wanted more!

Because of the holidays, our girls eating solid practice sessions have been interrupted for two days. WY told me that the girls were hungry every 2.5 hours this morning instead of 3 hours. I was thinking to myself that they might be ready for rice cereal again. So tonight at the 7pm meal, I prepared one table spoon of rice cereal with formula for the girls. Yeah, that was plenty for them to practice with usually.

I started with EY. After spooned her the rice cereal, she closed her mouth and moved her lids as if she was chewing something. After a few seconds, she opened her mouth and was ready for more. Hey, she didn't spit out the food this time. I spooned her some more and she "chew" and "chew" and she was able to swallow the food. HY was watching EY the whole time. Finally, after the 5th spoon went into EY's mouth, HY protested. I quickly spooned some into HY's mouths and she was sucking the spoon and used her tongue to get the food off the spoon. Wow, that was new. HY was a fast eater. I had to keep on spooning food to her and she dived for the spoon as usual. Now, EY was watching and she wanted some food, too. She cried and jumped up and down inside the excer-saucer. Before I could give EY some more, the bowl was empty. Now, I had two hungry babies crying for more food. I ran to the kitchen and made some more rice cereal. Luckily that I had prepared the formula so I just needed to mix it. I thought well they probably could eat one more around and they would not want more. That was wrong! Five minutes into the second serving, they finished the rice cereal and HY even tried to grab the bowl. I rushed to the kitchen again and made double the amount for them. They ate faster than I could spoon to them and they were getting very very inpatient with me. So, they both started to cry. When they cry, they could not swallow and the food just kept on coming back out. All right all right, they wanted their milk. Here you go, girls, the bottle of milk!

White beard is growing

After the first two attempts on the rice cereal, they were willing to open their mouths for the colorful spoon but they ended up with white beard on the entire chin and somewere on the cheeks. They were quite good at pushing the rice cereal back out with their tongue. I was not fast enough to spoon it off their chin so I just let the white beard grow until it almost reached the bib then I quickly spooned off a big chunk of it. The girls sat in the excer-saucers when I fed them rice cereal. It was funny that even though they didn't swallow it, they wanted me to spoon it to their mouth. They seemed to want it and wanted it badly. They would lean forward at the excer-saucers and watch the spoon to move towards them, then, they dived for it, as if they were starving for hours. Then they spit it out to make themselves the white beard. Then, they wanted more. Sometimes they would scream at me because I was not able to spoon them the food at the same time. Once the food arrived, they moved their little tongues in and out to try to move the food onto their tongues and pushed it out. I thought they wanted to move the food back to their throat to swallow the food but they had not learned how to do so with their tongues. So, they usually got very inpatient because the fact that no food got in their stomach but they knew they were eating. After five to ten minutes of practice, I had to feed them them the bottle of milk so that they would not start screaming at me. Ohh yeah, they would make their point across! It has been almost two weeks since we first try. I had a feeling that they would start swallow the rice cereal soon :-)

Second Attempt on rice cereal

I was not sure whether they were not ready for the rice cereal or they needed practice or they needed the baby spoons instead of my tea spoon. What to do? Don't know.

Alright, let's give them so practice. I spooned rice cereal and approached EY. Ohh, she was annoyed but the look of the spoon. She closed her mouth and arched her back. Before she started to scream, I backed down. That was a NO NO from her. What about HY? She was a bit curious looking at me and sister a second ago. I turned to HY with the spoon instead. She opened her mouth and let me drop the rice cereal in her mouth. She made a funny face and closed her mouth. It seemed to me she was figuring out what to do with the rice cereal in her mouth. Ohh well, two seconds later, she got the nice White Rice Cereal Beard :-) Well, good practice, I guess.

First attempt on rice cereal

Yesterday they were 5 months and 2 weeks old. Told by their Ped doc, we should try to feed them rice cereal at 5 and half of months. I was excited. None of the baby spoons or bowls arrived yet from Amazon. I used our coffee spoon to feed them the rice cereal.

