Agnes and I have been pretty busy at work this month. When we looked back over our pictures, we found that we had taken the fewest pictures for a month to date. All the same, we picked a few of the pictures and posted them.
As of today, Eleanor has six teeth (four on top, two on the bottom), and Miranda’s still going strong with just her four teeth. Both of them have been eating better. Eleanor still doesn’t like some Stage 3 baby food, but she’ll generally eat most things we give her. She’s a little suspicious of new foods though. She tends to push her index finger into it first, play with it, and then decide if she’s going to eat it. Eleanor has gotten pretty good at feeding herself with a spoon. She knows how to put it into a bowl of food and scoop it into her mouth. She’s too slow though, and we usually put more food in her mouth with another spoon. Miranda’s spoon skills have been lagging a bit, but she basically eats everything we give her. She has picked up a habit of rubbing her hands in her hair when she’s tired of sitting in her high chair though.
Both Miranda and Eleanor did fine at their last weight check. Miranda is 19 lbs, 8 oz. Eleanor is 19 lbs, 10 oz. That still puts them at only the tenth percentile, but if you plot out their growth curve, it has definitely stabilized as compared to a couple months ago. We attribute their weight stabilization to three things: baby chop suey, cheese, and the fact that I’ve been home to help feed the girls dinner more often recently.
The girls are still not walking on their own. They’ll walk around if you hold one or both of their hands, but they don’t like it if you let go. When we take Eleanor for a walk, she makes a whispered “ta! ta! ta!” sound with each step. Miranda just concentrates really hard.
As for language, both Miranda and Eleanor will point at flowers whenever they see them. Miranda will say “da da!”. Eleanor goes “ba va!”. Neither of them will change what they say when we try to correct them though. It’s so hard to say if any of this counts as a first word. It’s neither English nor Taiwanese, but they definitely have sounds that they use for different things.
This month we started brushing our girls’ teeth. Before this month we used a bit of wet gauze to wipe down their teeth, but we decided it was time to switch to toothbrushes. We don’t use a fluoride toothpaste–just some infant training toothpaste that is safe to swallow. Eleanor hates it. She purses her lips and slowly spits out bubbles while shaking her head back and forth. Miranda will open her mouth, but she doesn’t seem to like it either. They just have to get used to it.
We’ll have more photos in another month.