Mercury & Phoenix are Five Months Old!

But Mike! What happened to Four Months!?

No damn time. The very babies I’m writing about take up a lot of time. Time that could be spent blogging about them. How ironic. Like RAIN!!!! ON YOUR WEDDING DAY!!!! IT’S THE FREE RIDE!!!! WHEN YOU ….

PHOENIX

LIKES: Playtime. Toys. Scratching her head to complete and total shreds. Drum sounds. Daddy Dance Time. A Mother’s Touch. Sitting in someone’s lap facing away from them. Explaining things. Goobers. Pestering Mercury.

DISLIKES: Mittens. Having to wear mittens. Having her neck scrubbed out. Meeting new people.

Phoenix has become a complete and total charmer over the past couple months. She loves to laugh and smile. She’s generally pretty easy going and cheerful during the daytime. She’s really getting better at night too, its just her head is so dry and itchy and she just attacks it. All of our ointments, dietary changes, daily manicure routines & mittens have failed us thus far. Don’t get me wrong, she’d be in even worse shape without those things. But we haven’t gotten to the root of her itchy.

Don’t worry yourself. We’ll either figure it out or we won’t. Either way it’ll be fine. She’s pretty tough.

Phoenix (and Mercury) are becoming too complex to define their personalities simply. Such are humans, right? But one thing is sure. She has personality.

Phoenix continues to be a little mysterious. She’s good on her own, but enjoys company. She still flaps around like crazy. Pounds her chest, is a little rowdy with toys, stamps her feet a lot. Gives lots of cute smiles. Is suddenly motivated to tell you things and when she does she really seems like she’s trying to speak to you in earnest. Direct eye contact, raised eyebrows and a serious tone. She’ll talk to herself when down for a nap sometimes.

Right now we’re big Phoenix fans.

MERCURY

LIKES : Rolling Around, Being on his Tummy, Being on his side, His Thumb, Being Held, Being with Others, The Drum Sounds, Looking around

DISLIKES: Being set down, Being alone, Teething Toys, Naptime, Bedtime, Getting caught in the spindles of the crib, meeting new people

Mercury loves to roll. When you put him down to play he gets bored pretty quick and rolls to his stomach to look around. Tiff thinks he can see better that way. I’ve tried it myself a couple of times and it is quite a perspective shift. Everything’s right-side up. You can see a lot more of what’s at ground level. It makes sense. He loves it.

Mercury is definitely the sensitive one. Once he’s been up for a while he really starts to get fussy. He’ll whine and once you put him down for a nap he’ll start crying in earnest. It’s become part of his routine and the surest sign that he needs a nap. He’s also more upset by unexpected/unpleasant stimuli.

Fortunately he’s also a good self soother in that he sucks his thumb and it helps calm him down. Sometimes it’s tough to feed him because he wants to put his thumb in his mouth at the same time as you’re trying to feed him.

Mercury is a sleeping champ. He’s slept through the night every single night for over a month now. Knock on wood right. Hopefully it keeps happening.

Both he and Phoenix are enjoying their voices right now and give their own style of shriek for their own entertainment. Merky has more of a growl/roar. Phoenix, true to her bird-like name will give out a terrible hawkish screech.

They both like being outside and it’s a sure-fire way to sooth them and disrupt a crying sesh.

Mercury is quite cute and chubby.

They both seem like they’re growing up fast.

I’ll do another post soon that’s just like a photo dump without words.

OK!