At school I like to think of myself as a person who metaphorically wears a lot of different hats. First and foremost, I have my advisor hat- I enjoy being an advisor to my homeroom students, and, especially at the beginning of the year, helping guide my young advisees through middle school. Then I have my social studies teacher hat, my dean of students hat, my flag football coach hat, and my student council advisor hat. This year, however, there is one hat that I feel most proud to wear (and no, I'm not talking about my retro Brewers cap)! I feel like I am developing a whole new identity as Hope and Grace's father. Each day I am asked countless times by other teachers, staff members, kids and parents how the girls are doing, and it gives me such joy to smile and tell them the truth- the girls are doing great!With our crazy schedules and school in full swing, it has become harder to break away and take time to write and post photos, so I am hoping to take somewhat of a retrospective approach, highlighting some marvelous moments, and, in this case a rather funny story, from the past week.
Gracie Wants Seconds! (Or does she????)
Last Thursday morning, I awoke at 3:30 a.m. to the shrill cries of my ravenous daughters. Jeni and I try to take turns doing the "graveyard shift" and this was my night. Groggily, I left the warm confines of our bed, stumbled into the nursery and found the girls screaming with their eyes shut and their mouths open as wide as can be. Once I got there though and they heard my voice, their shrieks died down a bit. I changed Hope and Grace, put them in their Boppy pillows, attached bibs around their sets of chins and proceeded to feed them their bottles. Hope is up to 4 ounces these days and Gracie is at 3 and a half. Grace in particular acted like she was starving and took down her entire bottle in about five minutes. Now, to give some back story here, Grace is traditionally our pokier eater, who will sometimes take 30-45 minutes to finish a bottle, so for her to throw the bottle down that quickly meant one thing and one thing only (at least as far as I could tell). Gracie was signaling to me that she wanted me to go tell the chef that she wanted seconds. I went to the fridge, retrieved another bottle, and happily obliged. Wow, I thought to myself, Gracie is really starting to take off with her growth. She's eating like a champ! By the time that Hope had finished her meal, Gracie seemed to slow with her feeding as well. All in all she took down 4.75 ounces. A new record for Gracie.
I couldn't have been more proud of my daughter at that point, although, when she was finished, she really looked stuffed (not unlike John Candy's character in the movie The Great Outdoors after he took down the 'Old '96er). Could I have overfed Gracie, I thought to myself briefly? Nah, how could I, she only ate 4.75 ounces, that's not that much. I went to burp Gracie, and almost immediately her mouth opened and at least half of her feeding came flying back out all over my face, chest, lap and our couch. At this point there was only one thing I could do, and that was to yell, "JENI!" as loud as I could, waking my wife from her slumber, exactly what I didn't want to do given that I was doing the "graveyard shift."
I couldn't have been more proud of my daughter at that point, although, when she was finished, she really looked stuffed (not unlike John Candy's character in the movie The Great Outdoors after he took down the 'Old '96er). Could I have overfed Gracie, I thought to myself briefly? Nah, how could I, she only ate 4.75 ounces, that's not that much. I went to burp Gracie, and almost immediately her mouth opened and at least half of her feeding came flying back out all over my face, chest, lap and our couch. At this point there was only one thing I could do, and that was to yell, "JENI!" as loud as I could, waking my wife from her slumber, exactly what I didn't want to do given that I was doing the "graveyard shift."
I am not a morning person, but Jeni is even less so, so seeing her rub her eyes and stumble into the room was not a pretty site. Jeni looked dumbfounded, after being woken up suddenly only to see her husband covered with spit up, along with her daughter, who, incidentally thought this whole thing was funny and smiling. Hope just grunted in the Boppy pillow beside her sister. It was her only defense. This clearly was a sight for sore eyes, and not the way anyone, least of all Jeni, would want to to see in the wee hours of the morning after just being startled from her sleep.
Needless to say, I learned a lesson here. Sometimes babies need their nook to suck on after their feeding and not be given a whole other bottle! For an adult, 4.75 ounces is not much, but for Gracie, it was as if she ate a robust steak. While spit-up-covered dad didn't take any pictures of this charade, I found a video of the John Candy scene from The Great Outdoors that can give you the general picture of this story.
In other, non-spit-up related news...
Here are some super-cute photos of "The Hopester" from this past week. The girls are starting to smile a lot. On top of that, we are now taking them to a park near our house for picnics on Saturdays. The family picnic is especially fun as Maggie is getting more used to the girls and enjoys smelling their feet while we enjoy our sandwiches and "tummy time" on the blanket.
Needless to say, I learned a lesson here. Sometimes babies need their nook to suck on after their feeding and not be given a whole other bottle! For an adult, 4.75 ounces is not much, but for Gracie, it was as if she ate a robust steak. While spit-up-covered dad didn't take any pictures of this charade, I found a video of the John Candy scene from The Great Outdoors that can give you the general picture of this story.
In other, non-spit-up related news...
Here are some super-cute photos of "The Hopester" from this past week. The girls are starting to smile a lot. On top of that, we are now taking them to a park near our house for picnics on Saturdays. The family picnic is especially fun as Maggie is getting more used to the girls and enjoys smelling their feet while we enjoy our sandwiches and "tummy time" on the blanket.
