Three-quarters of a year already. Yowza.

The peanuts are growing and changing every day at this point.  They’re well into 3-6 month clothes now, and Emma’s starting to outgrow the size 2 diapers.  And the newborn shoes are now officially too small, although we can still make the open-toed sandals work.  Otherwise, we’re in size 1 shoes.

New developmental skills: 

Sitting independently, for 5-10 seconds or more at a time. 

Creeping/commando-crawling around in the living room, using their arms.  Emma’s much better at this and can go 4-6 feet over 10 minutes or so.   I see baby-proofing in the very near future. 

Eating all manner of fruits and vegetables, if mashed, pureed or diced finely.  Gerber puffs, cheerios and baby mum-mums are their current drug of choice, and are guaranteed to produce at least temporary silence while they gum them into submission.  Current foods: applesauce, pears, plums, peaches, blueberries, cherries, watermelon, bananas, squash (acorn & butternut), green beans, sweet potatoes, peas, avocados, oatmeal and rice cereal.  And bits of scone offered by Auntie Starbuck at their baptism party.  They’ve also enjoyed occasional french fries and tortilla chips when out at restaurants, and devour those.  They have solids three times a day (at the traditional mealtimes) plus snacks whenever they seem hungry/interested.

Both babies are still boobaholics, and are often up once at night to eat these days (growth spurt much?) and I can’t say that I mind.  During the day they nurse around 4 times, so 5 times total per 24 hours.  My life as a perpetual dairy animal continues. 

The tooth count remains stalled at Chloe 2, Emma 0.  Presumably they’ll sprout more teeth before college.  If not, I’m thinking about some tiny sets of dentures, and of all the money I’d save on orthodontia.

They’ve learned to give kisses, both spontaneously and on request.  Who knew that baby slobber was such a treat? 

Both girls know their names now, and look around when they hear them. 

Chloe especially is infatuated with Grandpa’s mustache, and although it’s been a sad month with Great-Grandma’s recent passing, they’ve had more opportunity to see Grandpa than usual, which is nice for all three of them.

Likes:

Chloe – pears, Jamberry, playing with the clean diaper during changes,

Emma – cherries, Quackers the ducky wubbanub, being barefoot

Dislikes:

Chloe – peaches, anything involving poo

Emma – sweet potatoes, being restrained in any way from her Very Important Business

Does anyone but me just adore checking out your blog stats, and seeing exactly what the masses are googling to get here?

A few selections (with comments):

Imput This is not a word, as previously discussed.  Try input instead.

Sex cocaine bitch If you’d call her nicer names, you might not need the cocaine to get the sex.  Consider this a helpful hint from Heloise.

Mastitis + book of the bitch  Well, yeah.  Mastitis makes a girl a bit crabby.  I recommend shoving an adult beverage or three in her direction, with a side of dicloxacillin.

OB Stirrups for sale Are you selling or buying?  If selling, I recommend Craigslist.  If buying, and you’re not an OB, I recommend therapy.

Getting pink amoxicillin out of baby clothes Oxyclean is your friend for all baby-related stains.

Nicknames for Chloe I call mine “Sugar Pumpkin” from time to time, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.

Nuns pee Yes, I’m given to understand that they do.

Took 3 ambien And how was your nap? 

And finally…Snarky Feminist Quote May I suggest “People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”  (Rebecca West)

Has it really been three weeks since I posted?  Criminy.  Since then, I’ve spent three days at the farm, fought a nasty case of mastitis (first 102+ temp I’ve had in I don’t know how long) and worked 132 hours in the House of God. 

We opened the new ER on the 23rd, leading to an increase in the daily census of about 50%. 

I had my aunt’s 13-year-old twin daughters for over a week, and twins -squared is simultaneously a great deal of fun and a ginormous pain in the ass.   And an excellent excuse for the consumption of alcohol.

We introduced the babes to their new Aquatic Center (5 foot baby pool) to much shrieking and consternation.  Will try again in a day or two. 

Chloe and Emma were baptized on the 28th, with much pomp and circumstance and a lovely brunch afterwards, featuring fruit salad, cranberry scones, quiche and orange-pineapple mimosas. 

I’ll do my best to post more in July.  Stay tuned!

You know it’s never going to be good when the chief complaint on the tracking board is “Genital FB*” and it’s a 53 year old male.  Not.  Good. 

I headed into Mr. FB’s room, fortunately a private one (smart triage nurse, there.)  Sitting on the bed is the most normal-looking guy you can imagine – I could see him working at H&R Block doing taxes.  Your basic straight arrow.   50ish.  Balding.  Button-down shirt and dockers.  Sheepish-looking, but no apparent discomfort.  You get the picture.

