Sick

Healthwise, we've been extremely blessed with the girls.

We've made it to eight months, almost nine, without the girls getting sick. Except for the ever present sniffles, and Katherine's pink eye, we've been blessed.

This weekend, therefore, we were due.

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On Saturday night, we put Caroline down to sleep, but she woke up around 10 p.m. crying and fussing.

When we picked her up, she was warm -- very warm.

Still, we weren't too concerned. It's been warm over the weekend, and we thought maybe we just needed to get her out of her winter pajamas.

But then we took her temperature.

It read 101 degrees.

I had no idea what that meant for a baby. Was that high? Low? I had read the baby books about fevers and illnesses before the babies were born, but now in the (literally) heat of the moment, I was drawing a blank.

However, I know how I feel when I have a 101 degree fever, and so I reacted like any reasonable first time Dad would.

I panicked.

Luckily, Terri kept her calm, and was a bit more knowledgable than me. She took Caroline out of some of her winter layers, gave her some Baby Tylenol, and fed her a bottle.

Within an hour, her temperature had dropped to about 99 degrees.

We put her back to bed, and watched her closely through the night, but she slept fine.

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The next morning, she seemed her normal self. Her temperature was back down to 98.7.

But then later that morning, while visiting our friends Laurel and Grant at their home, Caroline to seemed very, very warm again.

I thought, we need to leave, NOW!

We took her temperature again -- back to 101 degrees.

We gave our apologies to our friends, and started to pack up for home.

Laurel and Grant, who have a son a few years older than the girls, were able to give us reassurances as we headed out the door.

"You know, 101 degrees is different for babies than it is for adults," said Grant. "They can get up to 105 before you call the doctor. If one of us gets to 105, you're calling a coroner."

I was reassured by their advise, but we nonetheless gave our apologies once more for our quick exit, and headed home.

Once home, we gave Caroline some milk, and let her rest.

She definitely wasn't her normal self. Rather than crawling around and playing, she spent a good part of the afternoon in Mommy or Daddy's arm, dozing.

Caroline even sat quietly on the couch with Daddy, finally falling asleep.

Caroline napping with Daddy on the couch.
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At 3 pm, when she woke up from her nap with Daddy, her temperature was up to 103.

Was it the fact that she had laid next to Daddy's warm body that had risen her temperature, or was her fever going up?

We called the doctor. "Give her fluids," they said, "and call us if she gets to 105."

(Our friend Grant should open his own advice line!)

By 3:3 pm, her temperature was back down to 101.

By 4:00 pm, she was crawling around laughing and playing.

By this evening, she was cool again, and acting pretty normal.

Terri, as usual, stayed calm throughout, and handled everything very well.

David, on the other hand, is going to need several weeks to recover from the stress of having his first baby fever!

Eight Months Old

Spending each day with the girls, it's easy to forget how rapidly they are developing.

At eight months of age, each day brings new discoveries for the girls, and each day they show off new talents to us.

What is especially fun to watch is how each girl is really their own personality

Before I forget just how exciting each new daily discovery has been over the past month, I present to you: "Katherine & Caroline at Eight Months".

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KATHERINE
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Katherine on the whole is more easy-going (like Mommy). She will sit quietly, and likes to take her toys carefully in her hands and look them over carefully before playing with them.

The only exception to Katherine's mellowness is when she sees Mommy come home from work or first walk into a room. Then she cries until Mommy comes to hold her or kiss her.

Katherine's best friend after Caroline is her left thumb. She exclusively sucks her left thumb -- never her right. When she is very tired, she will suck her left thumb while holding a blanket to her right cheek with her right thumb. See "Linus & Katherine".

Katherine goes to sleep very quickly when you put her down. She usually sleeps straight through the night.

Katherine likes to eat. She is game to try just about anything you want to feed her.

Katherine is happy to hang out and play whatever games, or read whatever books you have for her. One of her favorite things to do, however, is to clap her hands along to whatever music you are playing.

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CAROLINE
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Caroline is the more fussy of the two (like Daddy). She took longer to learn to crawl, but has since become faster and quicker than Katherine. She grabs for her toys (unfortunately, even if someone else is holding it!) and likes to bang them on the hardwood floor and screech at the top of her lungs.

