The girls are teething and Living Juicy!
No one told us how painful teething is - it makes me cringe seeing their little gums splitting with the clear/white teeth coming through. It's hard not to OD them on Orajel, as that's what I'd want on my teeth. "Pea-size" dosage doesn't seem like enough, but don't worry - even the slightly larger pea-size dose we give them still doesn't seem to do anything in soothing them. :) Poor little angels.
The good news - outside of those teething times, we live in our honeymoon of a new family. Some of our funnest observations are as follows:
A) The girls have striking personalities - and they are sisters through and through. It's entertaining to see them "work out" who gets the toy (that could be just a piece of paper, or their favorite toy seems to be the phone - they hold it up to their ear and babble "dada?, yayayay," which is probably the Good Lords evil way of foreshadowing my future. . . ). They battle it out with a few pushes, some "BAAAAHHHHHSS" or in most cases with a nice YANK soon followed by running and holding it above their head with one hand as the other chases while crying (as our neighbor keenly observed, "All noise, no water").
B) Today my future hopes came true: I hoped that when the girls get older they will police each other - cause I know Suzanne and I won't always be there when they are misbehaving or are tempted to do the forbidden. . . although we'll be there to "handle" the situation when we find out. :) But hopefully by them policing each other we won't have to "handle" as much as my parents had to. . . Well, as some of you may know we're trying to ween the girls from sucking their thumbs. It was cute and a necessity to make it home - but being the hard-nosed/cold turkey believer, that time is over. As our dentist guided us in our first visit (Dec. 10), it's better to stop early because if we wait it may delay potty training or other developmental habits - because we shouldn't focus on changing more than 1 major change at a time. Well - today Isabelle saw me "take" Gabby's thumb out. . . much to Gabby's displeasure. Later in the day I saw Isabelle look at Gabrielle and give her this look that said, "OOOOOO, you're not suppose to do that. . ." Needless to say, when I looked at Gabrielle she had her thumb in her mouth and before I could "handle" the situation, Isabelle helped her sister take her thumb out - aka Thumb-sucking police. PERFECT! After laughing and admiring my dream come true - I did have to stop Gabby from slapping Isabelle. :) Ahhh, we can only hope this is the first of many "policings".
C) Thank goodness their "Izzy slaps" (Isabelle was the first to coin this behavior), or as their Aunt Wendy described little Orson's "forearm shivers", have subsided into just shaking their head "No" with a "stiff arm" to confirm they don't want to eat something. This new "stiff arm" has saved many peas, beans, bananas, carrots, etc. from flying on the floor and all over the kitchen. The honeymoon continues. . .
Live'n Juicy,
Pa/Ma'GI
