Gray squirrel, gray squirrel, swish your bushy tail...

Ok, so the squirrel wasn't gray. It was brown with a black face and paws. But it definately had a bushy tail. And it was definately scurrying all over my house.

Ian was away grading papers this morning (as he always seems to be when exciting things happen), and the girls and I had a little visitor. I heard a noise like someone moving around downstairs and went to investigate. Next thing I know a big, fat squirrel (we live in an old part of town with lots of walnut and oak trees...these squirrels are seriously obese) was running up and down the screens in our bay window at the top of the stairs. After a startling scream, my mama-bear instincts kicked in and I made sure my little cubs were safely locked in the bedroom and proceeded to chase the squirrel down the stairs and out the front door. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall watching that one. The big question remains, however, how the heck did it get in?? We checked the attic, the chimney, the basement...all show no signs of squirrel entry. I imagine this will remain one of the great mysteries of the Petersen family.

In other news...I went back to work this week and I was right: it was bittersweet. I miss my girls and it is sad knowing that I will likely miss many "firsts" with them now (the first roll-over, the first laugh, etc). But I do like my job and I do like getting back into the swing of things. In all honesty, as much I love them I sometimes got a bit bored and longed for grown-up (or at least 15-year-old) conversation. I'm sure this had quite a bit to do with the 10 weeks of bed-rest leading up to their birth. I mean, I love Ian and all...but it is nice to have someone else to talk to.

Evaline and Cora are getting cuter and cuter each day. Today they were in a particularly good mood. For the first time I attempted to shower when I was alone with them. I plopped them both in bouncy seats and went about my business and they were happy and content amusing themselves for over an hour! Such big, mature girlies! We've got some pictures of them below...we were much better the past week or so about getting the camera at the ready for something adorable to happen...and as you can see from the selection below, Cora had a slightly cuter week than Evaline :-)

They may think that tummy time is akin to torture, but as we see here with Cora, it is paying off...

Here are the girls, enthralled by the shower curtain, as I got ready for my bout of squirrel chasing this morning:

Sisterly love...please note the position of Cora's right hand. She didn't put it there. I did. But isn't it cute?

Showing off their grins (Evaline left, Cora right):

Kicking and playing during jammie-time:

Cora - sharing the love:

And finally...Ian made me include this one. We were so amazed that our little girl could produce something so vile, we had to record it for posterity.

More two month stuff...

We had our two-month doctor appointment today, and I was pretty right-on about their weights. Evaline is 8 lbs 2 oz and Cora is 9 lbs 13 oz, which puts Evaline in the 5th percentile for weight and Cora in the 25th...but those numbers don't take into account that they were born three weeks early.

Other exciting news: Cora slept through the night last night!!! From 10 pm to 7 am!! I don't anticipate this becoming routine yet, but this may be a signal that a break is just around the corner.

But the real reason for this posting: Although (as I said in the last post) I didn't take any pictures to purposely show how they are growing, I figured out a way to show this. I have an early picture of the girls in their carseats, and we've just taken another (see below). The best way to really see their size difference is to look at how and where the clasp on the seatbelt hits them. The two-month picture also shows their ever-changing personality/roles as twins. The several weeks preceding this week, Evaline has been a bit of a handful and Cora's been a "textbook" baby. But this week, Evaline is all smiles and fun and Cora...well, you never know with her if she's going to be happy, mad, crying, etc. (In this picture she's about to burst into a rather large crying fit.)

Newborn:

Two months:

Two months old today!

Wow! I can’t believe how the time has flown. I have four days (including today) left with the girls (I return to work on the 16th) and the parting will definitely be bittersweet (and much more bitter than sweet). In some ways I’m really looking forward to going back – I enjoy teaching, my students, and the school in which I work. But when I think that going back will leave me with only three or four waking hours a day with the girls, I sorta start to cry. Not sorta. I do cry. I often wish that I had thought of this ahead of time and had tried to arrange some sort of part-time situation at work…but it’s a little late for that now. C’est la vie. I’ve had 9 weeks off with them, which is more than many people get so I guess I should consider myself lucky.

The girls are growing by leaps and bounds. According to my bathroom scale (which I have some serious issues with, by the way), Evaline is upwards of 8 pounds – which is over twice her “take-home” weight! Cora is somewhere between 9 and 10. It is hard to think that this is around the size (particularly Evaline) of most babies when they are born – they seem so BIG to me!! The girls are getting to be pretty sturdy; Cora needs only minor support of her head when she is carried or sitting on laps, etc. Evaline needs a bit more help, but…she’s little. The last couple of days I’ve noticed some big changes in Evaline: she used to get incredibly frustrated with most activities (i.e. batting at things, etc); it seemed pretty clear that her mind was ahead of her body and she was very frustrated. But the past couple of days she has become much better at it all, and her disposition has bettered as well – all smiles and many shrieks of joy as she bats away under the floor gym. She’s also started to “talk” to us, Cora’s been doing this for a couple of weeks so it is nice to have Evaline joining into our conversations.

We've been a bit lax on taking pictures the past week or so, but the newest cute ones are below. When they were itty bitty I kept meaning to take a picture of them next to some object for comparison purposes…and failed miserably at the task. Why I never got around to it I have no idea since it was something that I really wanted to do. Maybe I’ll remember the next time I have twins (riiiiiight).

Play time

The girls are now seven weeks old, and it is astounding how much they have grown (physically, mentally, socially, etc). Sure, most of the time they are just laying around staring...but in a completely different way from what they did a few weeks ago. They are, however, still entirely unaware of each other. When laying next to one another Cora will hit and kick Evaline reapeatedly and act like she doesn't know she's doing it. And Evaline will act like she doesn't feel a thing. I find it particularly odd that they are entranced by the baby in the mirror, but don't care a lick about their sister.

But on to the new things that they are doing: I have received some of the most beautiful smiles that I have ever seen from each of the girls. They've been smiling in the "I'm having fun and finding whatever (face, toy, etc) I'm looking at to be amusing" way for awhile, but just in the past few days have they started to smile these HUGE "hey, you're my mom and therefore the most important person in the world" smiles. Only because he will be mad if I don't admit it: Cora gave one of these big, gummy (I'd say "toothy," but they're just not there yet) smiles to Ian first. However Evaline, our alleged "Daddy's Girl," gave me a big one that had not been seen before (ha!).

They're also making weird but adorable new noises all the time to indicate particular levels of excitement or distress; batting at toys hanging from their floor gym (Cora particularly likes to go town with this); holding their heads up; and lots of other little things that before I was a mom I would have thought were silly, no big deal, or not worthy of notice (but now elicit happy dances). And since they have begun to do a modicum of napping as well, life is very, very good.

Evaline, however, still has a bit more trouble with napping than her sister. In fact, we're trying to implement a bit of routine into the girls' lives and while Ian and I are completely convinced that they are geniuses, they seem to have a few things confused. For example:

Here is Cora during "playtime":


And here is Evaline during "naptime":


Here are some additional recent pictures of the girls as they are progressing - all are in keeping with the "playtime" theme:

Cora, just chillin' with some "boppy" time:


Evaline "reading" with her Dad: "Here is a mouse. M-O-U-S-E is how you spell "mouse." A mouse has two ears, can you find the ears?"


Cora, wishing that her arms were longer so that she could truly enjoy this toy.


The girls - see earlier comment about their refusal to acknowledge each other.


Evaline - chillin' on the "boppy."


And here I have to add the girls in their Linn-Mar onsies (just to make Ian jealous).