A day of little things

First things first, congratulations to Bleeding Tulip!  Another infertility blogger becomes a parenting blogger!  Please welcome her new little girl into the world.

Around here, we've reached a milestone - I'm removing the newborn inserts from the car seats.  Probably should have done that a month ago, but ya know, life stuff.  We may be breaking out the 3-6m sized clothing this week too.  Yeah, I know.  They are almost 7 months old and still itty bitty.  I hope they enjoy it while they can.  With genes like ours, they'll never be tall, but they are likely to be oversized.  I hope I do better with my children in that department than I've done for myself.  It's weird to watch these little girls with most of the skills of a 6 month old in these miniature bodies.

Some cuteness - when I dance with them, they are starting to wiggle and dance on their own a little bit now.  Tra-la-la boomdeyay makes Charlotte giggle.  Charlotte is starting to sit up but Tina wants to skip sitting and tries to stand instead.  Looking forward to them reliably sitting up on their own.

On the solid food front, we gave meat our first taste today.  I figure going from fruits and veggies to meat is a major taste change, so I gave them a puree of sweet potato and turkey.  I know they like sweet potato so I figured that would make for an easier transition.  I think they liked it!


Last night was a rough night.  Tina must be having some more teething pain even though her first 2 teeth have broken through.  She was just screaming last night.  We did our best to alleviate the pain and got her settled a couple of times, but then she reached the point where she just wanted to be held.  Once the Tylenol kicked in and we were pretty sure she wasn't actually hurting anymore, we went back to the cry it out method.  At first, I was going in to rock and soothe her, but the moment we put her back in the crib, the screaming started again.  That was our indication that she was crying because she wanted attention, not because she was hurting.  The rocking and soothing was only delaying her going to sleep so we suffered through until she finally dropped off.

We have a new morning routine around here on days that K works.  He gets up a half hour early and takes a shower.  Then he wakes me up so I can pump while he does random chores and is available in case the girls wake up.  Then he goes to work and if I'm lucky, I go back to bed.  This way, when the girls wake up, I'm not desperate to pump while trying to get them fed.  Most days, they seem to wake up right around the time that K is pulling out of the driveway so I don't get the chance to go back to sleep.  This morning, we were hoping they would sleep a couple of extra hours since they were up late last night.  I went back to sleep for about an hour before they woke me up.  They woke me up at that point in the sleep cycle where if you wake up, you just feel like crap.

I've got a headache, a general body ache, and I'm really dehydrated.  I'm trying to get a lot of water in me, but that doesn't seem to be happening as much as I'd like.  I don't think I'm sick, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm changing my tune on that one tomorrow.

In making my coffee, the bag sprung a leak and my entire utensil drawer got a coating of fresh coffee grounds.  Brilliant.

Charlotte is being crabby today.  I'm not sure what her issue is.  And Tina seems to just be tired.  She's taken a 2 1/2 hour nap which is really unusual for her.  I wonder if they are feeling the same kind of crappy that I'm feeling.

Ok, Tina seems to finally be awake now that Charlotte is down for another nap.  Swell.  An out of sync day.  This'll be fun.

Equal but different

I think this is going to be the challenge pretty much the rest of my life.  Making sure things for the girls are always equal, but different.

Ok, so yes, I have a lot of pictures of my girls in matching jammies.  I get matching outfits for a couple of reasons -

1)  It looks adorable in pictures.  Makes everyone go awwwwwww.
2)  I'm a very visual person.  If outfits clash or there's too much going on in pictures, I have trouble focusing. Matching outfits means everything is coordinated so I can focus on my girls faces.
3)  When I find something I think is cute, I have an excuse to buy 2 of it so if one is in the laundry, I have another one.
4)  They don't care yet.
5)  There are only so many jammie styles on the store shelves.
6)  I don't want pictures where one girl is wearing something cute and the other one is in something schlubby.  That's just asking for claims of favoritism in the future.

I'm kind of afraid that Charlotte will keep growing a little faster than Tina, dooming Tina to a life of hand-me-downs that started out as Charlottes.  Oh well, I've got years to worry about that.

So far, the equal but different thing has presented two specific challenges - their baby books and their outfits for their first Christmas pictures.

