This weekend we went to three holiday parties with the girls. I think it was more stressful for Bernard and me than for them; needless to say, the Chen family is exhausted. Up until this weekend, we had been getting the girls onto a pretty regular schedule. They would be in bed by 7 pm, and usually only get up once between 7 pm and 7 am to eat. For those of you who read the blog entry “Sleeping Through the Night”, the update is that we no longer wake them up up at 11 pm for a feeding. We felt that was a little cruel, and often, they would be too sleepy to eat, even after a bath. Now, we let them naturally wake up when they need to; however, we do tend to wait until we hear both of them crying before we pick them up. Essentially, we let one of them wake up the other one; that way, we don’t have to deal with two separate awakenings at night. Their middle of the night feeding is usually around midnight or 1 am.
This weekend, their schedule went out the window because the holiday parties were at night. Friday’s party was the Department of Neurology, Saturday’s party was the Pediatric department, and today’s party was a neighborhood party in Irvine where my parents live. It was the first time that the girls had ever been around large groups of people. Unfortunately, being up past their bedtime made them more cranky than usual, but I think everyone really enjoyed seeing them. The girls seemed a little anxious, especially because there were so many new faces to look at. They don’t really have stranger anxiety yet, but they definitely prefer the familiar. Also, we learned that Eleanor is sensitive to loud voices, high-pitched voices, and foreign smells. At the Neurology party, poor Jessica’s husband (Jess is one of my co-residents) was getting along really well with Eleanor when she suddenly had a meltdown because the loud karaoke started and she realized she was really hungry. Today, she had another fit with her paternal grandfather, we think, because he smells like garlic (he eats raw garlic for health reasons).
Overall, they must have been introduced to about fifty new people this weekend. We learned that they aren’t the most outgoing babies, but that they aren’t overly shy either. Today was the first time they wore long pants too.
That’s Miranda on the left. Eleanor is on the right.