Suddenly these babies are much more active. There’s no more rolling, it’s all crawling and pulling up on things. This weekend we expanded the gated-in play area so it now encompasses most of our living room, and the babies are taking full advantage.
I can’t get over the new activity level. If there’s a pile of books, they’re pulling them all apart. If there’s a tower of blocks, they’re crawling over to it to knock it over. When you pick them up they grip you like little monkeys. And when you try to put M down on the changing table, forget it. She hates lying down, arches her back and cries and twists and turns and tries to climb off the sides and onto the laundry hamper so that you’re pulling her back by the waist.
She got her first scrape yesterday climbing up on the toy box, which is not wood but a sort of flexible cloth-covered plastic. It flipped over and hit her in the face. Now she has a scrape right between her eyes. She was outraged and crying when it happened but very quickly recovered and went right back to climbing on the toy box. Great.
Also , now that we’ve expanded the play area our living room is like an obstacle course of thigh-high barriers to step over. I’m sure this is some new muscle I’m exercising with all this high stepping. In fact, M isn’t the only one who got her first scrape. Today Bean fell off the rocking horse, and in my rush to get to her I jammed my shin on the baby gate, nearly falling myself.
On an unrelated note, the Bean is now leaning in to receive kisses on the head and waving at new friends, who happily wave back. And she is definitely saying “duck.”
Space Monkey Twins 
Id say it’s good that it took so long for a first scrape. Good for the quick recovery too. Girls tend to cry more than boys over things like that.
I guess the quick recovery is good. I can only imagine the scrapes when they start walking…
Yes, this is the first of many. But, fortunately (or maybe unfortunately for us parents who wish they’d learn from these sort of things), kids are resilient and quickly bounce back from stuff like this. With the two of them, you’ll soon be walking down the middle of the aisle while grocery shopping, practically scrunching them between your legs, holding each of their hands in your one hand while pulling away and putting away stuff they manage to grab with your other! Ahh… the joys of having twins! 🙂
Your exponential learning curve has begun! Buckle up and enjoy. May all future bruises be hard won during adventures and fun. 🙂
True true, it is an exponential learning curve. Thanks for commenting!
My former life in Clinical Psychology left me paranoid about head injuries in childhood. The walking was terrifying, the running on concrete (gasp!), the falling over into a baseboard with a loud SMACK…it turns my insides. I’ve calmed down quite a bit now that we’re almost 2.5, but we still watch for signs of concussion when there’s a hard head hit. The worst part is that I KNOW keeping them on padded surfaces is certainly more harmful, right? London started having hesitation at little steps where there’s not a handrail, like the 3 inch doorstep. I force myself to not help her down, root for her to give it a go, and then cheer when she finally does.
With twins, at least ONE of them had a scrape or bruise from 12 months on. 🙂
This brings back memories of when we used to barricade our living room. That lunging over gates and furniture gets a little old, eh? Just be grateful you can still contain them!
Yeah, we just put them up a few days ago and it has already gotten old. But the second we leave the gate open they crawl out and it’s a whole other ball game and that much more exhausting. I can’t imagine the falling and running on hard surfaces. Sounds terrifying.
It is. After the 2nd birthday it didn’t seem as scary…probably in part because they weren’t so wobbly, and probably just plain exposure therapy for us with so many falls by then. 🙂