The Jensen Family's Little Viking Tales: "Gentling" the Baby

I've mentioned before that Gabe and Soren absolutely love Baby Brooke. They just can't seem to get their faces close enough to hers, or kiss her enough. We are often telling them to be careful or gentle with her, or to give her a little space. As I am writing this, Gabe is hovering over her little bed singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to her, and trying to get her to take her pacifier, even though she is sleeping. I guess most of the time we say "Gentle, gentle!" So a few weeks ago, as Gabe was smothering her with his affection, I think I said something like, "Careful, Gabe! What are you doing?" And he said, "I'm just gentling the baby." He was lying down next to her, just touching her head and arms softly. So now "gentle" is a verb in our family. The other day he asked Sean, "Daddy, can you gentle the baby?" Sean said, "Yeah Gabey, I can gentle the baby."

These boys say a lot of cute stuff. It's funny what they pick up. I really don't think Sean or I have ever said, "coochie coochie" or "goochie goochie" or however you may choose to spell that, but last week Gabe started squeezing Brooke's cheeks and saying "Coochie coo, Baby Brooke!" Sometimes Gabe or Soren will say, "Isn't Baby Brooke so cute?"

Soren started saying "She's so cute! She's cute as a flat pancake!" And yesterday she changed from a flat pancake to an apple. "She cute as an apple!" he said. This morning he said "I'm saying hi to the cutest baby ever!" And Gabe responded, "I already did." Then a little later Gabe was leaning over Brooke saying, "It's your friend Gabey. Hi my little sweetie pie!" I have to remember these sweet moments, especially when they are yelling at each other and hurting each other! Would my boys do that? Yes.

In honor of the USA in the Olympics. No wonder Gabe can't stop squeezing her cheeks!

Today Brooke is 8 weeks old. I just can't believe how fast she is growing! She's a good eater, that's for sure. And she's good at filling diapers. It seems like at least once each day she'll fill a diaper immediately after I have put on a clean one. Little stinker! She's started to smile a bit in the past week or so. Mostly when she feels like it, either early in the morning or later at night, but she's starting to respond a bit when we encourage her to smile. Sometimes after her early morning feeding, she will giggle a little bit as she falls back to sleep. Sean and I both heard her do that a day or two ago and it just made us laugh. It's the cutest little giggle!