Caroline likes to play with Katherine. She will crawl over to Katherine and grab her face, pull her hair, or climb on her back to try to get attention. Katherine will patiently take this abuse, and calmly try to continue whatever it is she is doing!

Caroline sleeps restlessly. She will often whimper or cry numerous times before she settles down to sleep. Often, Daddy or Mommy will have to hold Caroline and walk her around a darkened house until she soothes herself to sleep. Even then, Caroline wakes up at least once or twice a night to feed or just be held.

Caroline has developed a number of games that she is very proud of having discovered on her own. They include:

• Shaking her head from side to side. If you copy her, she will burst out laughing.
  
• Squinting her eyes at you. Again, if you copy her, your reward is a hearty laugh.
  
• Covering her face with a burp cloth, then pulling it away quickly, and acting surprised to see you, then laughing hysterically (She just showed us this one tonight, much to our surprise and delight, and played it for a good 15 minutes. We've been playing peek-a-boo with her since birth, and so it was exciting to see her emulate something we've been doing with her a long time).

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THE DYNAMIC DUO
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Katherine and Caroline are now big enough to sit up, crawl, and even pull themselves onto their feet without assistance (getting down off their feet is still a bit of a challenge).

The girls will often spend up to 20 minutes playing with each other, oblivious to where Mommy and Daddy are. This has afforded Mommy and Daddy some precious down time to just sit and watch the girls, as opposed to being the center of attention all the time.

The girls favorite game to play together right now is to take small plastic balls in their hands and crawl around the hardwood floor, banging them on the floor. They will then toss the balls down the hallway and then race to see who can get to them first (To be honest, I'm not sure if they are tossing the balls on purpose, or if they just lose their grip on them while banging them on the floor!)

Another favorite game the girls like to play is to help with the laundry. It works like this: Mommy and/or Daddy fold all the laundry. As quickly as they fold the laundry, Caroline and Katherine try to unfold the laundry, or alternatively, crawl into the laundry basket. I think the girls like the warmth of clothes just out of the drier. In any case, they love the game:

We can unfold faster than you can fold.
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The girls now eat all manner of foods: vegetables, cereal, and CHEESE. They love Kraft American Cheese. I call them the "Cheese Queens."

Finally -- the girls favorite place to nap is the car, in their car seats. Often, they will fall asleep on the ride home from running errands and still be asleep when we arrive at home. We've learned that if we let them sleep, they are often good for a 30-60 minute nap. Being no fools, we follow the cardinal rule of parents of twins: LET SLEEPING BABIES SLEEP! This has led to us eating many meals in our garage:

Food tastes better when you eat it in your garage with your sleeping babies!
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Of course, it's all worth it. I wouldn't trade our "picnics" in the garage for all the fine foods of the world.

Blue Heaven

Two Saturday's ago was a watershed moment for the girls, at least in Daddy's eyes.

They attended their first baseball game.

All right, I admit, they will have no memory of going to this game, being only eight months old. But for a father who is a lifelong baseball fan, there is something special about taking your first-borns to their first baseball game.

Of course, if you've read some of my previous blogs, you know there was only one place that the girls could experience their first baseball game. (See "Vin Scully Lullabys", Aug. 24, 2005)

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"I bleed Dodger blue and when I die,
I'm going to the big Dodger in the sky."

- Tommy Lasorda

It was a beautiful, warm summer-like evening in the City of Angels, as we arrived with Grandma and Grandpa Lim at Blue Heaven on Earth -- Dodger Stadium.

Walking into the game with Grandma Lim.
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Also with us were the girls cousins Lauren and Jonathan, and their Aunt and Uncle.

We sat in the left field bleachers, four rows from the field.

It was Jackie Robinson Tribute night, so the eighth largest crowd in Dodger Stadium's regular season history was on hand to pay tribute.

Dodger Stadium: Blue Heaven.
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The Dodgers played the San Francisco Giants, with Barry Bonds and his traveling medicine show in left field, so our section of the stadium was particularly noisy, with the crowd serenading Barry each time he trotted out to left field.