I originally bought 2 very different dresses for their Christmas pictures because I thought they would go together.  But when the one with the ruffly skirt got here, it didn't look nearly as dressy and put together as the trapeze dress looked.  Also, it was a little too small and really difficult to get on either of the girls because there was no elastic where the skirt started, it was a firm circle that hardly fit over the shoulders or the butt, depending on which way I was trying to pull the damned thing on.  They were just too different and I disliked one.  I didn't want one of the girls looking at these first pictures a few years from now and getting upset because she was stuck in the ugly dress.

So I got the same dress, but in the other color option available.  It was a good choice.  Equal, but different.

The baby books were one hell of a challenge.  It seemed like every brand had a boy choice and a girl choice and that was it.  Any different covers meant something else substantially different about the book like the size, or the kinds of pages inside.  That just doesn't work.  And everything else I found was just blank scrapbooks that would expect me to create baby books out of thin air.  I'm willing to do my part here, but at least give me some questions and other prompting so I have a clue as to what to write in a baby book!

So finally, with the girls over 6 months old, I finally bought their baby books.  I was running an errand that happened to be next to a Hallmark store.  I went in looking for ornaments that would allow me to put pictures of the girls in them (we'll have a tree next year) and I was able to find 2 styles of girl baby books that weren't so gag me cute, and being made by the same company, they had the same pages inside.  Yay!!!

Ok, so I do like one better than the other, but I'll never reveal which one.

In reality, this blog was meant to take the place of baby books.  But then I thought about how I was interested in sentimental things when I was in grade school and gee, I don't think the things I've written in the blog will be appropriate for an 8 year old.  K and I will fill these out, bit by bit, as we have time.  I'll write the "about Daddy" stuff and he'll write the "about Mommy" stuff.

Here's the real reason we're procrastinating - our handwriting su-u-ucks!  Both of us.  We print scribble like first graders.  But we do think it's important that there be samples of our handwriting somewhere in the universe and this seems to be an appropriate place for it.  I just don't want the books to be ugly because of my horrible hands.  I type so much faster than my hands will let me write that when I'm writing, I often skip letters or entire words because my hands don't keep up.  I have to scratch things out and rewrite them all the time.  I don't want their memory books filled with ugliness and I just know that my handwriting ruin the darned things.

Page 1 asks for reactions to finding out about the pregnancy and various thoughts and activities during the pregnancy.  Crap.  My first reaction when I saw both of them on that first ultrasound - "They're back!"  Yeah.  Not sure I can write that thought down because it kind of forces one to ask questions that lead to ugly stories.  Activities during the pregnancy - Getting to know the triage team at the ER!  Probably not what Hallmark had a mind.

It might take a while to actually get working on these things.

The end of the world

How are y'all doing?  Expecting to see tomorrow or hiding out in a bomb shelter somewhere?

It's fitting that the supposed end of the world should come on the 2nd anniversary of the days my world ended.  We all end up with some sort of tragedy in our lives, and I had this hope that the decades of bipolar disorder I endured would be mine.  No such luck.

During my first pregnancy, I intellectually knew that there was risk, especially with twins, but I didn't really feel that anything could go wrong.  I always knew that I would have trouble conceiving so learning that I would have to do IVF to get pregnant didn't phase me all that much.  So I have to work harder to get pregnant, but once you put the work in, you get the reward, right?  It totally rocked my world when that wasn't the case.

I'm so grateful that I never had to face the reality of my girls being gone, but rather that I can think back on those horrible days 2 years ago as just a painful delay.  I sometimes look at the girls and get all teary eyed.  I'm finally getting that overwhelming love and connection between mother and children that I was so afraid would never get here.

This is me during the Christmas season 2 years ago. Just miserable, plopped on the couch, tissues just out of frame, and a cat trying to make me feel better.  That's the kitty that now belongs to the girls, she guards the nursery door when they are sleeping and insists on hanging out with all of us whenever the girls are awake.

How the picture of my life has changed since then!  For the first time in my life, this Scrooge is thinking about what kind of holiday traditions I want to establish for my family.  No tree or anything this year, but I'm thinking about what to do next year when the girls are able to see Christmas as a day different from other days.  I don't know if I'll get around to writing anything on this, the first Christmas I might actually enjoy, so I'll drop some pictures from our holiday photo session in this post.  Thank you to Sarah at Triskele Photography for these great shots!

