8 Month Update

Suuuuuper late whoops.  Almost thought about skipping it but decided I would like to have these for the future…

How old:  Eight months!

Babies’ weights: Noooo idea!  I find out on June 19th.  Maybe I should try on our totally inaccurate home scale.

Adventures this month: big trip into the city for daddy’s birthday, loooots of walks in the park, fixing our sleep problems (haha), Apple comes with me to the city alone, trip to the botanical gardens, first time on the swings! and the eye doctor for mommy and daddy is a whole day experience! woo!

What’s up with my body:  After Passover I was only +23lb, then I gained 2lb back.  And then I lost it.  So I am kind of wavering at around that…

What’s up with the Babies:

Apple
Eeek it’s hard to do this part two weeks late!  Apple rolled front to back!  Yay!  And he looooves his food.  Baby led weaning didn’t make sense to him at first but then suddenly he got it and now he can’t get enough.  LOVES it.  EVERYTHING IS DELICIOUS.  FIVE THUMBS UP.  He’s also working on sitting up alone, although flops backwards kind of a lot still.

Banana
Banana is sitting up all by herself, totally unassisted.  She doesn’t want to lie down at all.  Gd forbid I put her on the floor on her back!!!  Only sitting up for this girl!  We started using a fabric travel high chair so that we can all be out of the stroller at the same time when it’s just me on deck and we’re in public, and Banana is our go-to for fabric travel high chair sitter.  She loves it.  She gets to be a part of the action, in on every conversation, everything.  My little social butterfly.

Also this month I figured out a way to get in and out of the building.  I wear them both at once!

Milestones this month:  Solids!  Sleep!  Apple rolled front to back!  Sitting!

What I miss:  I guess I still miss being able to go somewhere quickly, easily, spontaneously.  I might miss that for a long time, haha.

Mom Uniform

My standard Winter/Spring mom uniform has been yoga pants and various long sleeve shirts (usually with a tank or nursing tank underneath).  It’s great because I don’t think about my wardrobe, I just wake up and put stuff on.  Especially because I was getting spit-up ALL OVER everything and trying to nurse all the time, it was great.

Well, the weather is getting warmer and while I do enjoy having the yoga pants + t-shirt outfit at hand I kind of want something nicer-ish…  And the babies aren’t producing the quantities of spit-up they were before, and I’m not nursing, so.

The thing is my body is still changing shape.  So I still want everything to be stretchy.

Anyway, this is what I came up with for my Spring / Summer mom uniform (probably also for Fall but with boots instead of sandals).

 

Basically: t-shirt / tank dress, cropped leggings, and these flip flops that are made by crocs and supposedly very comfortable.  I want to just put on a dress and leggings and get on with the day.  I don’t want to think too much about my outfit – that has been the genius of my yoga pants and t-shirt outfit combo.  And I can add accessories, although I probably won’t because the babies hands are getting mighty grabby and the only thing I have been able to wear is this teething necklace I bought myself for mother’s day.  (Yes it’s expensive, but I love it, I wear it almost every day)

I’ll still have the yoga pants and t-shirt combo but I think these will be just as nice.  And the leggings mean I can crawl around on the floor or in the grass without worrying about underwear showage.  Everything is machine washable, and I have enough for almost an entire week without yoga pants.

Please please please let the flipflops not give me blisters…

My First Mother’s Day

New Nap Schedule

The babies have decided on a new nap schedule.

Their new nap schedule is LONG NAPS.

I called my sleep specialist and she hasn’t called back.

I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth here.  Yay long naps!  But what is going on!  They wake up at 6:30 and nap from 9am-11am – two hours.  They go back to sleep 1:30pm-3pm – an hour and a half.  Then I try to keep them up until bedtime (7:30pm) because otherwise they are getting too much daytime sleep and may not sleep through the night.

I never thought I would say those words.

Anyway, it takes 30min to get in and out of the house.  If they wake up at 11, eat, and then we go, the earliest we can be out of the house and moving is at noon.  Then we have an hour to be outside before I have to start the 30min incoming process and get them back into the crib for their next nap.  If it takes me 15min each way to get somewhere, then I have about 30min to be at a location before having to turn around.

