Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Pill's Progress

More new pix are here.

When you are an only child, a mishmosh and a Gemini, and not a blond & blue eyed Aries twin (began your mother's somber tale) the world tends to feel like it has a very sharp and special kind of teeth. The world says: A baby? A joy. Two babies? Triple happiness.

But you are not so concerned with your own bliss. You look into your babies' perfect, silent faces, which look like wizened, grown-up faces of people who are silent because it's judicious; who could talk if they liked. You look at gas pain that tightens the lips and clenches the eyelids. You see the eye-widened gaze at rustling leaves and flashing lights. When you push the stroller too fast, you see fawnlike panic. Eventually they giggle at you -- and also at anyone else. You stare and stare, waiting for some sign of recognition that you, and not the subway token clerk, you and not the take-out man, you and not the super, the neighbor, the babysitter, or the lady in the elevator, are the mother of these babies. And you think, GODAMMIT! Why won't you talk to me?! How else, when you make googly eyes at everything that moves, can I notice that it's me you love?

It's only a question, I'm told, that a Gemini lonely would ask. And maybe even then only if they were the workaday stiff who just put in family appearances in on mornings and weekends. Apparently you're just supposed to know.


Luckily for us and unluckily for the therapist, Odessa has started to laugh and smile at us more regularly, and in response to happy things. And our Georgia, who has been so pliant and good, has started to complain sometimes when we put her to bed before she's ready. They have opinions at last, so every smile is that much sweeter. We do stand around like collectors waiting for them. Especially the desperate, craven Geminists who turn out to be ruled by their children's rationed affections.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Monday, August 4, 2008

Plus ça change

The babes are changing madly... Stand them in the Jumperoo and they're whole new people with real person faces, cooing strange and beautiful whale noises at anyone who'll listen: plastic roos, spinning gears, clacky beads, singing frogs. Lots of photos here and hopefully more to come -- including the video of Odessa finding her feet -- from Bethany.

The constant attention of many cooing aunts, uncles, grown cousins and baby cousin, all gathered at Myrtle Beach, seems to have the babies growing and waking faster than ever.
They're getting Habits now. Odessa is no longer willing to go out to dinner no matter what's on the menu. She wants to walk around, and better yet, to just leave out of the restaurant. (If you try to come back in, the lip starts to quiver and curl and you're in trouble all over again.) Georgia, if you lean her back, slams herself forward in a sit-up... a trick she first unveiled for Great Grandma Dot. And she seems to have learned how to eat. Amazing!

The beach itself may have been incidental -- who knows what a baby takes in, when so little of it is remembered? But they looked devilishly cute in their stripey kits... which are more for the mothers, as we found out when we dipped everyone in the ocean. Really, the baby bathing suit is not the issue. Naked would be fine. The bigger problem is the sopping gelatinous diaper mess. (Although plastic diapers, grossly, don't seem so wet once the outside dries off. Chh! Feh.)

The funny part is that, the more conscious the bubelehs get, the more they look alike... till finally we took a picture and found, for a second, that we almost couldn't tell the difference.

P.S. What's with all the French? Don't know. Staci thinks all dogs are boys and all cats are girls. Maybe all babies are French. They certainly wear a lot of very daring horizontal stripes.