Sonja turned over, Nikolas is taking swim lessons

Two nights ago Sonja woke me up at 5am crying.... I considered letting her cry and go back to sleep because she had already eaten around 1 or 2am so really she needed to be trained to sleep until 7 or 8am, but I gave in, and then I found she had a real reason for crying--she turned over onto her belly! She was also turned 180 degrees on the bed, her head where her feet used to be. We've had her sleeping in the playpen since she outgrew the bassinet, but the playpen mattress is too soft and wobbly for her now and makes it more difficult to move and turn so that wakes her up more. It's time to set up the other crib in the bedroom, which we still keep in the living room as they daytime bed.
Michael now sometimes turns onto his right side for a change.
When Michael wakes up and gets tired of looking around and supporting himself on his forearms, he starts yelling really loudly, calling for attention. As soon as I touch his back, he starts giggling and yelling at the same time, and kicking hard with arms and legs, excited that he'll be picked up. Sonja, on the other hand, is normally on her back and when I approach to get her, she gives me the biggest smile and usually an excited shrill, and starts banging her legs against the mattress the same way Nikolas did when he was her size, and waving her arms. When I pick her up, she immediately pulls her knees up very high and glues herself around my waist like a little koala. If I let go of her, she'd most likely stay attached!

Nikolas has been taking swim lessons with Aagneya, Abbie and another girl from their apartment complex. While the instructor spends a lot of time singing songs with kids in a circle and getting them to dip their faces in the water, Nikolas is completely bored with that stuff and asks me to jump in the water from the edge of the pool instead. He has no fear of water. Dipping his face in the water and blowing bubbles has been his bath-time activity for a while, nothing new there. It's much more fun to climb out of the pool, hold my hands and jump in the water. I let him get completely submerged to see how he'd react: if he'd blow air by himself or hold air or swallow water, so I'd know what we'll need to work on, and surprisingly, he seems to be blowing bubbles through his nose because he hasn't gotten any water in his nose after numerous jumps! I saw some bubbles coming out and they looked like they were coming from his nose. Anyway, I can get him to kick with his legs, but he likes to hold on to me with his arms so we have to work on scooping water with his hands. In the middle of kicking with his legs and moving through the pool he likes to suddenly turn onto his back and dip the back of his head in the water just enough so his face won't get wet.
No matter how cold he gets in the water, he enjoys it so much that he won't come out by himself!
By the time I've finished this blog entry, the lessons have ended. The result: Nikolas is enjoying his newly discovered love for water, especially jumping and splashing in it, and, surprisingly to me, he has memorized the songs that the instructor has been singing at every lesson, which Nikolas kept ignoring every time ('The wheels of the bus' is the one he keeps singing at home now).

Twins' 4-month checkup

Sonja
weight: 13lbs 10oz (50%)
height: 24 3/4" (50-75%)

Michael:
weight: 12lbs 12oz (10%)
height: 24 1/4" (25%)

Teething (all three)

Two major events with the babies:
1. Sonja and Michael are both struggling with teething pains.
2. Last night, for the first time, neither Sonja nor Michael woke up to eat in the middle of the night from 9pm until 8am. (As I read this blog a couple of weeks later, I have to correct myself and note that the all-night sleep was an isolated event--they still wake up at 12/1am and then again at 5:30/6am, usually only Sonja for the second feeding).

Teething or what?
Still on the subject of teething, Nikolas has 10 teeth in the bottom jaw and 5 in the upper right, 4 in the upper left with the 5th just starting to come out.
Nikolas's cuteness is proportional to the amount of attention he is getting. When the babies get the most of it and mommy isn't able to grow five arms to handle everyone, he yells, cries, hits his head against the floor....he can also sneak up to a baby in an instant when no one is looking and slap it out of jealousy. When he knows he'll be criticized, he says 'Budi dobar!' ('Be good!'), which is what we tell him way too frequently.
Our major focus is on the balance between babies' needs and Nikolas's entertainment. When he is happy, he is the best kid in the world! And really, it's not very hard to make him feel attended to: just talk with him about the animals in the backyard or fish at the pond where we took him fishing (where he might have actually killed a few fish by smacking the fishing pole on the water), read him a book (for the past week he's been sitting more peacefully when one reads him a book and going through pages and talking about the pictures instead of climbing on the reader--he also selects poems or stories and says, we've read that one, read me this one, etc.), play some music and dance with him, tickle him and talk with him on the floor at his eye level. I've discovered that being at his eye level changes the depth of our communication: he feels more grown-up so he makes his tone more serious and calm and his sentences and stories extra long: 'Nikolas ide u sobu da se igra sa blokovima'(Nikolas is going to the room to play with blocks,) or 'Nikolas je vidio orlove u zoloskom vrtu i pauna sa pilicima' (Nikolas saw eagles in the zoo, and a peacock with chicks.)
He is *constantly* talking or singing. Now not only does he recite songs and poems in Serbocroatian but he has also memorized several Mother Goose songs that daddy reads to him often. He also likes to show off counting to 20, and to be funny he invents little rhymes like those nicknames that he has made for us plus more that doesn't always make much sense but it makes him and us laugh (he'll point out that it's funny in case we are not sure what he is saying!)
We find Nikolas on every piece of furniture that he can climb, and he also likes pulling all the pillows off the couches and piling them on the floor to make a little gym for himself. Every now and then he'll throw in a 'yoga' pose (this is what he learned as yoga almost a year ago! I plan to teach him some real stuff.)
Nikolas enjoys being helpful. He'll pass me a clean diaper while I change a baby, and he'll take the dirty one and throw it in trash (picture below). He'll also pick up his toys and put them in designated boxes when asked to. Oh, and he'll take my coffee mug and put it on the dining table when I'm done. He looks so proud when he helps out :) He walks with a special bounce :)