Jack is FINALLY having his wordsplosion. We get new words, in sentences, daily. He is finally starting to repeat what we say. It's still slow going, as we struggle to figure out what he's saying but it's so much better than random whiny demands. His favorite right now is mama or daddy play Mario. In Jack speak, it sounds like "mama pway mar-ee!" but it's definitely understandable. He also likes to tell us "I Jack!" And name random people: mama, een, paw-paw, GG, daddy, striyay, ZZ, cat. Cat is Penguin. Striyay is Strider. Jack does struggle a bit with his R sounds, but that's pretty common so I don't worry.
He adores Strider, something we are kind of in awe of, because Strider is definitely the most aggressive of our cats. The cat gets irritated easily, and is the only cat who has scratched Jack. Jack would love to get close enough to pet Cat, but Penguin is absolutely terrified of Jack. Zelda never comes downstairs, but loves the attention Jack gives her. She has the patience of a saint. He crouched down tonight and said "how doin' ZZ?" while she was drinking water.
Miss Nina continues to wow us. It's like she's our first baby all over again. Everything she does is exciting. Jack is fascinated with her now, I guess it just took some time to get used to her. He likes to get in her crib during our bedtime routine and talk to her. Nina loves staring at her big brother. Whenever he gets down on her level, her face lights up. I think Jack will be the recipient of her first social smiles.
We had some issues with soothing this week. Without getting too descriptive, I was letting Nina use me as a pacifier. It hurts after a while. Also, she spits up a lot. And when she comfort nurses too often she spits up more. She doesn't like the soothie pacifiers, so we went on a quest to find one she would take. Soothies and Avent are both Philips companies, so their nipples are similar. Nina prefers the Avent pacifiers. She sleeps better and is instantly soothed by them. I know there's controversy about nipple confusion and blah blah about pacifiers, but you gotta do what you gotta do and I wasn't about to relive the first week of nursing again. Nina seems to be like Jack: she doesn't care where her nipples come from as long as they serve their purpose. Pro: Strider doesn't care about the plastic binkies.
However, unlike Jack: Nina has trouble being soothed by anyone but me. She fights being comforted by Todd. She is getting better, now that we found a suitable binky. We are still working on sleep. We had a couple of nights there where we doubted why we got ourselves into this again. Of course, we love and cherish our sweet girl. I doubt any honest parent going into their second, third, etc., kid would deny that they ask themselves why. We are still discovering Nina's personality. She isn't as easy going as Jack was as a baby, but she is still sweet as pie and we know its going to take some time to really get to know her.
I know it's taboo to admit out loud that their kids are good whatevers...sleepers, eaters, pottiers, whatever. However, we are day two into potty training with Jack. After our initial hurdle of discovering that Jack doesn't distinguish between underwear and diapers, we didn't have a single accident since late yesterday afternoon. I don't think society will approve of no pants Jack, so we know we have to work on it, but the boy has learned that the potty is where pee and poop go. That's right. Poop. He recognizes the sensation of needing to go and will sit on his potty and go. He stops what he is doing and just goes. Other than a brief discussion of "we don't turn the potty over when it has pee in it" we are doing better than expected. Hopefully we can get him trained to work on pulling up and down his own pants and learn that underwear and diapers are completely different.