Even if today were the last day of the world, I'm good!

The gun controversy

Guns and their use is on the minds of just about every American today, as it has been after each of the mass shootings that have assaulted our media airwaves throughout recent years.  And like every American, I have my own opinions on the subject and have rules in my household that align with my opinions.  But unlike some, I don't believe that everyone should agree with my opinions or live by the rules that I impose upon my own household.

Personally, I'm anti-gun.  I don't like them, there's no place for them in my life, and I do not want gun ownership to be normalized in the eyes of my children.  As they grow up, I will not knowingly allow my children inside of a household that contains a deadly firearm.  Even the most responsible and safety conscious person has a day where they forget to lock their doors, or other accidental mishaps that can endanger my children if there's such an accident regarding gun safety.  I also feel that in order to keep a gun safely locked away from accidental usage kind of defeats the purpose of owning a firearm because it's difficult to get to and use in the type of emergency that the gun is there to protect the owner from in the first place.

However, I do think that hunting is a valid use of a firearm and those who choose to engage in that sport (again, not me) should have the right to do so.  I also believe in the original intentions of the second amendment being to allow the general populace to protect themselves from a corrupt government or from corrupt representatives of authority such as police officers.  The knowledge that the population is capable of rising up and protecting themselves from a corrupt abuse of power is in part what helps keep the powerful from mass destruction.  Ok, so they are still capable of mass destruction, but at least they have to be creative and work hard for it in back room dealings and destroying things financially as opposed to sending in armies to use deadly force to oppress the masses.

But there has to be some means of controlling the amount of destruction that the bad guys are capable of inflicting upon innocent victims.  This is not a subject I'm particularly educated on so I'm really asking questions here.

Aren't there now technologies that will allow people to protect themselves without killing?  I'm thinking along the lines of rubber bullets.  The ability to incapacitate an assailant, perhaps even maim, but without the easy capacity to kill that a standard bullet allows?  Doesn't a rubber bullet do basically the same thing in an altercation that a regular bullet does, but allows someone who is shot to receive medical treatment and eventually walk away?

In terms of hunting, if an animal is shot with a rubber bullet or tased into submission, a hunter might have a license and have gone through a big hullabaloo to obtain a firearm that only allows for 2 deadly bullets so they can approach the subdued and deliver the kill shot.  Bullets would have to be licensed and accounted for, and a hunter could only own a limited number at any given time.

Would bad guys still be able to get their hands on deadly weapons?  Yes, of course.  But the fewer that are circulating among the general populace means the more difficulty in obtaining them.  The guy who steals someones guns and ammunition would get their hands on maiming weapons and have the ability to incapacitate on a massive level, perhaps some would victims would die, but certainly the amount of death would be scaled back.

I don't propose that the problem of weapons being available to bad guys so that the good guys can also have access has a perfect solution.  I don't think we can wipe out the ability for bastards to harm other people.  But is there something that can be done to at least make it harder?  Lessen the destruction?  Since perfect isn't available, I guess I'm just hoping for better.  Maybe some regulations can be put in place to make deadly bullets harder to come by, incapacitating bullets the norm, and the death tolls from these horrible attacks might remain among the single digits instead of the double digits that have become so common.

The day Mama made it better

Today something happened that I've been fantasizing about since it occurred to me that I might want to have a kid some day.  Today, I, the Mama, made it all better.

The girls were just destined to have a crappy day.  They were woken up about 2 hours early in order to go to the doctor and get all sorts of shots with various vaccines.  Over tired, teething, stuck with needles, and then the usual just kind of not feeling very well because new stuff was introduced to the body.

K needed a good nap because he's working the overnight shift tonight.  Charlotte was doing ok in her swing, so he took Tina to bed with him in hopes that snuggles would lead to a more solid nap for her.  And it did, 3 hours!  They only got up because it was time for dinner before K had to go to work!

During that time, Charlotte woke up screaming.  I changed her diaper, offered her a bottle, teething tablets, nothing was making her happy.  She just cried and cried.  After a while, K texted me asking if he needed to come in and help.  I didn't want him to wake up Tina and there really wasn't anything he could do anyway.

