Two years ago today …

Two years ago today, Colin finally came home from the hospital. He was a tiny peanut, but had finally managed to kick the oxygen habit, and was at long last taking all of his feeds by mouth. He sure has come a long way:

Colin leaving the hospital, swimming in his preemie-sized clothes
and only fitting in his car seat when propped up with blankets on either side. 

All the kids together at last. Look how little they all are. 

Colin today, using himself as a canvass and debating
about auditioning for the new Kiss cover band. 

Diva and the Brute

Colin is in a brutal stage right now. Literally brutal. Both Ethan and Veronica are sporting large scratches on their faces at the moment, courtesy of Colin. He is constantly attacking one of us, either hitting, scratching, head butting or, his current favorite for Veronica, pulling hair. 

I can understand when he does it because we’ve been roughhousing and he just keeps getting more and more wound up. He lacks the ability to control himself in those situations yet. But when these attacks are unprovoked I just don’t know what to do. On Saturday, as we were getting the twins ready for bed, Colin suddenly just reached over and grabbed Veronica’s eye and gouged her cheek with his finger nails. Now I know she often kicks him or pokes him while they’re laying side by side, but I was watching them at the time and she hadn’t done anything. 

Yesterday morning, Colin did the same thing to Ethan. They had been wrestling, but Ethan had stopped roughhousing a few minutes earlier because Colin was starting to get carried away. Colin reached out and grabbed his cheek and left a big gouge. (A side lesson from this is that we need to trim Coin’s fingernails more often.)

We try putting him in time out, but that generally doesn’t seem to phase him at all. He just sits there and watches the action until we tell him he can get up. I think we’re going to have to try putting him in solitary confinement (i.e., his crib) next time it happens. Because it really hurts. 

Veronica is Colin’s favorite target, by far. And unfortunately, this tendency to attack Veronica is coupled with her melodramatic diva tendencies — not a good combination. It becomes very hard to tease out whether he actually did anything to her, if so, whether it actually hurt, or whether she’s just wailing because she likes the drama. (And the girl does like drama.) 

Now, of course, Veronica is often not blameless in these situations. She often is guilty of stealing toys away from Colin and is very fond of bossing him around. (I was downstairs getting something for them the other day, and heard Veronica upstairs yell “Time out Colin! Time out!”) The upshot is that we’re not able to leave them alone unsupervised, which makes getting dinner ready, changing the laundry and even going to the bathroom more challenging. 

I’m sure we’ll get out of this phase with only minor scars, but I do hope it passes quickly. 

Play date

Colin and Veronica had their first play date today, with Jasper. And it was a drop-off play date to boot. Jasper’s oldest sister has been in Ethan’s class the past two years, and so John and their mom decided it would be nice to start having weekly play dates so the kids could get used to being around other kids, and without Mom or Dad there. 

Coordinating the timing was a bit tricky, because Jasper sleeps until after 8:00, and takes a while to get going in the morning, but Colin and Veronica are ready for nap by 10:00. As they’re waking up from nap, Jasper is going down for his nap. So we settled on 9:00 today, and Carrie volunteered to host. 

Colin was a little put off by the idea of being dropped off (No, Daddy, no. No. No. No.) But they both were pretty quickly engaged by Jasper’s toys (oooh, shiny things), and all was well. 

When I got home from work, Veronica proceeded to tell me all about it. “Play at Jasper’s house. Jasper’s house pretty. Have two bath rooms. Our house pretty too. Jasper have two tables. Jasper have trucks. With wheels. Jasper has eyes. Two eyes. Colin cried [he fell down at one point and cried a bit]. Played with toys.”

She said a whole lot more, but she was talking so fast that I could only catch a fraction of the commentary. But I am relieved to know that Jasper still has eyes (I haven’t seen him for several weeks), and that our house is pretty too. 

Next week is at our house. We’ll see how it goes.