From birth, Miranda has had more hair than Eleanor. When we would see some of Agnes’ young cousins, they would distinguish between Eleanor and Miranda by seeing who had the hair that was sticking up — that was always Miranda. Recently, though, we’ve noticed that Miranda’s hair has been getting thinner. I thought we had already passed the point where infants lose their baby hair and start growing in more permanent hair, but Miranda has been continuing to lose hers.

You can see that the hair on the sides of Miranda’s head has gotten thin and a little patchy. You may also notice that Miranda’s head is covered in scratches. No, she didn’t get into a fight with a cat. She’s been doing this to herself when she wakes up and we don’t come get her right away. We’ll find her either clutching her hair with her hands or sometimes scratching her head. The result is patchy hair and scratches. We’re pretty sure that at this age, her behavior isn’t driven from trying to satisfy an itch or something like that. She just doesn’t have the motor control to do something that voluntary yet.

I don’t think we’re going to do anything about the hair loss and scratches. We could put Miranda in gloves, we would prefer not to. Miranda’s never worn them before, the scratches aren’t that bad, and the gloves would interfere with Miranda sucking her hands. We suspect that she would be losing hair anyway. We just need to stop her whenever we see her clutching at her head. At some point I’m sure the trend will turn around and her hair will grow back — I just hope that she doesn’t spend too much time looking like a scratched-up bald baby.

When we first brought Miranda and Eleanor home from the hospital, we tried dressing them in caps that we got as gifts. What we found was that these caps were way too big for their heads. Now that they’re practically four months old and the weather is starting to turn a little cold (for Southern California), we decided to try the caps again.

Miranda’s cap fit on her okay. She seemed happy enough in it.

On the other hand, Eleanor’s cap was just a little too big. It kept on slipping down over her eyes, or twisting when she would turn her head. I guess that means that Miranda has the bigger head. I think her head was a just little larger at our last doctor’s appointment when they were two months old.

We pushed up both caps so that they wouldn’t slip down too far, and took the girls to Target. At first they were okay, even when the caps would slip down. Ultimately, they both started to fuss and cry and they wouldn’t stop until we took the caps off altogether. We’ll probably try it again some time. I’m sure we have other caps that will fit better.

We took the kids to Agnes’ cousin’s place for Thanksgiving this year. They live in Irvine, a few miles from Agnes’ parents and my parents and they invited Agnes’ whole family to dinner. It was while visiting Agnes’ cousin over Labor Day that we first dressed the girls in something other than a onesie, and we thought it would be nice to dress them up again. This time, we chose matching dresses. Eleanor is on the left. Miranda is on the right. It’s a good thing we decided to put these dresses on. They have matching underwear and we found that the underwear only barely fits their thighs. In another month, I don’t know if they’ll still be able to wear these dresses.

We arrived early, just after three, and fed the girls. Today is the first day we tried six ounce bottles and they both finished. We moved to six ounce bottles because recently they’ve been going a little longer between feedings and we find that we’re often down to four bottles in a day. We thought they could use a little extra per feeding.

We then put them in a spare bedroom on top of some waterproof sheets to sleep. They slept a bit, but not as soundly as they usually do at home. I don’t know if it was because it was a little more noisy, or that the carpeted floor was harder than their crib mattresses, but they woke several times.

Thanksgiving dinner itself was great. We had a twenty pound turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, sticky rice, asparagus, fried shrimp wontons, and two kinds of pie (pumpkin and cherry). Here you can see Keith carving the turkey with Jasmine looking on. Jean is preparing the potatoes. Their son, Chris, was off playing the piano. In total, there were fifteen of us, and we were quite impressed with how well Jean and Keith hosted the dinner.

Overall, the girls behaved well all day. They fell asleep right away once we got back in the car, and now they’re still sound asleep in their cribs. Next year, they’ll actually get to try some of the turkey.

We know several people who have kids about the same age as our girls. One thing we’ve noticed is that we’re the last ones to take our kids out to a restaurant. Our worry is what would happen if the four of us are at a restaurant together and both girls have a meltdown. Would we put money on the table and all pick up and leave? Would one of us take both girls outside while the other continues eating alone? We weren’t sure how it would work, and we didn’t even know if we would enjoy it.

That’s not to say that we haven’t been out with the girls. We’ve taken walks at the park and at the beach. And we’ve taken them to Babies R Us. That has been the extent of our adventures outside of our house for the past three and half months. We decided to add one more place to our list on Saturday. We took them to the farmer’s market.