So I got Charlotte all snuggled in with me on the couch.  It took her a little time to calm down, but snuggles were what she wanted.  She sucked on her wubba and tucked herself between my arm and breast.  She just snuggled for a long time before eventually falling asleep.  We were on that couch for more than 2 hours just all snuggled.  After dinner, that's what she wanted to do to again and Tina was kind enough to take a long nap in her swing so we could.

I've been waiting so long to be able to do that.  Not that I would want one of my girls unhappy and need me to make it better, but to be able to just sit and snuggle with a baby who wants to snuggle with me, and not having to keep an eye and ear out for the moment when I'd have to get up from the snuggle to tend to the other baby.  Full fledged, non-interrupted cuddle time.

I'm the mama and I made it better.  There are no words to illustrate how long I've waited for this moment and what it means to me.

6 month check up

I feel like I should be making one of those "it gets better" videos for new moms right about now because seriously, it gets better.  If you've been following along, you know I was as miserable as miserable gets during those first couple of months of mommyhood.  Part of me feared I would never like my kids at all because I just saw them as these foreign torture devices.

If I can be that miserable and only a few months later be doing as well as I'm doing now, if you're in the thick of the newborn misery, I hope you can see that it really will get better.  Part of my problem was just not having an idea of when the torture would end.  All I saw ahead of me in life was one torture being replaced by another and life never actually improving.  But really, once they are sleeping in 5+ hour chunks, life starts seeming pretty decent again.  Yes, now we have the misery of teething, soon be dealing with the energy it will take to chase after crawling babies, but the sleep thing - none of the new tortures even come close to how horrible it was when we weren't getting more than an hour of sleep at a time.

The last couple of nights, the girls have been sleeping 10+ hours straight at night without waking to eat.  Awesome!!!   (She declared in a Barney Stinson high pitched tone)  Bedtime is now pretty easy and the fussing before falling asleep is minimal.  We are able to count on having 9pm-midnight as couple time and trust that the girls won't need us.  But we have given up on trying to make dinner when K gets home from work in the evening.  Our new pattern is to have a quick snack about the time he gets off of work, have family time with the girls until they are in bed, and then we make dinner for ourselves and eat around 10pm.

They're starting to do the fun stuff that babies do.  They are interested in toys, they kick with excitement when we walk towards them, and they are recognizing each other.  I'm loving that they are now seeking out each other to hold hands.  It's so sweet I just might go into a diabetic coma!

We saw the pediatrician for their 6 month check up today and she's very happy with how the girls are doing. Here are the latest stats -

Christina - 12lbs 11oz, 24.7 inches.  She's on the growth chart!!!  Still below the 5th percentile for weight, but between 5-10% for length.  Woot!


Charlotte - 13lbs 15oz, 25.5 inches.  Also fully on the chart with her length around the 25th percentile and weight between the 5-10%.

Ok, so they're still itty bitty for their age, firmly in the middle of size 3m clothing, but they're on the chart now!

A little "then and now" for you of Tina, the day we brought her home from the hospital versus 2 days ago.







Even more awesome sauce is that they are hitting milestones in line with their actual age of 6 months as opposed to their adjusted age of just under 5 months.  Charlotte was able to sit up for a few seconds when put in the ape pose of kind of leaning on her fists in front of her.  The doctor even said that getting her first 2 teeth already is pretty early.  Yay to surpassing expectations!

Now that their night sleep is pretty well under control, the doctor said it's time to start structuring their naps.  Just like night time sleep, it's time to start putting them down for naps and letting them fuss it out.  Once they go down for a nap, they are to stay down for an hour or until they wake up, whichever comes first.  It's going to be rough on Tina because she favors the 15 minute nap, but once we get over the first couple of days, this is going to revolutionize my life.  I haven't done any pottery in the last year because even when the girls are asleep, I never know if it's for 10 minutes or 2 hours.  Now I not only have permission from the doctor, but am encouraged to keep them in bed for an hour or more at a time, even if that's not what they want to do.  Since the monitor will go out to the pottery studio, once I get a groove going with the naps, I'm going to start going out there and making a mug or two during nap time.

