This Week in Mommyhood

This has been a fun and exhausting week. Elina's been spending more time awake and Cati's napping has been touch and go. With both girls on somewhat of a schedule, the days have been melting into one another. My only reference for the day of the week comes from Alex and even then things are a little screwy. Regardless, I feel so good about motherhood right now and I can honestly say I'm enjoying both girls fully. Cati's at the best stage and Elina is starting to look and feel more like a baby than a newborn.

Here are the fun (and one not so fun) developments this week:

Baby Smiles. Elina started gifting us with beautiful gummy smiles. These aren't those smile while you're sleepy and gassy smiles, these are smile while mommy's making goofy faces smiles. I've gotten a smile out of her daily and, needless to say, I look forward to those smiles.

Baby Coos. Elina is starting to discover her voice. It's so weird to have another talking person in the house but I look forward to hearing how her language develops.

Verbs Galore. Cati has been putting sentences together for a few months now but what really has me impressed this past week is her use of verbs. In Spanish, she talks about eating, cleaning, painting, bathing, and God knows what else. The girl surprises me with the things she says and I am constantly wondering where she learned certain things.

Favorite Words. The two things that have really stood out for me this week are Cati learning what sneakers on and how she says "hermanita throw up" whenever Elina drools or spits up.

Sleep Like a Baby. I never understood the "sleep like a baby" saying because I don't think babies are great sleepers (great sleeper =sleeping through the night and loud noises). This week Elina has decided to sleep nice, long stretches at night. One night she even slept from 10pm-6:15am and it was glorious. Since that day she's been sleeping about a six hour stretch at night followed by a four hour stretch before getting up when everyone else does. Cati didn't start sleeping this good until well after six months so I'm enjoying it but also staying aware that things can change at any moment.

And the Not So Fun. I hadn't written about this because I was hoping that not writing about it would make it go away but it didn't. Cati had surgery this past week to put tubes in her ears. Since October she's had fluid in her ears and antibiotics haven't helped. I thought pulling her out of school would help, but the fluid in her ears persisted and a hearing test revealed that Cati had suffered some hearing loss. I don't know how reliable the hearing test was but two doctors and two hearing tests said the same thing: surgery was needed to prevent further damage. The surgery was quick and went well and now it's just a wait and see and hope things clear up and get better.

Here's to another week of surviving the world of mommyhood with a 6 week old and a 25.5 month old. It's tiring and exhausting, but God, do I love my girls.