At first, EY gave me a benefit of doubt, she opened her mouth and let me put the stuff in. Then, she used her tongue to push everything out. I tried a few more times and she got fed up. She closed her mouth and turned her head away. She gave me a look saying with her eyes "what are you feeding me, Mama? When is my milk? I want my milk!"Let's try HY. As I approached with the spoon, she just pulled back and kept her mouth shut. She peeked at me with her peripheral vision to make sure I didn't move closer with the spoon. OK?! I guessed that was our first try! They were not into it yet. What's the next step?

Tongue Gymnastic

EY does this funny thing about her tongue -- flapping it repeatedly as if she was sucking or licking something in the air. WY calls it tongue gymnastic. she does it before she falls in asleep, while she sleeps, watches TV, enjoys her stroller ride, checking out little sister after she wakes up in bed. It almost is like a comforting habit to her. We always crack up when we see she does that.

What's that noise?

I tried to keep it down whatever I was doing so that the girls would take a longer nap - more free time for me :-) There was this noise sounded weird and from the direction of the crib. I looked over and both babies were sleeping. It didn't sound like snoring neither. Ohh yeah, they snored, loudly sometimes. I always woke up by their loud snoring :-P

So, what was that noise? It was a dull repeatedly noise. It always sounded like something was sucking on a nipple. My girls refused pacifiers so they didn't have anything in their mouth to suck on when they slept.

Finally, I went over to look. Ohh my goodness, HY was sucking her hand and she sucked it so hard and it made a very loud noise. Four of her little fingers magically fitted into her little mouth! Yes, she was in her happy sleep. By her side, EY was flapping her tongues outside of mouth making a synchronized sound. That was why I couldn't tell what that noise was. It was the mouthful music that my girls were performing in their sleep:-)

Yes, I fed them before they took the nap. So, it was not a sign of being hungry. Why did they do that? Who knows. It just cracks me up that all :-P

Separation Anxiety

Last week, I put the girls at their exer-saucer as usual and walked to the bathroom to wash my hands after changing diapers for them. Right after I left the room, HY started to cry loudly. I thought something was wrong and hurry to wash my hands and checked on her. When I walked back towards her, she stopped crying. She looked at me with her big and watery eyes and cooed at me. So cute!

"Are you OK, HY? What's wrong?" I didn't pick her up because picking her up in front of EY may not be a good ideas. She was fine and I gave her a stroke on her head and a kiss on the cheek then she went back to play her toys on the exer-saucer. I started to clean up the bottles and burping clothes. The girls were just fine playing and checking out each others' actions. I walked towards the kitchen with the empty milk bottles and just a few steps out of the living room, HY screamed and followed with a heart breaking cry. Wow, what was that? She was really crying with tear drops coming out of eyes down to her big cheeks. Once again, I went check on her and she was fine.

It happened over and over again to HY and finally I realized that she developed the separation anxiety. It didn't matter what I was doing, I had to stop and went over the comfort her. So far, only the musical swing was able to calm her and distract her.

Warning to my visitors: the girls may cry on you when I hand them over to you to hold. Don't take it personally:-P

Stranger anxiety to come :-(

Yes, thankfully they will grow out of this phase eventually.

Grab it, baby!

Yes, they can grab on things now. If you put your finger in their little hands, they would grab it tight. When we feed them the bottle, to comfort and occupy those hands, we offer our fingers for grabbing. They grab and hold onto our clothes, our pants, my hair and my glasses! If you put your face close to those little hands, they would grab your nose and lids as well :-) The cutest thing is when they grab each others' hands!

First conversation

I forgot exactly how old they were when they started to "talk" to each other.

One day in the 4th month, I popped HY up again the sofa pillow and sit EY facing HY. This was the first time that they sat face to face. At first they were just looking and checking each other out. Then, EY smiled at HY and waved her arms. HY was shocked and not knowing what to react. EY added the cooing to her friendly smile and hand motions. She patiently waited HY's reaction. HY was just looking at her sister with a blank face, no responses. After two more friendly approaches, HY finally cooed back at EY. EY was so happy that HY responded and she kept on cooing and cooing. HY cooed back from time to time. A couple of minutes later, HY got a bit tired from sitting against the pillow and started to slide her down and lost eye contact with EY. Their first conversation was finished.

