This month has been mostly about language for both girls. Chloë has, over the last several days, gradually started using "I" and "me" instead of "Koë." She has also gotten obsessive about "thank you," thanking us for things like "bringing me a drink" and "bringing Maia a toy," and much more precise about "please." This has lead to carefully crafted sentences like this one from this morning: "Mommy can I please have a cookie?" It was so well done and she'd obviously put so much thought into it that I considered saying yes for an instant. Unfortunately for Chloë, an instant isn't long enough for my mouth to open to let "okay" emerge, so she got praise and a "no" instead. I didn't stay for breakfast, but probably she had blueberry yogurt. It's all she's had for weeks, except when we run out of blueberry yogurt. Then it's strawberry or peach.
Maia, in the meantime, has discovered babbling. "Da da da da," she's been saying endlessly. It's highly cute, especially when she's confronted with Eric after an absence and bursts out excitedly, "Da da da da da!" She's been a very happy girl ever since she mastered sitting, though she'd probably be even happier if she could sit up from a supine position. She can push herself up on her hands, and I'm told she can kind of rock up on her knees, but not both at the same time. And she can now roll from her belly to her back--not that she does when she's been put to bed and decided to roll onto her belly and then decided she hates it more than life itself.
We had our nieces for an overnight Saturday evening to Sunday morning, which was fun but very tiring, and Maia was excellently behaved, even when she was very tired because I'd lost track of time trying to get everyone else in bed. I think she liked the stimulation. She loves her bouncer, certainly, which is a great relief. Chloë had a lot of fun at the overnight but woke up screaming twice, once for no good reason--she's been doing that a lot lately--and once for a nosebleed. We made cookies Sunday morning, mainly her and Addie, and when Addie started talking about "Now it's my turn, now it's Chloë's turn," when it came to putting in the ingredients, Chloë got into the act: "Now my turn!" They both ducked whenever I turned on the mixer, and they each got a beater to lick.
We also went outside, Chloë and Addie and Rae, and it was chilly enough I had to break out last year's winter accessories, of which there were luckily enough, of ranging sizes, that everyone's hands and heads got covered. Addie and Rae had a great time going down Chloë's slide. So did Chloë when she could, but she wouldn't push herself in line and with her two cousins leaping from the bottom of the slide to climb right back up the ladder, she didn't get on it very much. She did demand that we go on a walk, and she and Addie ran along the sidewalk while I walked with Rae. She's been loving being outside, and we're going to have to ignore our bodily comfort and go even as it gets colder, I think.
Unfortunately this means bundling Maia up, and she's a simply enormous baby, 95th or higher percentile for everything, 18.5 pounds at her checkup last week. We have "prams" (big fuzzy body suits) for 6 months, and 6-9 months, and one 6-12 months that always seemed a little small on Chloë...but we just put away the 6-month clothes and have some 12-month pants out because they're not too long, though the 9 months are okay too...for now. And they don't seem to make prams any bigger than 9 months at the places we've looked. In the later part of the winter we're going to have to just wrap her up in a lot of blankets when we take her out, I guess.
Speaking of clothes, we went and bought Chloë some long-sleeved pants and shirts the other day, all 3T, which is pretty much the end of the line at Babies R Us. We need to get used to clothes shopping again, and at other stores. But we picked out a green shirt and a sparkly purple shirt and a pink Care Bears shirt, and Chloë found some really hideous purple pants she had to have, and then we went to the boys' section to give my eyes a rest. There we found a rack of hoodie/pants sets with Mickey on them. There was one of a Mickey DJ looking pretty angry that I vetoed, but we both liked the gray with blue Mickey heads. It's been her sweater of choice ever since.
On that same trip Chloë wanted to look at the toys, so we did, and I decided I had to buy Maia a stuffed animal. I've been feeling bad that she has none other than Ugly Bear, donated to her by Chloë who never liked it anyway, and a huge pink rabbit that is still bigger than she is. So I selected a few and let Chloë decide which one to bring home, and Maia is now the owner of a soft brown cow with a jingly bell. Chloë's much more possessive about her toys and books now (and it doesn’t help that Maia is so very grabby with everything) so we're going to have to build up separate collections for Maia of a few things--mainly, "friends" to sleep with and upstairs books. I think we can persuade her that the downstairs books, like the downstairs toys, are for general use.
Maia's still not keen on solids. I did feed her some carrots yesterday; she loves her carrots. And I've offered her a couple of bites of oatmeal and apples, well-chewed, and she was okay with those, maybe because I was holding her at the time, maybe because I was offering her my finger instead of a spoon. Now that she's six months old, it's time to start getting supplementary foods into her. So we'll be working on that this month.
So, in summary: Chloë is awesome and talkative and sleeping restlessly and running around a lot. Maia is awesome and talkative and huge and grabbing at things. They're both playing, sometimes with each other, sometimes separately, and they both give me the most beautiful smiles and wonderful hugs when I come home at night. Status: their grumpy mama is lucky to have them.
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