Jeni Remembers Her Biggs

My life for the past month has pretty much been twins. I am nearly always doing something with one and occasionally both of them. Right now I'm typing one-handed while feeding Sophie. But I do have four other children, and you might find some news about them a refreshing change.

Grace is talking more and more. She is very polite. I made her a sandwich: "thank you, mommy." I cut the sandwich in half: "thank you, mommy." I cut it in fourths: "thank you, mommy." I gave her some applesauce: "thank you, mommy." You get the idea. But if you think she actually ATE the food I made for her, you would be wrong. I cleaned up her applesauce mess and ate her sandwich myself: "thank you, mommy." She also says "Oh my noodness," "I dough no" (when asked where anything is), and "wrap baby" (handing me her dolly and a blanket for the umpteenth time).

She still yells at her brothers, and today she pulled Nathaniel's hair. I wasn't around at the time, so I'm not sure if she was disciplined for that act of meanness. Aside from her yelling and the occasional mean streak, she is sweet and loving. Anytime she sees someone crying, she wants to help, usually with hugs and a tissue.

She loves, loves, loves the babies. No jealousy so far. "Hold Ophie" is one of her favorite things to do.

Nathaniel just turned five and is losing all his baby ways. He can, on occasion, sleep without his Baba, and yesterday he told me his bunny's name is now Carlos instead of Baba. His favorite room in the house (besides his bedroom) is the school room. He'll spend hours in there working on some craft project. Today he made a mask for himself, cutting nearly all our black construction paper to bits in the process.

He loves the babies, too, but won't often ask to hold one. Sophie is his baby, and he chose which of the quilts from Auntie M is to be hers. He also likes to choose the clothes the babies wear.

Ben is a learning machine. He is in an astronomy class one day a week, and he loves to tell us all he's learned about the planets, sun, and whatever else they've studied. In his free time he'll read Science books and he has made a list of materials he needs to do some experiments.

He loves playing with the neighbor kids--he's played more outside in the last week than the entire year in Florida. Tonight they were scooting, running, and climbing our poplar tree.

Ben also loves the babies. He'll come up to me while I'm nursing or holding one and in a cuddly kind of voice say "huggy." Sadie is officially his baby, but he helps with both. Today Ben and I gave them a bath. He is willing to hold them for me, too, and does a good job for short periods of time. Feeding them properly is a bit beyond his skill level--they end up sucking air and dribbling most of the formula onto their faces and clothes.

Bradford is still Bradford. Yesterday he thoughtfully brought me a gift wrapped in packing paper. He insisted that I needed to open it myself, so I did, and immediately screamed, threw the gift, and jumped up from the couch. Did I mention I was nursing? I was nursing, and I opened what appeared to be a dead cockroach but was in reality a very fine rhinoceros beetle. As Grace would say "Oh my noodness." After the shock was over I laughed and simply asked him not to bring me dead bugs while I was nursing.

He is taking more of an interest in the babies the last few days. He hugs and kisses them at least once a day, and he knows which one he is kissing. For the first weeks of their lives he paid little attention to them, didn't know one from the other, and may not have even known their names.

Mark is my last Bigg to be written about. He's beginning to settle into his job better, and there is hope that he'll soon have less than 14-hour days. Moving into our new house was a big adjustment for him since we now sleep in the same bed. with both twins. I had been taking care of the girls by myself during the night, and if they were both fussy at the same time it didn't bother anyone but me. We had a bit of a rough start, but now we've figured out that if we each take a baby we get more sleep. He gets Sadie, who is sleeping 4-5 hours at a time (often on his chest with only an occasional tumble to the floor) and only needs one bottle during the night. I get Sophie, who has tummy issues and cries for about 2 hours somewhere between 11 PM and 2 AM.

And that's some of the news from Lake Wobegon. I didn't write about Grace saying "Okay" in her sweet voice when we tell her to do something like stop throwing her bunny and blanket out of the crib. Nor did I tell you about the boys' rooms or Ben's new trick or their trip to IKEA with daddy. And news about the house and stories about our new neighbors and details of Becky coming will have to wait until another day. Because now I want to enjoy my sweet Sophie while she's sleeping.