Exhausting!

I may just have to have them have that second nap in the stroller, but then they will need a third nap, which is fine, but it is hard for different reasons.  Then I end up walking for an hour and a half for the first nap, and another hour for the second nap.  That’s a *lot* of walking.  I start getting really exhausted during the second hour-long walk but I can’t stop moving or they wake up and get out of sync.

Every time I have things figured out everything changes!  I can’t keep them awake in the stroller.  No matter how awake they are, they usually fall asleep – or one of them does, and then they are out of sync, which is kind of worse than the other situation.

I’m not complaining about these amazing naps.  And the babies, while awake, are delicious because of all of the wonderful sleep they are getting.  This is where the walk-up situation makes things more complicated in new and exciting ways, because if I could prep them in the house and just roll out then I would cut 15 minutes out of my in-and-out process.

I’m just going to have to figure out how to be much more concise and efficient with this process.  Or walk all afternoon long.  Or both.  The best solution I’ve come up with is leave the house at noon, be somewhere, then start walking at 1 or 1:30, get to another location at 2:30/3, then stay there until the babies get crabby and then walk for another hour.  I don’t think I can do that EVERY DAY.  (I guess I could leave at noon, get somewhere, hang out, leave at 1 ish, take the looooooong way home, and end up at home for their next awake period.  That’s probably the only way.)

More likely I will be mostly hibernating for a while until I figure out how to work around these naps.  This afternoon we were out from 4-5:30pm – we went to the library and exchanged books, went to the swings for 20 minutes, went to the grocery store, and came home.  It was tiring, but it happened.  I have to be home no later than 5:30 because of our evening schedule (5:30 bottle, 6pm dinner, 6:30 bath if bath night, 7pm bottle, 7:15pm story, 7:30pm bedtime)

I do NOT want to go back to the way the naps were before.  They were awful.  Four 30min naps a day.  I felt like I was spending my entire day trying to get them to fall asleep (I was).  I love that they have two or three long naps a day.  I just don’t know how to schedule them properly.  Maybe I’m doing something wrong, maybe I should wake them after a certain amount of time, I don’t know.

Sleep specialist!  Call me back please!!!

Okay most of this was just me brainstorming.  Living with twins is a logistical puzzle every day haha.

Your reward:

34 weeks and 1 day! Happy Wombaversity haha

Today at 5:29 and 5:31pm, the babies have been outside as long as they were inside.

WHAT!

CRAZY!

34 weeks and 1 day ago they didn’t even exist yet because you start counting pregnancy weeks by first day of last menstrual period.  But we’re counting it anyway I guess.  They were each a sperm and an egg 34 weeks ago, and now they are these cuties:

(Banana on the left, Apple on the right)

PS: if you put a boppy pillow behind a baby learning to sit up but can sit on their own most of the time, I’m finding it’s better to put the ends of the pillow at their hips than to wrap the pillow all around, because if they fall back with the pillow in this position their heads will land on the pillowy part.  In the other position, their backs land on the pillowy part and their heads can still hit the ground behind – or else their backs are just totally arched in a really uncomfortable way

I got my period!

Which means I must have ovulated!

Yay!

This also explains why I stepped on the scale and mysteriously (disappointingly) I had gained 2lb in a week… must be period bloating, or so I am telling myself.

I get my period so infrequently that I have no tell tale signs.

I’m so excited.  Go oves!

Libraries – is this even legal?

I have recently re-discovered the library.  I remember my mom taking me to the library when I was a kid, and I remember using the library a lot in grad school for research, but I never really used the library.

I was getting bored of our kids books.  We have a lot of Dr. Seuss books thanks to my parents who bought us like 10 books for Hanukkah.  We have some other books that people bought for the babies.  But our selection is slim.  And board books are boring since I am not reading them with the babies (they make sense when a baby is in your lap while you read, but I can’t do that most times, so I am reading story books).  We have lots of board books.  I don’t want to read them though.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I hadn’t gotten my library card registered, and that there are two fabulous libraries within easy walking distance of me. So yesterday I went with the babies to the library and get my card activated and then went and got some new kids books to read.

