We spent last weekend visiting the girls' paternal grandparents, who live in the 'burbs outside of New York. It was a delightful visit, with lots of time for the babes to charm the pants off various neighbors and relatives, including their nonagenarian great grandmother and great-great aunt, a first cousin twice removed (or was it a second cousin once removed?), and my uncle and aunt.
Elsa now clearly understands what a camera is for. Clio prefers to keep things candid.
But the best feature of the trip, by far, were the great expanses of nice, soft, wall-to-wall carpet at the grandparents' house and the great-grandmother's apartment. For the weekend, the whole world was the babies' play mat. We could just plop them down on the floor, scatter some toys around, keep an eye on minor hazards like tablecloths and tippy antique plant stands, and they were happy as can be. (And when I say "toys," that includes plastic measuring spoons, rubber spatulas and other cooking utensils, which are easily as fascinating and delicious to the girls as any plush or plastic gizmo.) We didn't have to put down a blanket or lunge to keep small heads from thumping against the hardwood, like at home. (We don't always get there in time.) So, while I'm not generally a fan of the carpeting aesthetic, I have to say: excellent for babies.
Elsa took advantage of the choice floor conditions to work on her crawling, and made some major progress. At her great-grandmother's apartment, she took her first real crawling "steps" -- a good five or six bonafide hands-and-knees strides forward. The goal: the wheel of great-grandma's wheelchair. Fascinating! The girl's going to be a mechanical engineer, and is clearly a genius. She did some more crawling here and there throughout the weekend, although a lot of the time what seems to happen is she'll go for a bit, then bend one leg in and end up back in a seated position, much to her own dismay. Other times she'll crawl a little, then seem to get tired and revert to commando creeping.
The girls were quite smitten with their great-grandmother's singing birthday bear.
Clio, meanwhile, still doesn't seem to have any interest in crawling. We put her on her stomach sometimes, and sometimes she'll hang out there for a little while, or even creep a tiny bit, but then she gets annoyed and wants to sit up, which she still hasn't figured out how to do on her own from lying down. I keep telling myself there's no reason to be concerned; she's just going at her own pace. Maybe she'll be one of these babies who skips crawling all together and goes straight to ballroom dancing.
Grandma and Elsa, overachievers. Note carpet, wooden spoon.
I will hand it to both babies: they managed to co-exist incredibly well with their grandparents' two golden retrievers, one of them a fairly young and boisterous dog, both of them very excited about licking, pawing, and otherwise interacting with the babies. We started by having the babies look at the dogs from behind a safety gate, from a bit of a distance (Clio was, characteristically, a little freaked out by them at first) and then, once they were comfortable with them, let them get to know each other a little better. The dogs were reportedly very sad after we left.
Clio with Aki and her "Abuelito." Abuelito (Grandpa), it should be noted, has not a drop of Latin blood in him; it's just what he wants to be called because he likes the sound of it.
Elsa and her new pal, Niko
One more event that must be mentioned: the feeding of applesauce. I get along very well with my mother-in-law (Hi, mother-in-law!) but we did have a difference of opinion over the matter of applesauce when the girls were first starting to eat solids. I'd heard that it was a good idea to start with vegetables, before fruit, so the babies don't get used to the sweet taste of fruit and then refuse vegetables. Joyce, on the other hand, swore by applesauce for Alastair, and reasoned (quite reasonably) that if you want to get them used to eating real food, you're better off starting with something they'll actually like. Well, I stubbornly stuck to my vegetable guns. But this weekend, the girls had applesauce for the first time, and their grandmother did the honors. They loved it, of course.
