Barach.com

Click through to see a video of Noah and Jesse crawling. Read more…

It’s been an eventful month.  We had visits from our friends Ron and Jacque from Baltimore, my mom, Mimi Susan, and David’s dad, Saba Jerry.  David came home from a business trip to New Hampshire with a pinched nerve in his back and a bad cold.  Unfortunately, the cold was contagious, and Noah and Jesse came down with it.  They were miserable, and they made us miserable, for a good long while.  They are feeling better now, though, and last night, for the first time in a long while, slept all the way through the night again.  Here’s hoping they continue getting back to normal.

Despite their colds, Jesse and Noah recorded a few major milestones this month, and they’re all keeping us on our toes.

Teeth. Noah has 4 now, and Jesse has 8.  Yes, 8.  They are using those teeth coming in as an excuse to whimper, whine, and generally be grumpy (not to mention keep us up at night), and we are ready to be done with the whole teething experience.  I’m sure they are, too.  But the teeth are helping them mow down food they wouldn’t normally be able to…we’ve been feeding them nice big chunks of fish, fruit, cooked veggies, bread, pasta, etc., and they are loving it.  They’ve also learned to feed themselves their own bottles and sippy cups.  It gets messy sometimes, but it’s fun to think that I won’t have to keep making special baby food for them much longer.

Talking. No real words yet, but these guys are noisy!  They really vocalize a lot, and they mimic each other’s sounds.  They don’t say anything on purpose, but it’s fun to think they do.  “Mama” and “Abba” are in their vocabulary – if only they really meant it.  More importantly, they both understand the word “no” when we say it to them.  It seems that Jesse really gets it – perhaps because he hears it the most.  But he really responds – he knows what it means, and stops doing whatever it is that we’ve indicated is not okay.  He usually cries about it, too.  But the reality is…we are starting to discipline them already.  And so far, so good.  It’s all downhill from here, I’m pretty sure.

Crawling. Yep.  Our guys are mobile.  Noah’s still a little tentative about it, but they can both cover some serious ground when they want to.  Jesse even climbed two stairs the other day.  Needless to say, our busy lives just got busier, as these guys now require CONSTANT attention.  The days of sitting quietly on the floor playing with toys are over.  Now the toys are strewn all over the house, wherever the boys take them.  And it is not uncommon for one or both of them to quickly crawl up to David or me when we enter the room, pull themselves up on our pantlegs, and stand there looking up at us expectantly.  Bang to the heartstrings.

Standing and cruising. They both love love love to stand, and to pull themselves from one object to another.  They can’t stand without support yet, but they are close.  I can tell.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they are both walking in the next 30-60 days.  CRAZY.

I really can’t believe how quickly they went from lumps-on-a-log to mobile, communicative little humans.  The past month especially has brought so many changes.  They’ve even started interacting with each other now – laughing and smiling when the other is laughing and smiling, getting upset when the other is crying.  They do this really cute thing when they’re crawling near each other – they rub heads.  It seems to be affectionate, at least for now.  Some day, all too soon, someone will get a concussion.  Boys.  Sigh.

The Barach boys - Saba Jerry, Jesse, Noah, and David

Jesse loves Saba's beard

Last Saturday was the official 9 month mark…and on Wednesday, Megan (our fearless nanny) and I took the boys to the pediatrician for their well-baby check-up.  The doctor actually laughed at how big the boys are, and the nurse told us to be careful picking them up so we don’t hurt our backs.  Fortunately, they are both tall for their age, too, so they’re not just fat.  But seriously – they are enormous.  I’m so proud.

