two months

We’ve now officially been at this parenting thing for 2 months, and I’m again thinking that time has flown. Days have certainly flown by without posting around here, sorry about that! The truth is, my days are pretty dull and repetitive. Change, feed, sleep x’s two, repeat, repeat, repeat. The work is not particularly hard, but it’s pretty all-consuming, and there’s just not that much to say about it. Right now, my girls are just now starting to smile and hold their heads up on occasion, which doesn’t make for much blog fodder.

But oh, the smiling!

One of Jon’s pediatric colleagues tells new parents they just have to make it to 2 months, when social smiling starts up, and then it’s all worth it. And it’s true– a little baby-smiling goes a long way. Etta in particular has taken to the smiling this week, and is particularly happy in the mornings. The memory of our morning smiley girl either holds us over or makes us extra frustrated during our evenings with her, with a multi-hour witching hour in which she basically hates life until she finally falls asleep. It’s amazing how just getting a few smiles out of a kid will make me happy to deal with all the other stuff.

Claire, meanwhile, has marked another milestone– she is getting more consistent with her ability to get her fist into her mouth. This may seem like a silly milestone to you, but that’s just because you’ve probably not popped a pacifier back into the same mouth 15 times in the last 10 minutes. The ability to suck on a fist and thus self-soothe is priceless! Overall, I’d say we’re doing quite well. Jon has started back to work, and the girls and I are surviving at home on our own, even when he works a 24 hour shift. I’ve even made a successful shopping trip with both girls in tow! The thing other folks seem most interested in is our sleep, and the girls are still giving us 3-4 hour stretches for the most part. One night recently, Claire slept a whopping 6 hours in a row, but that has yet to be repeated, and Etta still woke up in the middle of that. Still, perhaps because I so adequately prepared myself for the worst, I have been pleasantly surprised that this whole twin parenting gig is not as bad as I imagined, possibly because it couldn’t have ever been that bad. We’ll see how I do when Jon is gone for several days in a row this month, off to Chicago for a work conference!