.
Milo and Nora are both suspicious and both adventurous, just with different things. Nora will embrace any person cheerfully, whereas Milo might cry if you dare to actually look directly at him. It's better to take tiny glances, like looking at the sun. Meanwhile Milo is cheerfully accepting of whatever I might deign to shove into his mouth, whereas Nora's first instinct will be to turn red, shudder, and gag, and that's all before the food has actually reached her lips. When Nora actually likes something, she seems surprised, like Oh! This yogurt with bananas? Actually, that's not half bad. More, please, but just remember, I'm doing this for you.
I can't believe it's already August, I can't believe we've made it this far, I can't believe they'll be a year old in only 4 short months. Below are some 8-month portraits I tried to take, but they didn't work out well. Milo and Nora are too active now, too antsy, too eager to look around rather than pose cutely for the camera. So they're all over the place, looking anywhere but me. I like that about them. They always want to do stuff, and see stuff, and learn things, and that's what makes them interesting little people.
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