Language development and learning

First of all, I realised I haven't updated this thing for a while. The girls grow so fast and learn new things every week. They had their 4 month check-up and all is well. They had their immunisations and besides a few tears, no problems at all. Duane and I are really settling into this mummy-and-daddy stuff. It truly is rather cool.

What is so cool? I've always been amazed by the learning process of babies/children etc. They come out knowing nothing and in a few short years they learn to communicate, move, coordination, cause-and-effect, etc. Pretty nifty if you ask me :)
Now we have two babies, and it is even funkier to see the differences between them.

Emma:
She is still the smaller of the two, she weighs about 1kg less than Caitlin and is about 3cm shorter. Her vocabulary at this point in time consists of a "Ggrrrr" in the back of her throat, a pfft (rasberry),"arr", a loud laugh and a cute giggle.
She is not too keen on rolling, but she discovered today she can get herself onto her tummy. Hasn't figured out how to move the bottom arm into a more comfortable position so we need to help her with that. Her hand-eye coordination is good, her head control is excelent. She sits firmly with help (balance is missing but the strength is there). When playing with different objects she uses both hands to grab hold of things. When we place her on her tummy she can keep her head up well. She doesn't really push through the arms yet, it would be rather early for it. She can stand on both legs for a few seconds with assistance. moving around is not really an issue for Emma. She will rotate around her own axle, and has this funny way of throwing her legs and bottom in the air and moving a few cm. There is not much coordination in it yet, the direction of movement is not really predictable for anyone (including her) and she runs into her sis regulary.

Caitlin:
Has a great vocab: "Grrrr" and "Pfft" have been on the repetoir for a while. On the weekend she discovered "oooww" and today she had an epiphany: She can talk without opening her mouth. Its the biggest joke ever and it makes her giggle and laugh. so now we also have "HMMMMMM". (well its more of a "HMmmmm-m-m-hmg-ggg-ha-ha-ha". We have ofcourse "AAHHhh" and "AAhhrr" and the giggle and laugh. She has been able to roll from her tummy onto her back for a few weeks, however, when it happens it still is mostly accidental and then it turns into a game. She can turn onto her tummy and has for a few weeks now, she also has not figured out the freeing up of the bottom arm and doesn't seem too interested in that to be honest. She will grab for things and use both hands, but mostly she is just happy flailing and having accidental hits on the toys we have on a dangly string near them in the play-pen.

oh, and both the girls are strong: Mr Lion and Mrs Rabbit are thrown about quite a bit, and quite some distance. Which really is an achievement: Those stuffed animals are nearly half the size of either girl.
The cutest thing is that they have discovered eachother. They are making sounds to eachother and reaching out and touching eachothers hands. Not all the time, and not very often at the same time (which is rather sad for the one who is trying to engage the other in conversation...).

Oh and lastly: That feeling everyone keeps telling you you should have as a mother the first time you look at your baby? It finally happened last week. It wasn't that I didn't love my girls, I sure have, but this all absorbing, "oh-how-cute-are-you-and-you-are-my-daughter" feeling didn't happen until last week. I wasn't worried, I knew it would happen, I just thought to mention it so I could disspell the myth of "instant motherly love" which makes so many new mums feel guilty because it so often doesn't happen straight away.