The local farmer’s market is in the parking lot of the park that we go to. It runs on Saturday morning every week, and you can find good cheap produce as well as stalls with prepared foods. The thing we noticed about this farmer’s market, though, is that a number of people seem to take their kids there. There are strollers all over.

We showed up around 10:30 with the girls in their double Snap n Go and started making our way around. The strange thing is that within the span of about ten minutes, we noticed at least four sets of twins. There were way more twins than you would expect as a normal percentage of the kids there. No idea why. Miranda slept through our trip to the farmer’s market. Eleanor looked around quietly. We bought some eggplant, zucchini and bagels.

By now, it was time for lunch. The girls were behaving so well and things had gone so smoothly that we decided to take them out to lunch with us as well. Prior to the girls’ births, we had been going to a ramen shop at least two weekends out of every month. Mama Ramen is a small shop with a dozen tables, a high turnover and a friendly waitstaff. The moment we walked in, the two girls who work there on weekends bounced right over to take a look at Miranda and Eleanor and say hi. They knew that it had been a long time since we had been there.

We sat down on opposite sides of a table for four. Eleanor was next to me. Miranda was next to Agnes. We ordered our usual spicy shoyu ramen for Agnes and the spicy shoyu ramen lunch special for me. The spicy shoyu ramen is their basic shoyu ramen (ramen noodles, soy sauce flavored soup, pork, bamboo shoots, a piece of seaweed and some scallions) with a dollop of some chili paste. The lunch special adds three gyoza and a bowl of very tasty fried rice. While we waited we constantly monitored the girls. This shop often plays Japanese punk music, but today it was Hip Hop. I think the music was keeping both of the girls awake. Miranda had a frown on her face, but she was quiet. Eleanor looked a bit anxious. She was clutching the edge of the carseat with one hand and sucking on the other. She wasn’t making a lot of noise, but something around her eyes made her look uncomfortable. Fortunately, she didn’t melt down and we were able to eat our meals without incident. We just needed to keep an eye on both of them, and give them pacifiers when they needed them. Everything went more smoothly than I would have thought. Yay!

On Sunday, we decided to go out again. We took them out to Redondo Beach, the site of our ill-fated first attempt to bring our girls to the beach. I went for a run while Agnes walked the girls. We each went in the same direction for twenty minutes, and then turned around to return to the start. We arrived back at the beginning at the same time. Miranda slept pretty much the whole time. Eleanor was awake, but quiet and calm.

On the way back from the beach, we decided to go to the grocery store. We stopped there and picked up our usual groceries. One thing we noticed at the grocery store with the girls that we had not noticed before is that the grocery store is very bright. It’s also cold in many areas (the produce section, the dairy section, the meat and poultry section, etc.). Miranda continued to sleep, but Eleanor was starting to look overstimulated. She was sucking on one hand, her other hand was grasping at her ear and she had that anxious look in her eyes again. We quickly finished up and went home with no real problems.

All in all, we had a pretty busy weekend. The farmer’s market was new, the ramen shop was new and the grocery store was new. The girls did great — we’re really pleased. Hopefully this is the start of many future weekend outings. Our only concern is that with all the sleeping Miranda does on these outings, she won’t believe we ever took her out.

In the earlier blog entry A Look of Concentration, we described a distinctive yelp that Eleanor and Miranda make by drawing in their breath. They only make this sound after pooping. We have a video of Eleanor making this sound.

Please choose the format that works best for you or let me know if you would prefer a different format. The quality of the video isn’t significantly different from one format to another — just the file size and the video format.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been putting our girls on a sleeping and eating schedule according to some simple rules. See my blog entry Scheduling the Girls. Their “nighttime” sleep is a twelve-hour period from approximately 7pm to 7am. During this time they should be only getting up to be quickly fed and burped, i.e. no playing. And instead of eating every four hours, like during the daytime, we just let them sleep for however long they can. Well, a few patterns have emerged. Eleanor gets hungry sooner than Miranda, and usually needs a bottle at midnight and 4 am. Miranda can sleep for seven hours straight from 7pm until 2 am, and after eating at 2 am, she gets up to start her day at 6 am. All this is pretty normal for three month old babies, but there’s a huge problem. There’s a feeding going on in the house at 12 am, 2 am, 4 am, and 6 am. Needless to say, Bernard and I are barely functional at work the next day.