So I asked him about his problem.  It turns out that he had been, for one reason or another**, in the habit of pushing a long strand of metal chain (similar to that used to hold military dog tags) up into his urethra.  Ordinarily, apparently, this was easily removable after he achieved his ultimate goal, shall we say. 

Tonight, for whatever reason, Mr. FB was unable to extract said material by simple pulling, and was in fact attempting to lever it out by winding it around a ballpoint pen and pulling.  This makes a better handle, and allows more force, so on the face of it it wasn’t the worst idea, except that oops, the chain broke off.  With about 3 cm of chain sticking out of the end of his penis.  No way to get it out, can’t pee, off to the ER he goes. 

We x-ray his pelvis, and yep, there’s the chain, going  up through the prostate and winding around in his bladder.  Nobody (the urologist included) was willing to yank on the thing any harder in the ER, so off to surgery Mr. FB went, with his seriously irritated wife in tow.  (She was completely ignorant of this particular extracurricular activity, and not a little pissed off, pardon the pun, to be dragged down to the ER on a Friday night due to her husband’s misadventure in the world of self-pleasure with household objects.)

The urologist reported back to us after he got out of the OR, and it turns out that the fellow had a good 20ish inches of chain up inside of him.  Not the best life choice, and definitely not something to mention at future cocktail parties.  Further proof that there is no object so mundane that it cannot be used for sexual gratification, and that you just never know what’s going on behind closed doors in suburbia.

*foreign body
** Actually, there’s just the one reason.  Use your imagination.

Eight months old.  Whoa.  Two-thirds of a year, gone in seemingly five minutes.  I’m currently planning their baptism party (and starting to look at options for first birthday themes – “jungle” featuring lions, tigers and zebras is a top contender) and enjoying their last few weeks of relative immobility.  My hunch is that at least Emma will be crawling (or ambulating in some fashion) by next month’s post, and Chloe may just surprise me and do the same.

Developmentally, neither is sitting independently, although they can do it with just a hand to hold.  Neither crawls, although Emma does get up on all fours and wiggle.  Chloe would rather lie on her back and bat at her crinkly elephant, and sing to herself.  Both are babbling nonsensically, mostly vowel sounds and ba-da-ma sorts of noises, combined with things that sound more like a pterodactyl, wookiee or creaky gate than human speech.  Chloe’s also fond of loud raspberries, which is a bit socially awkward when out in public with them.  “Really, I’m not cropdusting over here in the produce section.  My kid’s blowing raspberries.”  Riiight.

They both roll in both directions with ease (although Emma’s still the stronger roller, and likes being on her tummy more) and both can stand for long periods if holding on to something.  No pulling up yet.  Emma found her feet a few weeks ago, and Chloe’s found hers in the past few days.  Who knew that one’s little toes were so tasty?

Solids began this month, and the current menu includes rice and oatmeal cereals, pears, avocados, bananas, peas and butternut squash.  I’m enjoying prepping their foods, and it’s fun to try a bit myself to see if it’s good (particularly the odd mixtures that I make, like squearcado – that’s squash, pear and avocado, and tastes surprisingly good.)  They both enjoy their meals immensely (breakfast and supper almost every day, and lunch some days) and shriek for another bite if I take too long to supply it.  They’re still big nursers, and have breastmilk at least four times a day, sometimes five. 

In great news, they now sleep through the night almost every night (as long as they have avocado at suppertime) and only occasionally need a pat or re-binking to settle back down.  Hurray!

The tooth count stands at Chloe 2, Emma 0 (but not for want of drooling and chewing on anything in reach.)  I’m betting on at least a tooth or two for Tenacious E in the next few weeks.  Who knows about top teeth for anyone?

They’re both bright-eyed and observant, always looking around when they hear a helicopter go over or a dog barking.  Emma has become much more social recently, and has big smiles for strangers when we’re out.  She’s also learned to give mama kisses (the big open-mouth baby kind.)  Chloe is actually a little more reserved than previously, and loves to yell mamamamamama from her bed when she’s done with her nap.  Time will tell if this is actual speech or just the syllable du jour.

All in all, I’m looking forward to the summer with my duo.  Swimming in the baby pool, going to the park, stroller rides around the neighborhood, learning to crawl and sit up, cutting teeth and spending lots of time just being a family.  This is what it’s all about.

Emma:

Likes:
Her feet
Da boob
Bananas
The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Dislikes:
Squash
Getting into/out of the carseat

Chloe:

Likes:
Grandpa’s mustache
Pears
Kicking her feet in the tub
Hippos Go Berserk

Dislikes:
Rice cereal
Pooping

Grandma died at a little after seven this morning.  She’d been at the hospice house for the last several days, and they took great care of her, but in the end cancer is just an evil beast. 