Then I brought the books home and was like, let’s read these brand new books!

And then I was like – I totally just got five books for free.

FIVE BOOKS FOR FREE.

Then I feel like an idiot for not checking out my book club books from the library.  Then I realized all the other books I could read FOR FREE.  Because the library is 10 minutes’ walk away, on the way to EVERYTHING, and I could go there every week and get new kids books and new me-books and read and read to my heart’s content.  And the library can (if you opt in) log all of your check-outs so you can find a book that you liked and re-borrow it in the future even if you can’t remember its name.

It feels criminal.  I am serious.  I pay for everything, I don’t get any of my music illegally, we don’t have cable tv but we pay for netflix and hulu and all that.  So I always buy used books if I can, new books if I have to … it didn’t even occur to me to not buy the books at all.

Now the only trick is keeping the babies calm in the library.  I picked five books almost entirely at random.  So far I’ve read one great book, one okay book, and one beautiful book but with almost no words (the illustrations are amazing, though, totally transported me to hot, hazy summer evenings at amusement parks).

So yeah.  Libraries.  Freely distributing books right under our noses.

.

.

(I guess my taxes are paying for it but I don’t really notice that)

Graduated Myself from Therapy

At least for now.

This isn’t to say that I’m not in need of therapy, but I don’t know how to use it in my life right now, so I ended it.  It’s too expensive and not worth it to keep doing it if I don’t know what to use it for.

I’m doing a lot better.  I am liking parenting more and more as there are more fun times in the day, the feedings get shorter, the naps (sometimes) get longer, and the night wakings (hopefully) get less frequent.  As the babies get older it becomes easier to envision my “life” with them (as opposed to around them or despite them haha), and I find myself more and more feeling like I wouldn’t give up being a stay at home parent for employment.  For a while I was on the fence about it but I think I am settled on this side of the fence, not just because of circumstances.

I have fun stories like, today Apple picked up a cube! (apparently a development) Or, we aren’t using the bumbos at all anymore!  Or, Banana keeps fondling herself during naked play time! (apparently this happens???)

I don’t even know what I thought my life would be like after having the babies.  I know I wanted to have kids but I didn’t even really know what it would look like once that happened.  And here we are, it’s happening.  And we’ve had some really great moments the last few days that have made me stop and take a mental picture that hopefully will last a long time.

But coming to this kind of place has also made me wonder what my purpose is.  Did I grow up, go through all of that school, get married, get crappy jobs, quit them, go to more school, move to three states, etc, just to reach a point where I can raise these kids?  Is that what I’m supposed to do?  Is that an all-encompassing job?

I’ve decided for the month of May I will do one drawing / art piece a day, maybe just digitally on my ipad or maybe just in a sketchbook.  I feel like that’s the way to explore these things, not with talking talking talking.  So we’ll see.  May is an exciting month.

An Amazing Shabbat

I forgot Shabbat could be relaxing because for the last almost 8 months it has been so exhausting.  But today was wonderful.  I am going to be very cheesy right now.  But honestly, there was a moment in the day, where I said to myself – if I have to go back to a “happy place” at some other point, I want it to be this moment.

Their napping is getting better and their sleep is getting better.  I talked to a sleep specialist but I am hoping we won’t need her plan.  You never know. But their sleep improvement has made the days better – happier babies, happier mommy, happier everyone.

Last night they went down with almost no crying and slept from 7:15 – 6am and we didn’t have to go in once.  This morning, the babies were delicious, and went down for a 1.5 hour nap with almost no fuss.  Then, friends from out of town came visiting and brought us cute new outfits for the babies and also announced their second pregnancy.  We hung out, the babies were adorable, we said good-bye.  I packed a picnic and the four of us went on a long walk and it was glorious outside.  We picnicked in the park, the babies had some solids while we ate, had their bottles, were mostly calm.  Ran into some friends in the park.  Ran into more friends leaving the park.  Went to a playground and had the babies swing for a little bit.  Then we went back to another part of the park to finish out their pre-nap awakeness, playing in the shade, giggling and rolling on the blanket on the grass.  Long walk home.  Delicious evening.  All four of us ate dinner together at the table.  Easy bed time.

