Ten Weeks Old...
Quite a special, one-(and first)-of-a-kind holidays with it being the Twins' first Christmas, or more aptly "our first Christmas with the twins" since with the exception of being mesmerized by the Christmas tree lights and an even larger abundance of people holding them, it's not like they had any idea there was a holiday taking place. But I don't want to downplay how remarkable of a holiday season it was for us...Following Thanksgiving, it was great to have most of the extended family in town that hasn't met them yet, and particularly great for us to have plenty of people willing to watch them for a bit to allow us to go buy or return gifts, attend adults only Christmas parties, or just take an uninterrupted nap or non-rushed shower.
In addition to the abundance of free babysitting, two other benefits we realized is that by having them now - and all that comes with them - it gives us a stake to put in the ground and declare that we aren't traveling anywhere, come all ye faithful. And two, when a bunch of extended family comes to town the option of people staying at our house is now off limits, or wait, I don't think anyone actually asked us this year, but can't say I blame them.
As for life on the home front, it's still a work in progress and can be viewed as a glass half-full/half-empty situation depending on how you look at it (and when you ask either one of us). The good "half-full" news is that we're starting to get the hang of things a little bit more. By that I mean a lot if things, but most significantly getting to know them and their habits a little bit better...and by that I mean being able to see things coming (i.e. crying fits or waking up and demanding to be fed) and doing whatever we can to prepare for it ahead of time. On top of some invaluable accessories and clutch inventions (I'll have to go into these in another posting) we've added to the equation for solving the riddle of middle-of-the-night feedings, we've gone to what I'm calling the "Zombie Feed" method where we get them out of their cribs as comatose as possible and basically feed them while their still half-asleep with the hopes that it fills their belly and they contently and immediately pass back out afterwards. To do this, we go into in the nursery with flashlights in our mouths and step as slow and soft light as possible to keep the creaking hardwood floors to a minimum. We also try to get to them at the first sign of any unrest so they don’t awaken too much, and to do this we now unfortunately keep the monitor volume on full blast and both our door and the nursery door open.
Once we get in the nursery, where we already have feeding stations prepared, we don’t bother un-swaddling them (if we were able to swaddle them in the first place - big if with Logan) and we try not to even change them before or after the feeding unless it is VERY necessary. One key here for me, when we go tag-team on a feeding, is to try to be the first one in the room and do a quick "sniff" test to determine which one I pick up first. (Catherine knows, not like any info in this blog is news to her).
This “feed them while their half-asleep” method has worked with mixed results. While it does make it a little easier to get them to fall back asleep, they don’t eat nearly as much and therefore can’t go quite as long before they are hungry again. So we’re faced with a difficult, lose-lose dilemma between choosing more frequent feedings with a higher likelihood of them going back down afterwards, or pursue a longer lapse between feedings by making it more of a production but run the risk of one or both of them not going back to sleep afterwards.
Speaking of dilemmas, which it seems we have quite a share of when it comes to navigating the logistics of handling two, the game plan for how we're going to tackle the middle-of-the-night feedings is a nightly debate between tag-teaming them together at the same time or each of us taking turns facing the double-team alone where like I'd take 1am and Catherine takes 4am. Initial reaction is to think taking turns would be the way to go so each of us is only getting up once in the middle of the night, but there is always a decent chance that you could be woken up to help if things go awry when it's not your turn - then you're having to get up twice anyway and when it's all said and done you're probably out more sleep than you would have been with both of us waking up each time to run a more timely man-to-man defense.
Did I mention dilemmas? Another major one we're faced with is whether to keep them on the same feeding schedule or not? Ideally, the answer is yes...But, the problem is that Cate can definitely go longer than Logan and we certainly don't want to discourage her progress by having to feed her every time he is hungry (on average still every 3-3.5 hrs). Not to mention we'd be violating a major policy of mine to not wake a sleeping baby. But if we roll the dice by letting her go and she doesn't make it to his next feeding then we get staggered and then the ship starts sinking...Where it already figuratively feels sometimes like all we do is feed babies and all that comes with it (burping, changing, mixing bottles, etc), having them staggered on two feeding schedules literally equates to doing nothing but feeding them around the clock.
Therefore, sleep is still few and far between in the Walters household. Catherine is reading this book12 Hours By 12 Weeks and trying to stick to it religiously, but if they are now 10 weeks old, doesn't that mean they should now be at 10 hours? Even half that amount of time would be nice, but just five consecutive hours of sleep is still rather rare.
