Brothers

We all know brothers have such a unique bond, but it is still great when you get to witness it.

The other morning I brought A & B into the living room. We change play and change diapers before eating breakfast. Baby A kept walking to the patio door, but I could not see what he was looking at because the curtains were closed.

After a few moments of standing there our cat Cid ran from under the curtains and hoped through the gate into the kitchen to safety. Baby A stood there for a few minutes longer and then walked away.

As we resumed playing, Cid jumped back into the living room and went to the window. This is highly unusual activity- normally the cats keep as far a distance to the babies as possible and only come into the living room during naps and at night. Baby A started approaching the cat and the cat could not decide if he should stay by the window or run away. Now I knew something was up. Why wasn't he escaping?

I decided to move over to the patio door, and to my surprise I saw our other cat, Gato on the other side! Now, they are not outdoor cats and have never even roamed outside in our current house. Cid was trying to be with Gato from inside the house and risked exposure to babies just to keep him company and let us know he was out there.

After I let Gato in, he ran to get food and water and gorged himself. To my amazement the other cat ran to the bowls and acted thirsty and hungry too. I figure he probably spent the night at the door inside the house keeping Gato company and never ate or drank. What good brothers.

Was it worth it?

The boys are now almost 14 months old- how did it happen? Every time I look at them they have changed so much. I feel like I can't even remember exactly what they looked like 3 months ago, 2 months ago, even 1 month ago. They certainly don't look like babies.

We have taken a lot of photos, but most are just not quite perfect. And certainly, we have very few photos of the two boys together and only a hand full of the 4 of us.

I decided I wanted to capture this time in photos we would be proud to share. We hired a photographer to take pictures and planned to take them at a great out door shopping center.

It was enough stress figuring out clothes for us all, timing when they boys would be at their best and getting ourselves ready on time.

We made it, everyone looked good, we were on time and the boys were ready to have fun. Only that was all they wanted to do, was have fun. They both went in opposite directions the whole time. No matter what we did they would not stay together. If we picked them up, they freaked out- they wanted to be free! We chased them for two hours, jumped up and down to get them to look, yelled, whistled...

On top of that, Baby A, who I like to call Mr Cheese because he is always smiling and showing his teeth off, never smiled. No matter what we did, he did not show off those teeth!

So two exhausting hours later, we have many smiling shots of the Ham, Baby B, serious but cute Baby B and a few shots of the 4 of us where everyone is looking different ways. My back hurts from bending over, my throat is sore from making noises and I know husband is emotioningly exhausted from the turmoil. I guess we won't know if it was worth it until we get the proofs.