The girls were surprisingly well-behaved the entire game. Of course, they had their grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, and cousins to entertain them and hold them!

Caroline with aunty, cousin, and grandma.
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Mommy and Caroline.
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Daddy and Katherine.
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Luckily, it was a short game, as far as baseball goes, and the Dodger's ended up beating the Giants, 3-1!

Go Dodger Blue!
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The end of a successful evening.
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First Tooth

Last Friday, Katherine got her first tooth.

Well, not quite a tooth, but a small white nub on her lower left gum that is waiting to "erupt" into a tooth.

I'd post a photo, but Katherine is incredibly shy about showing her nubby tooth.

So instead, here is a photo of Katherine with a runny nose:

Katherine: Waiting for her teeth to arrive.
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Linus & Katherine

Katherine has developed an interesting habit, reminiscent of a popular comic book character.

We all know and love the "Peanuts" cartoons. And we all know and love the character Linus, with his trademark security blanket.

Linus was often drawn holding his blanket up to his cheek while sucking his thumb:

Katherine's hero: Linus.
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Katherine has not yet been introduced to the Peanuts comic strip, but she is already doing her best Linus impersonations.

We can tell Katherine is getting tired, because when she is getting ready to sleep she will rub her blanket up against her right cheek, while sucking her left thumb.

Even once asleep, Katherine will often rub her blanket up against her right cheek, and hold it there while she sleeps.

I thought his was a pretty recent occurance, but then I was looking through some photos of Katherine's first days at home from the hospital, and I realized she's been doing it the whole time!

Here are some photos, confirming that she is indeed a Linus groupie:

Sleeping in the car with a burp cloth for a blanket.
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Katherine at two weeks old impersonating Linus!
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Happy Easter!

We are visiting family this Easter Sunday. More details on our trip later. In the meantime, Happy Easter!

First Easter!
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The girls with their cousins.
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First Late Night Doctor's Visit

Today was humming along quite nicely. I was being productive at work, just working on a file, minding my own business.

My cell phone rang. I picked it up. I heard the the four words I've dreaded to hear since becoming a parent:

"This is daycare calling . . . "

Time froze while I waited for the other shoe to drop.

What was wrong?

Something big? Something small?

I waited for what seemed an enternity before the teacher resumed talking.

"Katherine's eye is a little swollen. She took a nap, woke up, and now it's swollen."

I asked a few follow-up questions, and got reassuring answers.

No fever. Doesn't appear to be in pain. Actually quite happy.

It was close to 4:30 p.m., so I started to close up my work. I left about 15 minutes early and headed to day care.

I got there, and little Katherine looked like someone had socked her in the eye!

The skin around her eye was pink and swollen. "Sleep junk" oozed out of it.

Other than the way it looked, however, she seemed perfectly happy.

I took the girls home, wiped Katherine down.

The eye didn't look any better.

After dinner, I gave Katherine a warm bath, and put a warm wet towel over her eye to soak while I bathed her.

The eye looked a little better, but still oozed.

We consulted our baby books.

"Your baby most likely has 'pink eye'. Call your doctor to confirm."

We called our doctor and talked to the on-call nurse.

"Any fever?" she asked.

"Uh, doesn't look like it."

"Well, if she has no fever bring her in first thing tomorrow morning. If she develops a fever, or if you just want to play it safe, you can bring her into the clinic tonight."

Obviously, the kind advise nurse didn't know we were first time parents.

Play it safe? Of course we're going to play it safe with our first borns!

So, needless to say, at this moment, Terri is off with Katherine to the clinic, while I'm at home putting Caroline to bed.

9:15 p.m. -- ** UPDATE **

Good news. Terri called.

Katherine has no fever. It is just pink eye. Terri got some medicine and is headed home with our little girl.

Our first late night doctor's visit.

(And, yes, 8:30 p.m. counts as "late night" when you are a stressed out, first-time Dad!).

It's gonna be a long 18+ years!!

No photo of Katherine -- I don't have the heart to take a picture of her with her little eye all swollen. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to laugh enough about it to take a picture.

