Lots of newness

Sorry it's been a while. We had a great weekend at the lake to celebrate Jeff's birthday, and then another great visit with Jeff's parents Monday July 4. Last week was a blur but I know that the boys were kept alive and that I met another new mom with whom I'm going to take walks semi-regularly. She's fun and friendly and has a lot of the same parenting philosophies I do (e.g. cloth diapering, attachment parenting), and I think it will be nice to have a standing walk date with someone I like who is also home during the day.

My cousin (once removed?) Kelly is visiting this week and she has been incredible! She started out the week afraid that she would drop the babies but now she is a professional, changing cloth diapers and bouncing cranky babies with aplomb. You should have seen her with the Baby Bjorn on yesterday in the grocery store! I promise to take and post more pictures of her--she's fantastic. It's amazing how much better a day goes when there are two of us here. We got two loads of laundry done, a major grocery shopping trip, and made a fabulous dinner. Not much, but when we also had two very wakeful babies yesterday, it seems like a lot!

New things babies are doing:

• Beck smiles while awake, seemingly in response to us, all the time. Big, open mouthed, gorgeous smiles. It's amazing.
• Theo has been smiling just in the last few days. One time I saw the open mouthed smile, but more frequently it is that cheshire cat, lip curled smile that he does so frequently in his sleep. He laughed yesterday.
• Beck did his first practice vocalizing on Sunday. I thought I heard him say "Ah goo" but Grandpa Stu corrected me--he actually said "Hi Stu." He truly is a genius.
• Both babies are doing lots of pushing off with their legs, both when lying down and when supported in standing position.
• Self-injury. I was holding Theo and spending time with my cousin Deb and Kelly and looked down and he had a big cut on his forehead. It may be from his own fingernails and I can't find any other explanation but it was bleeding! Other fingernail scratches have just been little red lines, with no blood. I have a picture of him with a bandaid that I will post. I didn't put a bandaid on it for HIM but so that I didn't get antibiotic ointment on myself when I hugged or held him.
  
• Beck hasn't rolled over again in a few weeks but when you put him down on his back he ALMOST rolls over lots of times. He also scoots up with his feet when on his belly.
• Last but NOT least: increased sleeping, as of last night. We put Beck down at 11:15 (he was wide awake until then) and he slept til 4:45am. That's 5.5 hours by my count! Wow! Theo went to sleep at 9:30 and slept til 1, but then went back to sleep at 1:30 until 5:30. I don't like having them on different schedules but it is getting increasingly difficult to wake them up from a deep sleep. I hope this sleeping longer continues!