Heat wave

It was HOT and the babies wilted.

The grins are in

The books and the bad, bad internet said the babies should've been smiling a a few weeks ago, but they weren't. It wasn't clear if they didn't like us, were already doing the teenage sulk or thought they were supposed to be posing for some grim daguerreotype portrait, but their range of emotion was limited: sleeping was as close as we got to "happy," when chomping on a nipple they showed a sort of relief, and on the other end of the spectrum was hellacious screaming associated with stinging, bilious spit-up. Being a baby has looked like a huge ordeal.

But all that is suddenly over now. They're smiling like champs. Odessa is still a little coy with the grins, doesn't want to give 'em out too easy. Georgia cheeses from ear to ear whether it was funny or not, and the other day she said "ha!" Odessa is saying more serious things like "ah, hmm, er," and little throat vibrations.

Here are photos from the smiling, and from the heat wave that happened at the same time... (Steel yourself, Bethany!)

And bébés, listen: just don't do anything new and exciting this week while you're away, okay? Don't go any further than "ha!" -- save your first multisyllabic laughs and muttering for when you get home...

xo

Mommy

How they grow

Georgia is up to 8lbs 3oz. Odessa is almost 9lbs (8'13, but she squirmed on the scale.) They feel more different than that... although they both feature that same squishy delishusness. Two babies!

More photos are here.

Where are they now?

Because moms like to be scolded about our child-rearing practices, we like to take the babies directly to the strangers who make themselves available to berate us. Apparently 1am is too late to have the babies on Metro North, even if they've been asleep for the previous 6 hours at Aunties Lili and Leki's house (while their mothers have gone, for our sins, to see Cry Baby and do some off-duty boozing.)

So our latest round of photos is mostly road shots. (Here's the link.) Google doesn't let you write captions, so maybe it'll be fun to guess where they are.  Here are your choices:

1. With Cousin #3 at the Daily Planet in Poughkeepsie

2. In the hospital after a scary post-vaccination seizure (which the doctors tried to pawn off as "an incidence of severe acid reflux!")

3. On a first country outing to Rhinebeck, with Nana and Him

4. In the Upper West Side pied-a-terre of Yossi, attaining a level of glamor generally unknown by their parents

5. At the Working Families Party office, attaining the more usual level of glamor

6. Riding Metro North at 1am
 

7. In Odessa

8. On the Bronx balcony, enthralled by rustling willow leaves