Wow, imagine how excited I was! I almost wanted to call WY at work just to tell him what I just witness - my babies' first conversation with each other!

Synchronized cries

My babies don't cry?! That was my question to myself for the first month of their arrival. They were so gentle and making the "ah, ah, ah" sound. It was quite cute. Well, no surprises, after one month, they started to cry their lungs out like other babies. They didn't at first because they were pre-mature and their lungs were not developed well enough.

Well, that was when I started to notice the synchronized cries. One cried out loud for something bothering her. The other one would follow even though nothing was obviously wrong. Maybe because she was irritated by her sister's cry, we don't know. Then, when the first one heard the other one cried louder than her, she stopped. Once she stopped, the other sister stopped, as well. All the sudden it became very quiet for a few seconds. What's next?! The synchronized cries! Together the ups and the downs of the cries were all synchronized!

Their cries got louder and louder now a days. Today after the third meal, they had their choir session for me. I wanted ear plugs badly. At one point, they were so tired from crying, they had to pause to breath. Then, they looked at each other to see how hard her sister cried and again expanded their lung at once, together, with perfect timing!

Real babies

Today all four of us took a walk at the San Antonio Park in Los Altos. It was windy and cold. I dressed the Twin Youngsters in white bear body suits to keep them warm. We carried them in front of us with BabyBjorn slings. Apparently their white bear outfits attracted a lot of attentions. People smiled and commented "Look, twins!" "Wow, two babies!"

Then, this one lady was like super excited when she saw us. She asked " Are these real babies?" WY and I looked at each other, thinking in our head "real babies?" "Do people carry fake babies walking around in the park?" I couldn't stop laughing about that question. About 10 minutes later. I heard another comment. "NO! It is a baby!" (with very surprised expression). Haha, I guessed people at first thought to themselves that why were these two crazy people slinging baby dogs or stuff animals walking in the park.

Yes, they are REAL BABIES!

Fuzzy Day

We were lazy the night before last night and didn't wake up the girls to feed them at 10pm and all four of us went to bed instead. Well, the girls were off the schedule and woke up at a different time. I ended up waking up earlier than usual to pump and had to wake up again to feed the girls in less than an hour. A long day started at 1:30am. The worst of all, they were fuzzy all day.

HY decided only burp if she was held up onto my shoulders. Imagine how many times a day you could lift up a bag of 15-lb rice and held it up walking around. By the third feeding, usually around 1pm, my shoulders were sore and my back was hurting. HY's lung was nicely exercised by screaming. Mama was not able to meet her needs holding her after feeding because EY needed to be fed as well. I tried to change her from station to station (Bumbo seat to Exer-saucer) but she still cried her lungs out. At one point, I was afraid the neighbor may call the police on me because of that. Never the less, I found no tears on her cheek :-P

In the other hand, EY seemed to be quieter except that she would not eat her food. I tried to change feeding positions to get her to eat but she just wanted to talk and stick her finger in her mouth, didn't seem to be interested in the food. She might be trying to tell me to burp her again but she already burped two to three times. By the time she got tired, she fell in asleep with the bottle in her mouth. You think she was drinking still because her mouth was moving like she was sucking. Ten minutes later, the milk was not going anywhere. It was still the same volume inside the bottle. She tricked me! Then, I had to change her feeding position, wake her up to eat. It took 90 minutes to finish feeding her the bottle.

By 4:30pm, I was dragging and falling in asleep feeding the girls. EY saw me closed my eyes while holding her bottle and she laughed. I didn't even know she got her mouth off the nipple! That usually only happens to Daddy who watches TV at the same time he feeds the girls. I started to talk to EY and told her that Mama was tired. EY replied with her cute little baby talks and then gave me her killer blink. You know how the melting power that blink could be. I think a lot of boys are going to be in trouble in the future. I gave her a big fat kiss and imitated her blink. She cracked up. She thought she was the only one knew how to blink like that, haha. Her sister HY does the same blink which she gains Mama's kiss all the time! Then, I forgot all about the sore shoulders until I hit the bed at 11pm, ohh mine!