Another nap change - they generally nap in their swings in the living room.  Once they fall asleep, I turn off the swings to let them go into a deep sleep.  Well, they are now far more curious about their surroundings, so being in the middle of the house where all the life action is isn't going to work much longer.  Even once they do fall asleep, they wake up pretty easy unlike newborns who can sleep through anything.  We're going to be moving naps into the nursery.  I think I've avoided doing that because it kind of feels like I'm "putting the kids away" like I would put away a toy when I'm done playing with it.

We're mentally preparing for the girls to start crawling and what that will mean for our household.  We're going to have to section off a portion of the house with a giant play yard and try to keep the cats out of it.  The damned cats are peeing all over the carpet lately even though they check out as healthy when taken to the vet.  So the play yard area is going to have to be floored with those foam alphabet mats that can be sterilized if a cat manages to pee in the kids area.  Grrrrrr.  So much of my day is now dealing with urine.  Cat urine, baby urine, finding time to get rid of my own urine.  Blech.

6 months

The girls are 6 months old today.  It was rough at the beginning but things are pretty swell now.

Last night they slept over 10 hours straight without waking up to eat.  They woke up about a half hour before our alarms were scheduled to go off.  K didn't wake me up when they got up because my shoulder has a muscle spasm going on and I took a muscle relaxant before bed last night.  So when I got up to pump, I walked into the living room to see my husband playing with his two little girls.  It doesn't get much better than that.

It's been almost 2 years since I miscarried.  I kept a vague notion that it wasn't an end, but rather a very sad delay.  I don't know quite how we managed to bitch slap statistics in the face, but I'm so grateful that I never had to give up that delusion.

The girls are each developing at their own rates and in different ways.  Charlotte seems to be the first to reach various coordination milestones while Tina favors communication milestones.  Charlotte was the first to reach and grab, roll over, and she's recently discovered her feet.  Tina was the first to smile, vocalize, and she's still better at blowing raspberries.  Charlotte now has 2 teeth while Tina is still just drooling up a storm without much to show for it.

The latest development is that they like holding hands.  At first it was just a fluke, but now they seem to be doing it on purpose.  Whenever they are near each other, their hands seem to find each other.

 This is getting fun!

The body of a girl half your age

Update on the teething thing - Charlotte's first tooth broke through 2 nights ago.  It's moments like these that I'm glad I'm not nursing.  Even though it's barely poking through, it's sharp!  I guess we need to start brushing her teeth/gums as part of the bedtime routine.  Yeah, we'll get on that soon.


Update on solid foods - Going good!  We've tried rice, oatmeal, peas, sweet potatoes, and tonight we tried green beans.  So far, no adverse reactions which I'm thankful for.  Of course, the poo has had an adverse reaction, stiiiiiiinky!  Tina is more enthusiastic about it, but Charlotte is better at getting the food in her mouth and down her throat.  Tina kind of purses her lips and goes at it like a fish which ends up spattering it around.  Charlotte has figured out how to fold her lips around the spoon so the food stays in.  Tina makes a big mess and Charlotte not only doesn't get much on her to begin with, but she keeps wiping her face with her bib just to make sure she stays relatively clean.  Tina is trying to grab the spoon and help herself.  Both have experimented with trying to shove the spoon down their throats.


The girls are at an awkward spot in terms of size and strength.  They are smack in the middle of 3m clothing, but they have the strength and skills closer to their real age of almost 6 months.  They want to play in bouncy toys, but their feet don't really touch the ground.  I think they also want to move up to the more upright stroller (they are in a carseat carrying stroller now) but the straps are designed for the average size 6 month old and bigger so it's not safe yet.

But where it really gets awkward is bathing.  We have 2 baby bathtubs, the Puj and The First Years .  We've been using the Puj in our kitchen sink and it's been working really well.  But they've kind of outgrown it.  Last night I tried using the First Years tub, but they aren't yet big enough to sit on the toddler side, and they arch their backs and squirm too much to stay on the newborn inclined side.  Tina flopped so much that she ended up with her butt on the toddler side leaning back over the bump that separates it.  While I appreciate that she wants to play in the water, they aren't quite able to sit up on their own yet and are too little to be held in place by the contours of the tub so it gets dangerous.

I think for the next month or so, we'll be going old school.  One parent will strip down and get into the regular bathtub while the other parent hands babies back and forth.  Hopefully after a few more weeks pass, either they'll be firmly sitting up, or they'll be big enough to be held in place within the tub without needing to sit up.  The sink is just the easiest place to bathe them for so many reasons so I'd much rather use the blue tub in the sink for a few minutes of bath rather than getting all naked myself and having bath time be a half hour ordeal.

