All Is Not Always as it Appears

I love the feedback that I get from the blog. It drives me to continue writing, and as was pointed out to me recently, it serves as a record of our daughters' development since birth. It occurred to me, however, that so far maybe I've painted a picture of perfection, where we are always happy and doing everything the right way. Well, as the video shows, this is not always true.
In fact, yesterday we took the girls to their 2 month check up. They are steadily gaining weight (Tilly is 12 lbs and Lexi is 11.5). This tells me that all of my breast feeding efforts are paying off. On the other hand, both girls have a candida infection (thrush). Tilly on her bottom and in her mouth (bum in mouth disease?), and Lexi in her mouth. Ivan had questioned the cheese-like curds that were sticking to the insides of their cheeks the other night. I'd seen thrush before, but this looked like the remnants of spit-up to me, and Tilly's rash looked like standard diaper rash. I never put two and two together! I'm usually so good at that sort of thing. So the three of us are on a regime of anti-fungicides which is really a pain. I've got to treat my nipples, and then the girls need to have their mouths bathed in this horrible, yellow, fake banana tasting liquid. How do you tell a 10 week old baby not to spit this out? The problem with such an infection is that it's highly transferable. So one gives it to me, then I give it to the other and then back again to the first. As if I don't have enough to do!
The girls also were given their first set of immunizations yesterday. They didn't really suffer any adverse reactions. It seemed that Lexi's temperature may have been slightly up, but some Tylenol took care of that. Mostly I was scarred by watching my daughters have needles jabbed into their tender little thighs. Really, can't we come up with a better way of administering these things? I'm sure the technology exists, why isn't it available here? They're so little too, it just seems truly awful to be shooting them up with junk so early in their lives. I've been over the dilemma of to immunize or not a million times and each time I can't decide. Both sides have arguments that are so compelling. I guess indecision won this time.
Being home with the girls has been really terrific. The weather is warming up here, so I've been able to get out for long walks with everyone. River, who was the wild card in all of this, has turned out to be really good. He keeps station directly behind the stroller and checks the girls with me periodically. I'm starting to think that he places the babies as highest in the hierarchy of our family. He always greats them with his tail wagging, but down low at a respectable level, and he runs away when a random arm happens to flail too close to him. We still never leave him alone with the girls even just to go to the bathroom, and this can be a nuisance at times. Imagine having an audience every time you pee (even if it is a canine one). I'm sure he's wondering what the heck he's doing there too!
Finally, dare I say, the girls seem to be extending the length of time they spend sleeping at night. We had three days in a row where they skipped their middle of the night feed altogether. Ivan's alarm was going off while I was feeding Lexi, and then I would have to wake Tilly up. I'd finish feeding them by about 0630 and then go back to sleep with them until 0930. I was feeling really good most of the week. Thursday night had them going back to their old habits and we had to get them up by 0630 for their dr's appointment so we were all pretty sleepy yesterday, and last night Lexi woke me up at 0430. So we haven't really found our schedule yet. But it's getting easier all the time.
Well, Lexi is hollering at her dad about it being time to eat. She's saying "Gully, gully, gully, gully!!!" Since there's not much that he can do for her, I'd better sign off. Once again, thanks for checking in on us and have a wonderful weekend!