Lesson learned: Do not skip a meal for them and do not get off the schedule! They don't like it. Neither do I :-P

Time to giggle

They both love us singing to them. It doesn't matter what we sing. I don't remember lyrics of songs so I just sing alone the melody of the music. Their eyes immediately focus on me when I start singing next to them. If I move their arms at the same time as if we orchestrated the music, they giggle. When I hold them up and move around as if I I was doing ballroom dance with them, they giggle harder.

They love it when I let one of them sit on my tummy as I do crunches. For example, I put HY on my tummy facing me with her body supported by my legs. As my legs extend, her body is lower. As my legs band, her body is raised up. She cracks up every time she is raised up by my legs. I don't know why that's so funny but certainly she enjoys it very much.

The sweet moments

Yesterday when EY was sleeping, I went over to turn her head to the side. Yeah, she has flat head which made her Pediatrician very concerned. She even warned us that if EY's head not getting better, she might prescribe a helmet for her which needed to be worn 23 hours per day and its cost was about $4000! Imagine how diligent I became to make sure her flat head go away! Anyway, there was my hair sticking on EY's face. As I picked up the hair, EY smiled while she was still sleeping with her eyes closed. She knew that was me who turned her head and picked away the hair even in her sleep?! Or she just happened to smile because she was having a sweet dream? I didn't care. All I know was that smile just made my day! My sweetie!

When HY was being fed by her Daddy, she kept looking around the room searching for me. Once she found me, she eagerly checked what I was doing. I was feeding her sister. And, at times I looked up and when my eyes met HY's eyes, she got so excited and stopped eating and burping and gave me a big smile, waving her arms in different directions. This girl was looking for Mama. That made me feel so special! Yes, her smile just melted my heart.

Nicknames

EY and HY have many nicknames given by different people. Our favorite ones are Peanuts. When they were born at Good Sam, the NICU nurse Vickie called them little peanuts. Sure, they were tiny little babies compared to the other NICU babies. The Youngster dad was particularly fond of the name Peanuts. Grandma started to call them peanuts after Dada kept on telling everyone the Peanut story.

Once they came home, I came up with another nickname out of blue. One day I was laughing how HY aimed her little mouth towards the bottle, just like a little bird going for the food bird mommy got for them. Her poppy seat was like a little nest for her. Since then, I couldn't stop calling them little little birds. Their voices were very gentle. When they cried, it sounded just like the little baby birds chirping.

EY is one minute older than HY. So, mama has been calling EY "Jie Jie" and HY "Mei Mei". It is just a Chinese way to call the older sister and younger sister. I use it so much that they may thought those were their names.

There are more nick names: Grandma called EY "The older one" or "The bigger one" and HY "The younger one" or "The smaller one".

"Beautiful" --EY, "Graceful" -- HY
"sweet peas" -- both of them

Why Blog?

I never thought that I would write a blog. I like to read my friend SC's blog. Thinking myself as a poor writer, I simply gave up on the idea of writing a blog. This morning 4am, as usual, waking up either by my engorging breast or one of the girls sweet voices, I started to pump. Yes, reading my friend SC's blog is one of the favorite things to do while I am pumping. After reading her reason of blogging, I had an urge to want to document down how my twin girls grow up. One of my church friends suggested to me that I should write a journal about how Em & Han grow up and show that to them when they turn 21. I thought it was a good idea except that I knew myself would not able to find where I put the journal many times that I want to write and then eventually stop. Writing a blog is different. As long as I have my computer and Internet, I can write. Well, I can always write it privately and not make it public if I am afraid of being caught with grammar mistakes. Hehe, the ESL fear is still in me.

Here you go. With the help of my Youngster husband, I got my blog set up and writing it now! Yes, I am pumping and typing at the same time while the girls are sleeping. I love my twin youngsters. They are just so precious!