We Found Felix's "Twin"

They say everyone has a twin. Most of us will go our whole lives without finding ours, but lucky little Felix won’t be left out. We found his “twin” last night!

We were at a neighborhood block party on the other side of town, and I spotted a cute little guy who looked so much like Felix, I just had to go say hi.

Turns out, the boys are only 3 days apart in age. And just when I started to wonder if they really might be related (birth mom has relatives in the area), Baby M’s mom told me where she’s from – the SAME town in Mexico where I used to live. And we lived there at the same time! This means we probably frequented each other’s places of business and most likely share mutual friends. The block party music was too loud to really get into a detailed conversation about it, so we exchanged info to get together later.

I asked her permission to take a picture and she agreed (but I’ll respect their privacy and not share names here.) She and her husband both just stood there in awe looking back and forth between the two boys. Felix is definitely chubbier with more hair, but when M catches up, the resemblance might become even stronger. 

Baby M is on the left; Felix on the right.

ABC has a neat little clip on the “twin” phenomenon: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video?id=2912467

I’d love to hear if anyone else has found their twin!

Fun with Garage Doors

Tagged in April - "Nute Gingrich"

Short-term solution.

Semi-long term solution (I primed it myself).

Four months later, the whole building is finally painted! I'm really liking the less-ghetto look.

I'm almost 420 months!

Felix at 14 weeks and 5 days, sporting
a cute hand-me-down and headed to the fair.

I always sort of rolled my eyes at parents who gave their babies' ages in weeks instead of months, or months instead of years. I never understood why. Twelve weeks? Just say "He's 3 months old." Geez.

Of course, now I understand it perfectly. Not all months have exactly four weeks, and people tend to have very set expectations for every month of a child's age, with respect to both physical size and skills.

For example, Felix will be 16 weeks on Sept. 3, but not "four months old" until almost two weeks later. And babies learn a lot in two weeks! So it's understandable that a new parent wouldn't want to make a child sound older than he actually is...heaven forbid they appear to be behind schedule to all those busybodies who have to ask. I've already had people ask if Felix can sit, crawl, hold his bottle, say "mama" or eat real food, all skills that are beyond any three-month-old.

Either way, I think it's time to graduate to saying months. And somewhere around 18 months, I'll switch to "a year and a half". Anything over 18 months just sounds silly to me. And it's a little sad when parents refer to their older children as "38 months" (yes, I've heard that one!) I think those kids are more likely to still have binkies everywhere they go, like the parents just don't want to let go of the baby stage.

Okay, rant over.

Felix and I have a fun week ahead of us, with a Meetup, a political picnic, the first BSU game and my birthday party on Friday. I'm celebrating a week early...technically I won't be 420 months until September 6th, so please try to keep your expectations of me in check. :)

Randomness

Waking from a nap while I worked on
a translation project.

No big news here, which is fine with me! Felix is doing well and growing like crazy. He laughs a lot and thinks it’s hilarious when I change his clothes, and he finally dropped a night feeding, so now we’re “only” up at 1am and 4am. 

And I ordered a jogger last week, since he can sit up pretty well and our Snap N Go is hard to push on grass. Boise is known for its parks and we have a number of festivals and fairs coming up that will all be held on grassy areas. The Bjorn is still good, but he’s now 14 lbs and increasingly wiggly, so I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep that up. 

I recently joined a Meetup group to connect with other parents of young kids. Unfortunately most of the events happen during the day, and the weekend ones are often “no kids”, so I haven’t gone to anything yet. I looked into a single parents’ group, but their focus is dealing with divorce, sharing custody, etc. I haven’t given up hope yet – there are a couple of promising events coming up.

And in case you’ve missed the national headlines, Idaho is on fire. Boise has been full of smoke (can’t see the foothills, reminds me of L.A.) for a few weeks. My throat has been very sore and it’s definitely limited our outdoor time. The largest fire, Trinity Ridge, was only 3% contained last I heard. It could end up being a very long August! 

It’s also been ridiculously hot. I started refinishing an old baby dresser in the garage quite a few weeks ago, but the chemical stripper is most effective at 85 degrees or cooler, and it hasn’t been getting that cool before I go to bed every night (our hottest day was 108). So I haven’t been using my garage and Felix’s clothes are still in sized piles across his bedroom floor.

Speaking of my garage, it’s finally getting painted this week – the whole building, actually. You may remember it was vandalized with “Nute Gingrich” in spray paint in May. I’ll share some before/after pics later for your viewing pleasure.

And finally, Monday night I got back into the gym for the first time in months. They were kind enough to let me pause my membership when I went to get Felix. I felt a bit guilty putting him in even more daycare while I worked out, but it’s something I really, really need to do. It’s my quiet time and stress relief. I have my workout down to 45 minutes and of course everyone at the Kids Club loved him – such a good baby, such big smiles, etc. – so that made it easier. He has started showing a smidge of stranger anxiety lately (it’s a normal developmental phase), so I figure the more people he can get to know now, the better. 

 That’s all for now – hope everyone is enjoying their last few days of summer!

Two Down...

Got 'em!

