Mr. Mom, Double-Jointed Dolls & Baby Babble

The last couple of days, Mom hasn't quite felt her normal spunky self. As a result, Dad was called into full-service daughter watching duty.

That in and of itself is a scary proposition. Luckily, Mom was still able to fulfill her duties as a hairstylist for the girls... otherwise Braelyn and Gwendolyn would have truly been sunk.

However, we are happy to report that Mom's back at work this morning and Dad's back to filling his normal role of gorging himself and inexplicably falling asleep on the sofa.

As for the girls, Braelyn has taken to a new set of baby doll items Mom recently picked up at a consignment sale. She loves moving between stroller, swing and pack-and-play with her dolls. The funniest might be when she follows our family routine of going to bed. She has her doll say its prayers first but instead of folding its hands in front, she jets them behind the doll and claps its hands backwards. We are not positive but we think that doll's got to be double-jointed to pull off a prayer maneuver like that.

Gwendolyn continues to test boundaries. She is getting better and better at side stepping. She even has momentarily taken her arms off the sofa and stood for a few seconds unaided all by herself. Her physical therapist said that most of her leg muscles have started to develop except for the hamstrings. Hopefully, they won't be far behind.

Gwendolyn has also got a little better at opening up to strangers but that's kind of like saying you really enjoy the winter except for the cold, ice and snow. To that end, her new speech therapist had to sneak in through the garage and stand out of view in the dining room yesterday just to hear that Gwendolyn does in fact make audible noises when she's in her normal environment.

In fact, we think Gwen's advancing vocabulary is another prime example of her sister unintentionally pushing her to get better. Lately, Gwendolyn's new words are mainstays that her sister has frequently been using. Of course they both sometimes bust into a diatribe that sounds like a long-ago forgotten European language so what to we really know? As long as they know what one another is saying, I guess we are good to go!