Thanks for everyone who responded to my request for advice on the Great Sleep Project. We have experimented a little with a Ferberesque approach to nighttime sleeping, although lately I've still been going in during late night wakings to quickly replace binkies or re wrap blankets instead of letting the kids amp things up to total meltdown. While M still thinks I'm letting the boys off too easily with this approach, he doesn't seem to mind that it keeps the night time hours a lot quieter than the alternative. I still don't feel comfortable letting them cry anyway, so this seems to be working for me for the time being.
Otherwise things in Mommyland have been chugging along pretty well lately. The boys hit the seven month mark a few days ago, and I caught myself tearing up last weekend looking at pictures of them when they were newborns. Both of the boys are becoming more and more independent, although they still have their moments of clinginess that are surprising in their ferociousness. The whining for my undivided attention always seems to reach a fevered pitch as bedtime draws closer, and they still don't get it that my attention will almost always have to be split between the two of them. Neither of the boys has gotten any teeth in yet, although Nathan has had what looks like the tip of a molar sticking out of his gums for almost a month now. The worrier in me thinks this isn't completely right, but it doesn't really seem to be bothering him so I'll wait to bring it up with the Ped when we go back in a few weeks. He's also one of the juiciest babies I've seen these days, but I've given up on trying to stem the tide with things like bibs and repeated outfit changes.
Max is currently trying desperately to crawl, although the closest he has come to true forward motion is either through a goofy army-type crawl where he then ends up rolling himself onto his back, or by simply rolling over and over until he reaches his intended destination. For the last week or so I've been finding him during his aformentioned late night wakings on all fours trying to take a lap or two around his crib. Usually he goes back to sleep quickly, but other times he continues to stay awake and I'll keep hearing him crash into the sides of the crib as he rolls around and moves about (see description above.) Up until a few days ago Nathan was content to lay on his belly during tummy time sucking his thumb and singing to himself. But all of a sudden on Wednesday he started rolling over and over in the same way Max has been for a few weeks now. I had sort of suspected that Nathan knew perfectly well how to roll over from front to back and back to front, but that he was either too lazy or simply not motivated enough to actually do it (because I have seen him roll over when he really wanted to get at something like a toy or the dog.)
Speaking of the dog, both of the babes have become intensely preoccupied with our poor pug dog for the last month or so. In fact, I think she will be Max's main motivation to start crawling in earnest. They love reaching out for her and trying to touch her, and if she's hanging around during mealtime it's very difficult to get their attention because they're just too busy watching her do whatever it is she's doing. I feel bad for her, because I know she still feels (rightly so) that her place in the family was supplanted by the kids. But I suppose she's just going to have to learn to go with the program because of course they aren't going anywhere except in her general direction.
On another completely unrelated note, here's a picture of the boys in their snowsuits M took a few weeks ago. M tried to talk me out of bundling them up like this, but I won the argument after pointing out that a lakefront walk in a Chicago January is way too cold for no bundling. They seemed to enjoy the walk, but I have to confess that we've been staying in mostly because it's just been too cold for venturing out of doors lately (we haven't even left the house in almost three days. Bad Mommy!) Because we have been living virtually as shut ins lately, the boys had to send their dad out for the Valentine's Day card they gave me. But they apparently gave him very good instructions and a lovely card was procured for me. Signed even, in baby chicken scratch that looks suspiciously like M's handwriting when he writes with his non-dominant hand.
Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Hopefully I'll have more pictures to post soon, that is once I get this digital camera thing figured out for myself so that I don't have to keep bugging M to upload them to the computer for me. Because whenever I try to do it they never show up in the photo program and they always get saved in some weird out of the way place on our hard drive.