Today was our second post-placement visit. Just one more to go! The visits are nice. Basically I get to talk about Felix and myself for an hour and answer questions about how we're bonding, his development, his personality, etc. I can't imagine a new parent who wouldn't enjoy such a visit. And even though there's no home inspection or anything, it was enough motivation to get our laundry out of the downstairs hallway and give the toilet a once-over with some scrubbing bubbles.

We also had a new oven/stove delivered this weekend. The one that came with my townhouse was down to just 3 reliable burners (the broiler and baking elements started smoking), so I figured it was time to go. I really, really appreciated being able to shop the ads, buy one with no-interest financing, and sit home in my jammies sipping coffee while other people delivered and installed it on Saturday morning. I patted myself on the back for being in a position to do that.

Tomorrow night I'm taking Felix to his first Hawks baseball game with a group of people from work. We got an actual baseball and a food ticket too, and I'm going to have to argue a pretzel out of the concession dudes, even though it clearly says “NO SUBSTITUTIONS” under “hot dog”. I'm not sure how many innings we'll last in this smoky, hot weather, but I'm sure it will be fun for a while.

And finally, even though I know we're not supposed to judge our babies by the baby books, I have to admit it's nice when Felix meets a milestone early. He smiled early, laughed early and yesterday, discovered his feet a full 3 weeks before the “experts” say he should have. It's pretty cute to see him with one fist in his mouth and the other firmly wrapped around his toes.

Little Tastes of Reality

A little sleepy and a little crusty the morning
of his 12-week birthday.

This has been an interesting few days. In addition to a little boy asking "Does he have a dad?" the young woman selling me a stove asked, "Does his dad have dark hair, or did you adopt him?"

The agency also requested an update from me for the birth mom. I'm finding it almost as hard to write as that initial greeting card for her in April. I don't know how's she's feeling about everything so it's hard to know if gushing over him will only make it worse. Would it be easier to hear that he's just an ordinary baby who eats, sleeps and poops, or does she want to hear how perfectly amazing and unique he is? Will she have more regrets if I tell her how he's a funny, easy little guy who gets compliments on his skin tone and big eyes everywhere he goes? (Does she even have regrets to begin with?)

These are all questions/situations I knew I'd have to deal with eventually, but maybe I wasn't quite prepared to get them all in the same 48 hours. I still haven't perfected my response for strangers who outright ask about Felix's dad - especially kids. The young boy in the store didn't seem to know what "adopted" meant, so he kept asking the question over and over till his parents gently guided him back to their cart, without offering an explanation of "adoption". Hopefully it's a conversation they had when they got home. Of course, it's good I'm getting these questions so Felix can grow up hearing confident, natural responses that send the message "It's no big deal."

Switching gears: We house sat for my parents this weekend, and Jayda howled in her kennel one morning like I've never heard before. Then, suddenly, Felix howled. It was hilarious! I immediately Googled "baby mimicking sounds" and learned that it's not at all unusual for young babies to mimic sounds very closely. This explains why it sounds like he's saying "hi" back to me all the time. The sounds he's making don't have meaning for him yet, of course, but it's pretty cool to see him take such an interest in language.

Bilingual Baby

Abuelita Marisol and Tia Yazmin with Felix and me.

Before my niece was born, I made her a onesie that said “Bilingual baby: I cry in English and Spanish.” It seemed like a joke at the time, but I’ve since learned that babies’ earliest sounds really do mimic what they hear from us. Lately I’ve noticed that Felix’s coos and cries often match my tone of voice. If he’s upset and I coo back at him, he’ll match my pitch.

It’s pretty cute and funny, but it also reminded me that we need to get on this Spanish stuff right away since he’ll be 3 months old next week (but not old enough for the bilingual immersion daycare till next winter.) It turns out our brains can completely lose the ability to make certain sounds if we’re not exposed to them before 6 months of age…perhaps why Americans have such a hard time sounding fluent in other languages, no matter how hard they study. And maybe why Spanish speakers have a hard time with all our vowel sounds. Some of my Mexican friends had the hardest time with certain words all coming out the same: bird, bear and beer all sounded like beer. Her, hair and here all sounded like here. (Spanish, as you may know, has just one sound per vowel.)

So in addition to ordering a set of 14 kids’ Spanish books for Felix, I ordered 3 DVDs from Amazon today. Two are Plaza Sesamo, aka Sesame Street, and the other goes over 60 words and phrases related to manners, greetings and everyday objects. Now before anyone gets all worked up about me putting Felix in front of the TV, I’m only going to play them as background noise to start. It’ll expose him to the sounds and prompt me to speak more Spanish around the house, since I often switch to it when I hear it.

This weekend, my sister-in-law’s mother visited from Utah. Her first language is Spanish and it was really cute watching Felix study her as she spoke to him. I don’t know if Felix’s birth mom or half-siblings speak Spanish, but if they ever meet one day (and I’m sort of assuming they will), I sure don’t want him to feel left out of an entire culture because of a language barrier.

Something else to remember: bilingual babies often speak a little later than their peers, but they have better comprehension overall. So there’s no need to fear they’re getting confused or overwhelmed with all the info. Their little brains are just amazing.