It’s a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning, and my cousins (her other two granddaughters) are being confirmed today, and it’s Pentecost.  And Grandma gets to spend the morning out of pain and in the presence of her Lord.  All things considered, it’s a good day.  I wish we were in church this morning, too, but the girls decided that they desperately needed to nap.

Dear Gallbladder Girl (let’s call you GBG for short):

It was lovely to see you in the cafeteria this morning, just after you were discharged from the ER.  (Sometimes surviving night shift just means staying awake long enough to hit the cafeteria at 0600 for a diet coke and blueberry muffin.)

Glad to see that the instructions about avoiding fatty and spicy foods really sunk in.  Enjoy those biscuits and gravy!

Why the lack of new posts?  Nothing particularly interesting is going on (not that that’s stopped me before) so will just update my three readers with the following list of my recent activities:

• Whittling away at Mount Washmore, which was originally roughly the size of a Volkswagen Bug (the 60’s model) and is now only one load of baby clothes from completion.  But oh, the folding, yea the folding still needs to be done.  I sense a mini-Alton Brown marathon during nap tomorrow.
• Hunting for my trowel, which tool is necessary for planting my dozens of small plants (flowers and herbs, mostly) that are sitting on the edge of the porch waiting to be planted.  Personally, I think that the garden gnomes stole it. 
• Sleeping all night.  With no interruption from the tiny ones.  All due to the recent introduction to their diet of avocados.  Avocado-banana-cereal* for supper (affectionately abbreviated bananacado around here) results in a good 10-11 hours or more of blissful quiet from upstairs.  Rah!  Of course, not feeding them results in…
• Plugged duct/mastitis.  OW.   That’s all I’m saying.  Freaking OW.  We’re better now (that’s the boobs and I) and I’m pumping before bed until the ol’ bod gets the supply figured out. 
• Fighting off the ant invasion from hell.  Apparently the entire ant kingdom has my fair city in its sights, because we’re all whining about the ants.  At least I’m not alone, and don’t have to blame my housekeeping.
• Failing to keep up with my Netflix in any meaningful way, and am considering cutting it down to one DVD at a time.  Am concerned that this may be the first sign that I’m turning into my parents, who haven’t watched a popular television program since 1985 (unless you count Dad’s obsession with “The History of the Gun” or Mom’s love of “House Hunters”) and who have seen, collectively, maybe two movies in the theater in the past 10 years.
• Reading an actual book, written for grownups, unavailable in board book format.  No sign of hippopotami or hungry caterpillars anywhere.  Rah!

And of course I’ve been working, changing umpty-jillion diapers, spending time with Grandma in hospice, setting up Great-Aunt’s meds each week, visiting my parents out in Mayberry for a weekend, wasting far too much time on Facebook (and FarmTown,) mowing the lawn, washing dishes, getting Piper’s ACL repaired (and keeping her from running or jumping for at least 6 weeks,) taking the kids in for their 6 month pedi visit, having my pap done, etc, etc, etc. 

*The bananacado recipe (for the curious and/or the sleep-deprived parent of an older infant):  1 tbsp mashed banana + 1 tbsp mashed avocado + 1/4 c. dry baby cereal (we favor oatmeal around here) + breastmilk/water/juice/whiskey/other diluent of choice to make a consistency suitable for your offspring.  Feeds two seven-month-old, moderately hungry 13-pounders.  YMMV.

Watson and Crick had their “6 month” well visit today.  At the age of seven months and two weeks, but who’s counting?  (Considering they’re gestationally around a week shy of 6 months, I guess it all works out.)

Chloe:

Normal head sono from a few weeks ago.  (Good, can go back to joking about her LAARge CRAAAnium in superhero voice.)

Now allergic to amoxicillin.

25″, 12 lbs 13 oz, 45.5 cm head.

Small downstairs problem (l@bial  adhesions), plan of care TBD.

Emma:

Normal, normal, normal, but with similarly massive cranium. 

25″, 13 lbs 11 oz (girl can eat, yo), 45 cm head.

They’re tracking at about 6.5 months developmentally, which is fine (would get more points if they 1) could sit independently, or 2) could feed self a cracker/cookie (no opportunity = unable, totally unfair imho as they do pacifiers, spoons and toys with ease) or 3) could “rake” a small object like a raisin (Again, no opportunity – can we say choking hazard?  Who lets their infant play with buttons and marbles?  Other than the patient clientele of the House of God, obviously.)  Anyhoodle, they’re fine on development, each had three shots and oral rotavirus (don’t lecture, folks, rota’s nasty shit, no pun intended.)