Even with kids now and sleep at such a premium, I still just can't force myself to go to sleep before 11pm. Which would be fine if we fed them right before then and they slept 'til 5am or so because I'm fine operating on 6-7 hours of sleep. But by that I mean 6 hours of consecutive sleep, not 3 hours here followed by 2 awake hours of feedings and then 3 more hours of sleep later (if I'm lucky). Catherine, on the other hand, requires 8-10 hours of solid sleep, and that is usually with an hour nap or two mixed in most days...So she is even more sleep deprived (notice I did NOT say irritable or cranky).
We know learning to function on much less sleep is just something we have to just get used to, but it is much easier said than done. Kind of like we try to get them to feed in the middle of the night, at times we really feel like we're zombie walking our way through life and parenting. I liken it to feeling like you just got off a red-eye flight and trying to go straight to work each day.
Therefore we've had to go back to more of the night nurse drug. Being spoiled with family in town and time off during the holidays, we were foolish and ambitious to try and quit cold turkey. However, we've gotten smarter about maximizing the nights when the nanny comes. It really boils down to two main goals: catch up on sleep and rack up on sleep, nothing more, nothing less. Going in to these nights sometimes we have high hopes for doing something productive around the house (pay bills, house projects, write blogs), but usually just amounts to going straight to bed, or at least retiring to the bedroom. Catherine is good about going straight to sleep, whereas I'll still stay awake inhaling mass media. Heck, sometimes she even does this before the lady even gets there and leaves me to let her in and get her settled - which is fine, like I said, I can't go to bed before 11pm anyway.
Anyway, that is enough about us. Sorry, I know the twins are what everyone is interested in here and I just realized I haven't spoken much of them yet. Hopefully the silver lining to this omission is that they are doing just fine. More than fine actually, they are more than we ever could have imagined - and in so many ways. I guess if the top of mind issues are all just around how we are doing with them then maybe it shows we are doing something right.
The twins had their two month pediatrician appointment (the one with all the shots) on Friday. All checked out well with them, Cate is still slightly ahead of her brother in weight, but both are right around 10 lbs now. The shots and the experience wasn't nearly as bad as we expected. At one point Cate literally fell asleep on the exam table as we waited for a while for the nurse to come back in and give them. They definitely cried as they were pricked, but we were able to get them calmed down shortly after and haven't shown any I'll effects from it - Cate even slept seven hours last night from 8pm - 3am and her brother was back to his normal "feed me every three hours self", for better or worse.
Logan is taking his back arching capabilities to another level. Not only is he rolling over already, but he now turns an arch of the back when on your chest into a ferocious head butt. Which fortunately and unfortunately doesn't seem to hurt him in hopes of teaching him a lesson. Being able to roll over is great I guess, but the problem is he cant roll back over to where he wants to be. And since he likes to lay on his stomach, where he can push himself up and over, he the then gets pissed he can roll back over after discovering it's either not as comfortable on his back or his seen all there is to see on that ceiling already.
Speaking of which, they are becoming more and more aware and inquisitive about things around them every day. Remember how I said they were mesmerized by the Christmas tree lights? Well when we discovered this I quickly strung lights across their pack and play that provided hours of entertainment over the holidays (see pic). Whenever we'd put them down for sleep or play in it we'd say, "Ok, it's time to visit McAdenville." Well it doesn't look like this McAdenville is shutting down anytime soon...we just need to figure out a year-round universal name, like maybe "Grand Central", "Graceland", or "Grand Ole Opry".
Lastly, the other child of ours has gotten no mention, which isn't fair either - after all, Baxter was our first. He is doing pretty well, he is great around the twins, almost too great sometimes wanting to lick and lay up right beside them when they're in our laps on the couch (see pic). Almost to a fault and safety hazard, he will come in the nursery in the middle of the night for during a feeding. When he does this, because we keep it as dark as possible and he is black as night, we often can't see where he is laying on the floor when we try to put them back in the cribs. On more than one occasion we both have tripped right over him or stepped on his tail. The only area where we can see Baxter doesn't like having them around is the pouting that comes with him going from the only child to the third step child. And to make matters worse, although Catherine and others are home during the day with him now, he still hardly gets any attention which ends up making him more depressed and more wound up for attention when I get home - but it's not like I have nothing else to do when as soon as I walk in the door. So in honor of Baxter, who got to enjoy the snow storm with me, I've posted a video of him sledding with me below...can't wait 'til we they can come with us on "play days" like this.
Here are a few of our favorite photos since Thanksgiving...