Blogging Help

The girls wanted to help with today's blog, so I let them post this photo of themselves using my laptop:

Future bloggers.
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Reading Is Fun, Right?

Even though the girls aren't yet one year old, it seems all the "expert" books agree that it's never too early to start reading to your kids.

With that in mind, Terri and I try to read at least one book a day to the girls during their play time.

Today, for example, Katherine and I read from one of my favorites, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. Here you can see Katherine perusing the book:

Katherine reading her book.
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I wish I could tell you that Katherine sat in my lap in rapt attention as I read to her how the caterpillar eats himself from a tiny caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly.

But that would be lying.

In fact, this whole photo is sort of a sham.

You see, I had to toss that book into the photo.

Katherine's choice of toy for this photo is that purple-striped sock you see under her left hand.

That sock held much more fascination for Katherine then my attempts to read to her did.

She kept knocking the book out of my hands while I was reading it, in order to more fully concentrate on gnawing at that sock!

I guess the trip to the local library for the library card can wait until next week.

The Story Behind The Photo

A few weeks ago, during one of the few sunny weekends we had in the Bay Area this March (it rained something like 23 of the 31 days!), Terri and I took Caroline and Katherine out for a day of shopping and strolling at the Stanford Shopping Center.

While at the Mall, we stopped to eat at California Pizza Kitchen. During lunch, Terri snapped this photo of me and Caroline:

Daddy is the one hamming it up, Caroline is the one looking embarrassed on my behalf.
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If you look over my right shoulder, you'll see a couple at the table behind me seemingly minding their own business.

In fact, they did not mind their own business.

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If you are the parents of multiples, you quickly get used to the fact that numerous times during the most routine outings, you will be stopped while eating/shopping/reading a magazine by someone who will ask you, "Twins?" followed almost certainly by the next question, "Identical or fraternal?"

The first couple hundred times you get asked the question, it is endearing. But after the next hundred times, it's becomes a perplexing question. "If not twins," you think, "how else did we get two babies exactly the same age at the same time?!?"

It's hard sometimes to answer that same question over and over and over again politely. But we always try. And sometimes, with good reason.

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As you have already anticipated the man over my right shoulder caught me and Caroline up at the soda fountain, and asked us, "Twins?"

"Yes," I replied, "Fraternal." (Thus, intercepting the second question, giving me more time to suck down some Pepsi before Caroline could grab the cup away from my mouth.)

His response was one of pure joy.

"So are we!" said the man. "We're expecting fraternal twins in June."

The excitement in his voice was subtle, but as a first-time Dad myself, I could hear it in his voice.

He was excited at what lay ahead of him.

He was also nervous of the unknown that lay ahead.

And here we were, parents of twins in front of him, eating out!

"Congratulations!" I said to him, and I didn't have to fake any enthusiasm on my part.

"What's it like?" he asked.

I thought about my response for a fraction of a second.

What should I tell him about? The late night feedings? The constant crying? Worrying so much all night that you sneak into you babies' room to check that they're okay?

I decided in the end, to tell him what I've found to be a general truth.

"It's great," I said. "It's not easy, but it's not as hard as people say it is. It's the best thing you'll ever do."

"Thanks," he said. "That's good to know."

He went back to his meal, I went back to mine, and we didn't speak again, except to smile at each other as we left the restaurant.

But when I look at look at the picture now, I always notice him in the background.

Good luck, guys!

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More photos from our shopping outing:

Mommy & Katherine at CPK
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Mommy & The Girls Enjoying the Spring Flowers
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Final Four: Postmortem

Gee, wasn't it grand to see the Baseball season get underway today?

In all honesty, it was great to see UCLA go so far. Perhaps the best part about it is that for the past three weeks, I've reconnected with old college friends I haven't talked to in years -- running into them at games, getting emails and text messages from them, swapping old photos.

That's the real beauty of sports, isn't it?

(P.S. -- It's not really the beauty, let's be honest. But it's what the losing fans say when their team falls just short. Oh, well, it's still great to be a Bruin, and not a Trojan! U-C-L-A Fight! Fight! Fight!)