Two days ago, we decided to try something new. Our new plan is to wake them up at 11 pm, feed both of them, and then expect them to sleep until 6am. The first night, we woke them up, gave them baths, fed them, and put them back to bed. The baths are necessary because otherwise, they aren’t awake enough to eat. Well, Miranda woke up again at 3 am, but after fifteen minutes of crying, she fell back asleep. Eleanor woke up at 5 am, and started crying. And kept crying. And crying. And eventually woke up Miranda, so they were both crying. Well, we wanted to be firm with the 6 am wake up time, so Bernard and I tried not to go soothe them at all, but after 45 minutes, we couldn’t take it anymore, so we went in. Both of them were sweaty and had a lot of snot from the crying that we had to suction out. But they were happy to see us and stopped crying immediately. And after cleaning them up and changing their diapers, it was 6 am and thank goodness, time to eat.

Yesterday, Miranda actually slept the rest of the night after the 11 pm feeding. Eleanor woke up at 4:15 am. Bernard re-swaddled her and let her fuss for a little bit, then she fell back asleep until 6 am. So, there’s some progress. I think we’re going to continue with this plan for the next 1-2 weeks. The main problem is that waking them up to feed according to our schedule just doesn’t seem right. And, it might prevent them from actually sleeping through the night. However, after many weeks of doing multiple post-midnight feedings, we had to do something. I think our next plan will be to let them sleep for as long as they can again, but wake up both of them when the first one wakes up. We’ll let you know how it goes.

I suppose I need to start with an apology to Eleanor (and possibly to people who are reading this). The picture of Eleanor is not flattering. If you can’t tell what’s going on in the picture, this look of concentration means that she’s having a bowel movement. Eleanor has been quite regular, having one just about every other day. It’s usually in the evening, and it’s usually in the middle of having a bottle. At about the halfway point in the bottle, we burp her and then she won’t take the bottle again. Instead, she hunches over, gets a focused look on her face, and then she starts to turn red. She sometimes develops a bit of a sneer. She’ll stop to take a few breaths and then push again. It’s all entirely quiet. I usually just sit her on my lap and wait for her to finish. When she’s done, she breaks the silence with a distinctive high pitched yelping sound made by drawing in her breath. It’s the only time she makes this sound, and any time I hear it, I know that she has had a bowel movement. After a diaper change, she happily finishes her bottle.

Miranda is a bit harder to read. She often has a furrowed brow and a look of concentration on her face, even when she’s just looking at you. With her, the only signal she makes that she has had a bowel movement is the same distinctive yelping sound that Eleanor makes. That, and the smell of course.

Yesterday, our girls turned three months old. We posted photos that cover this past month. We don’t have formal measurements from the doctor’s office on how tall the girls are or how much they weigh, but it looks like Eleanor is now 23.5 inches and Miranda is 22.5 inches. For Miranda, that’s four inches of growth in three months. Eleanor grew four and a half inches. That seems like a lot, but they are probably right around the fiftieth percentile still.

The girls have just reached that “Gerber Baby” size. It’s the point in a baby’s growth where you most often see them in baby formula commercials — they’ve outgrown any weird skinniness that they might have when they’re born, they are pretty aware of what’s around them, but they can’t move off their backs still. They’re just cute and pudgy and wiggly.

We’ve been hearing new sounds from them all month. They’re putting together different vowel and consonant sounds and they almost seem like they want to talk. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s until they reach almost one year in age that they start to make associations between their own sounds and any actual meaning. Agnes’ mother has been quizzing them on a daily basis, asking them, “Where’s the pretty flowers?” and pointing their faces to the pictures of flowers on our wall. I wonder when they’ll start to look there just by being asked the question (in Taiwanese, of course).

I mentioned in an earlier post that Eleanor is no longer wearing gloves and neither of them are being swaddled. While the first part is true, the part about swaddling may have been premature. They don’t startle themselves any more, but the girls will still get fussy and refuse to sleep until they’re bound in their blankets. It looks like we’ll be doing that for a little while longer.

The girls have recently moved up to five ounce bottles, five times a day. We found that they were finishing their four ounce bottles every time and often wanted a little more. Now, they finish the five ounce bottles most of the time and rarely want more. My understanding is that their total formula intake will probably never exceed much more than thirty or thirty-five ounces in a day. Instead, they’ll start to eat solids at six months and start to reduce how much they eat through their bottles.

I’m not sure what else to expect this month. I think we’ll finally try eating in a restaurant if we can find someone to come with us. It can’t just be the four of us because if Eleanor and Miranda each have a meltdown where they need to be taken out of the restaurant, there will be no one left at the table. If we do make it out there, we’ll be sure to write about it here.