One thing I've learned: 6 week edition

Yesterday marked the boys' six-week birthday. Here is something I've learned: tiny babies are astonishingly smart and aware of their environments.

I suppose this would have come as no revelation to Darwin, but it's been a big surprise for me. I thought that babies were mostly unaware of adults and our mystifying ways for at least the first several months. Not so. These babies are already trying to train me.

For example, both of them can tell when I'm leaving them temporarily to visit the bathroom, vs. when I'm cruelly deserting them in their crib until the next feeding. They don't cry when I leave their room, as I might have expected. Instead, they wait and listen to what I do in the hallway when I leave the bathroom. If I turn right and take one step toward the stairs, they immediately start to yell. If instead I turn back toward their room, they wait quietly and contentedly in their crib for me. The latter is the equivalent of patting me on the head and giving me a cookie. Good Mommy.

Maybe this behavior doesn't seem like much, but it's much more complex interaction than I anticipated (I figured that babies simply cried until someone shoved a breast or bottle in their mouths). It takes observation, and patience, and abstract pattern recognition. The difference in sound between one step toward their room and one step away from it is pretty subtle. And yet, they can tell the difference, interpret what it means and spring into action if needed.

It's impressive, considering that babies come into this world with absolutely no context at all, and have to somehow assimilate so much at once. Meanwhile, I get lost for hours when I make the mistake of simply going to a new grocery store -- even though with the same products, same checkout lines, same everything, there's really very little assimilation required on my part. Babies who didn't know what it was to breathe six weeks ago are already running their little world; but merely switch the frozen food aisle with the pet supplies on me, and I'm helplessly wandering around like Moses.

It's a good thing we adults are bigger than these babies, because I think they're smarter.

What a lucky girl am I

I was planning to write at length about yesterday's admittedly mundane but still brain-bulging aggravations. We started off well with a swimming one-month pediatrician visit -- Scampy weighed 7lbs, 15oz, Impy weighed 7lbs, 6oz, and each was 20 3/4" long*. All was well. However, by the time we got home, we were... (insert scary sound-effect of choice here) ...Off Schedule.

I may be starting to grasp the sanctity of Baby-Related Schedules and the Perils of Departing Therefrom. Okay, so it's really just a lot of crying and not sleeping for very long and demands to be fed at surprising times. Not that fun; not disastrous, either. But in line with all of Murphy's Laws, this State of Being Off-Schedule apparently involves everything else going to hell in a ham biscuit: dogs barking incessantly; cats galloping up and down the upstairs hall as if they were running with the bulls (hell, as if they were the bulls); doorbells chiming; relatives, telemarketers and utilities weary of my strangely compulsive late payment habits calling and wanting to chat. Sensory overload, and not in a good way.

But then I looked at the calendar, and realized that a year ago, I had just done my first IVF transfer (which subsequently failed). This, after years of pure infertility hell. Suddenly that Schedule thing, even with its accompanying frustrations, doesn't seem like such a big deal. The fact that we find ourselves with two sweet, healthy babies -- now, that is a big deal. I know that in parenting, as in other life challenges, perspective can be hard to come by...I'm going to do my best to hang onto it.


*'Though they are currently in the puny 5th-10th percentile range for size, this is apparently unsurprising for twins. After a relatively rough few weeks at the beginning (when despite their almost term gestation, Scampy lost too much weight, spent a night in the NICU with jaundice and nearly failed to thrive) they're now gaining weight and growing in all directions. Given the boys' double shot of big, strapping family genes, size is just not something I'm prepared to worry about at this point.