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!