In celebration of the 9-month mark, we have been giving them some new foods to try out, finger foods, especially.  They LOVE raisins, cheerios, pasta and biscuits, and aren’t so fond of rice cake and craisins.  We’ve also introduced egg yolks, and lots of herbs and spices, as well as making their food really chunky.  Even though they don’t have very many teeth yet, they are doing a great job gumming stuff down.  My goal is to have them eating what we’re eating by around 12 months, and so far, things are going according to plan.  It’s really fun to watch their faces when you put a new food into their mouths – sometimes they are so disgusted, and sometimes they are pleasantly surprised and start to open their mouths for more before they’ve finished the last bite.  Jesse seems to be more particular than Noah, which is why Jesse weighs a little less…  Noah rarely spits anything out.  He’s totally the kid who, when he’s a bit older, will eat dirt to win a bet while his brother looks on in horror and explains to him condescendingly that the bacterial composition of the soil will do such and so to the chemical properties of the immuno-gastro-intestinal system blah blah blah.  I can’t wait for that.

In the meantime, Jesse is fully crawling.  Fully.  He still goes slowly when he’s on his hands and knees.  His military crawl is faster, and since he’s too impatient to go so slowly most of the time, he still relies on his military crawl a lot.  But when he wants to, he is up on his hands and knees cruising around the room.  Our lives are over.  This weekend, I filmed my two baby boys, each doing what they do best…  Enjoy.

For months now, Noah has been making this horrible noise. We can’t get him to stop. He mostly does it when he’s happy, so I guess it’s okay, but it’s a horrible noise. Sometimes it even makes Jesse cry.

We flew up to Spokane last weekend to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with the Hornors. This was the first time that we flew anywhere with the boys. Wow. Those of you that have traveled with children know what I mean by that. The Alaska Airline people were really great and the boys were as good as can be expected, but it was still really hard. We had to carry around with us three carry-ons (one a diaper bag) a car seat to put in the seat we bought for the boys, two strollers, and two babies. They needed to be fed and changed and entertained. And we get to do that all again on Tuesday when we head home.

Once we got here everything was great. We are having a wonderful time staying with Susan and Rick, and we got to spend time with Rachel’s siblings Gwen and her fiance David, Sara, Alex, and Neil and his wife Tiffany and their 3 month old daughter Nadia. We also saw many of the Hornor family friends including, but not limited to, the ever popular Judy Potter, the Kendalls (happy 70th birthday to Jay!) and Bob and Claire. From the previous generation, Rick’s twin brother Randy (yes it’s Rick’s and Randy’s fault that we have twins) and Randy’s wife Sherry visited and I think that today we’re going to see Rick’s brother Greig and his wife Annie. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious thanks to Susan, Rachel and Tiffany who are all amazing cooks, although I will never understand green bean casserole. Also, I think Rick’s OCD deserves a special thanks for keeping everything so clean and tidy.

The unfortunate part of the visit is that Noah got a bad cold and subsequently gave it to Rachel and me. This is the first time either one of them got sick and as you can imagine, we had no idea what we were doing. Poor Noah was so miserable. He’s used to sleeping with a pacifier, but he couldn’t breathe with one, so he had a really hard time sleeping. We took turns sleeping with him upright on the sofa during the first night. On the second night he did better and Susan held him all night and the two of them slept pretty well all cuddled up. Last night Noah slept in his pack-n-play and amazingly slept through the night. He’s still not feeling well, but he’s much much better.

Rachel and I are exhausted and not feeling well ourselves. Still, we went on Friday to see The Lion King at the Spokane Opera House and it was undoubtedly the most amazing show I’ve ever seen. We both loved it and we’re so grateful to Susan and Rick for taking care of Jesse and ill Noah while we were living it up. They have been so generous, loving and caring that we feel overwhelmed by it.

So it’s been a great visit so far. And as a reward for your reading this long ramble, Jesse, who miraculously has not caught this cold from all of us, is going to make you laugh.

While Noah still hasn’t quite figured out how to roll over, Jesse is a man on the move.

Another benefit of the boys being able to sit up on their own is that we no longer need to use a special newborn/infant tub for them and we can bath them right in the kitchen sink. I bought a little rubber mat to put on the bottom of the sink so that they won’t slip and we gave it a shot. It seems like Rachel and I aren’t the only ones happy with the new bathing arrangement!

Jesse has two new favorite things to do. Observe:

Now that the boys are almost 5 months old, we thought we would try a little rice cereal to see how they do with food. Here’s how it went with Noah. Needless to say, we decided to abandon the food thing for a little while longer.