I said to Mr. Brightside – this was what I hoped parenting would be like.  Days like today.  When things go smoothly and everyone is happy and smiley, and unending giggles.

After bed we read on the couch for a while, had some ice cream, and now I am doing some last minute blog reading before bed.

I think their sleep issues really makes a big difference.  For a while they were sleeping wonderfully through the night, although waking at 5am, but still sleeping really well.  Except their naps were awful.  So they got progressively crankier as the day went on.  Today they were delicious until the end.

It is SO nice to have a relaxing day that includes all four of us.  I even got a 20 minute nap somewhere in there.  The cherry on top.

Routine

I am desperately grasping at straws to make a new routine.  We had a routine.  I built my life around it.  Then it crashed and burned.  The last month has been a rollercoaster of trying to figure out what the babies want and build a routine around it.

I am not trying to force them into doing anything.  I want to know what THEY want, and then do it, and then figure out how to be a human being again around it.

This is what I think our new routine looks like:

6 / 6:30am – wake-up, giggles with abba, diaper changes, etc
7:00 – bottle #1 (abba makes the day’s formula)
7:15 – play while I check my mail and set up breakfast
7:30 – breakfast solids adventure
8:00 – play while I clean up breakfast
8:30 – nap #1 begins kinda (I take a shower and try to make the day’s bottles in advance)
9:15/9:30 – nap is over, change into the day’s clothes
10:00 – bottle #2
10:15 – play, practice sitting up, I put in a load of laundry, tummy time, dance party, etc.
noon – nap #2.  (At this point if I am going out for the afternoon I think I would load them into the stroller and take a long long walk, ending at our destination.  If I’m not going out, this is when I eat my lunch, flip the laundry, check mail, do some quiet cleaning maybe, or otherwise fill my time…)
1:30 – nap is over
1:40 – bottle #3
2:00 – play, tummy time, sitting up, practice rolling, etc
3:30 – nap #3
4:00 – nap is over
4:15 – bottle #4
4:30 – play
5:00 – dinner solids adventure
5:30 – clean up from dinner, bath on bath nights, a little quiet play time or TV on non-bath nights, change into jammies
6:15 – bottle #5
6:30ish – abba comes home, gives kisses, gets them all excited again haha
7:00 – Banana goes to bed
7:05 – Apple goes to bed

Then various wake-ups, which we are working on eliminating.

I think this is the new normal.  Writing this out makes me feel good.  It makes me feel like maybe there is a new normal.  Maybe that 3:30pm nap will disappear at some point (soon?) and the other two will be pushed a little later, so we have two naps a day instead of three.  As it is, we are now down to 3 naps a day instead of 4, so I can’t complain.  4 naps was nuts.  Three is manageable.

I really wanted to move down to two but that is a more gradual change than I thought it would be.  This is what happened at 3:30 today on the way home from the park.

They seemed awake, I didn’t think they needed another nap, and then simultaneously they both shut their eyes and were asleep at almost exactly 3:30.  So I ended up staying outside for half an hour, until they both almost simultaneously opened their eyes and woke up at 4.  So I guess we’re keeping that nap.

I’ve also instituted a sleepy time routine.  Story, singing the “end of playtime” song, get in sleep sacks, and then each baby has a routine for what I do as I put him/her in the crib.  Then I walk away.  Up to 10 minutes of crying at a time.  The last few days I haven’t had to go back in after putting them down awake in the crib.

It’s been a lot of work, really.  A LOT.  I hope this is a good trend, I hope we are on the upswing from the illness-slash-growth-spurt-from-hell-that-never-died.  I’m ready to feel good again, to feel as in control as being a mother of twins affords me.