CIO, no really this time

Soooooo, we made the mistake that just about every parent makes when they first try the cry it out method. We were too lenient.  By going in and soothing every few minutes (5, then 10, then 15, etc) we trained the girls to fuss longer because they would eventually be rewarded.

A few nights ago, we bit the bullet and did the full on extinction method.  Once we put them down, that was it.  No more visits from us unless they were truly in distress or the time came around for them to be hungry again.

I left the house.  I took my dinner (we often don't get to eat until around 10pm because K gets home shortly before bedtime routine and it just gets put off and put off until the girls are firmly down) and ate out in the pottery studio and entertained my studio cat Buster.  Poor Buster, I wouldn't touch him while pregnant and tend not to have much time for him now that I'm not anymore.  Anyway....

K reports that it took about an hour.  During that time, one would fuss for a few minutes, then fall asleep while the other one took over the fussing duties.  They switched off, one fussing while the other recharged the crying batteries for a few minutes.

The following night, it took 10 minutes of both of them fussing before they both dropped off to sleep forthe night.  The three nights since then, they've pretty much been asleep by the time we get to the other room and get the monitor turned on.

It's been heavenly!  Around 9pm the girls go to sleep and K and I have the evening to ourselves!  Chores get done, a few video games get played, a little nookie gets had, it's just been great to have a couple of hours of the day of being off duty.

We generally expect them to wake for a feeding around 1am, and being night owls, we're able to stay up and take care of that feeding right before we go to bed.  Last night, 1:30am rolled around and we expected the girls up any minute but decided to just go to sleep for however many minutes they wanted to give us.  They gave us until 4:30am!  A solid 7 hour or so sleep!  K fed them while I pumped, back in bed by 5am.  Tina fussed around 7am and our alarm was set for 8am so K could go to work.  So he brought her into our bed and she went right back to sleep on his chest.  When he got up to take a shower, we successfully transferred her fully asleep onto my chest for another half hour and then got the girls up for the first part of their day.  I'm not an advocate of bed sharing or co-sleeping, but damn I really loved dozing with a baby on my chest.

I really believe that we've done the right thing for these two particular babies at the right time.  I think we caught them very near the beginning of their capability to learn how to go to sleep on their own and we taught them rather quickly.  Minimal days of being ready but not yet knowing how to do it.  I fully expect set backs, bad nights, and sleep regressions, but overall I think they've learned and will be happier and healthier children for having been taught.

In that same vein, I'm kind of surprised that Tina has been doing ok with it.  Charlotte is doing a little better with the teething, she doesn't seem to be hurting as much, but she's passed the pain torch on to Tina.  Poor thing.  Yesterday she cried a real pain cry for the first time in I don't know how long.  She was really hurting for a few minutes there and it broke my heart.

She took a nap on my chest on the couch yesterday too.  I wish it could have lasted longer but Charlotte woke up from her nap and, well, that's how it is with twins.  You have to put down the happy sleeping child and tend to the awake but bored or annoyed child.  I'm doing my best to get in lots of cuddles, but it's difficult. K's days off require him to take naps because he has day 1 off, then day 2 has a 6pm-3am shift, then day 3 off before he goes on to work more standard hours for 4 days.  He spends a portion of his days off taking naps so he can function and recover from the overnight shift.  In order to multi-task, we've been having one of the girls take a long nap with him in the afternoon.  They get some cuddles and sleep and I either get one on one time with the other one, or if she naps at the same time, I get a few minutes to myself.

For those of you on the journey a little bit behind me, it seems that it kind of gets easier around 3 months, and around 5 months a lot of things have fallen into place.  Like someone told me once, 12 weeks and 12lbs is when it all clicks.  It took until after 5 months for both of my girls to cross over 12lbs so it took a little longer to click around here I guess, but yes, that seems to be the magic combo.  The girls will be 6 months next week.  But it's always something.  Just when feedings and naps started to regulate, teething started.  But even with the teething, it's getting more fun every day as the girls learn new tricks and I learn a little more about how to play and the logistics of multiples cuddling.