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Okay, no, not really. How satisfying is it that when you are a Mama, you can pick up your baby and immediately fix what ever is wrong? Well, most of the time, anyway. Unfortunately, when you are a twin Mama, you don't always have enough arms for all the babies who are crying. Thankfully that only happens once in a while (like twice a day).
Anyway, we've had a busy week developmentally speaking. The girls have discovered that their hands are attached to their arms, which are attached to their bodies. They bring them together at the mid-line and then stare at them as though they were the best things they've ever seen. Then they watch carefully as they bring their hands to their ever eager mouths. This means less swaddling for us, since they can now fully realize the potential of their hands to sooth themselves. I skip it all together for naps, and often when I go in to get them, they are contentedly sucking away on their fingers. Sometimes it even wakes me up at night (they are pretty good at getting out of a swaddle) and I know it's time to go in and feed them.
Yesterday we went over to a girlfriend's home to visit with her, her 2.5 year old and 6 month old. The children (and Moms) sat around on the floor and my girls marveled at baby Anna, and young Maria. It was quite an evolution getting everyone out the door, but completely worth it. I'd like to start introducing the girls to more and more people, and we always look forward to visitors.
The girls are getting stronger on their bellies and hold their heads up at 90 degrees for longer and longer periods. I thought Tilly might roll over the other day, but she doesn't quite understand that she needs to giver herself some momentum to get all the way over. Since babies are now put on their backs to sleep, the age that babies roll over has been pushed back to around 7 months. That said, some babies do it earlier, and some skip it all together. Frankly, it's safer if they don't roll over, but I figure it might be more fun for them if they could do it.
Both girls are now openly laughing. In my opinion, this is the cutest thing in the whole entire universe. Even cuter than a herd of snowy white puppies and kittens. It really just gets better and better. I'm always told these things in advance by well meaning people, but it just doesn't hit home until it happens. Ivan's arrival home also invokes many super smiles and giggles. I imagine that must feel pretty good too.
Well, this will be a short post. I had an extra waking by Alexis this morning, and although it certainly was quality time, I am feeling the pain today. The girls are down for the count, (how long I couldn't say), and so I think that I will join them. All the very best to you all!
Well, not really, but I am currently grooving to that song while it plays on the radio. CBC doesn't play a great deal of music during the day, so when they do I like to take advantage of it. How weird that I would go from always having a pop music station on in the background to listening exclusively to CBC. Okay, it is the only English radio station in these parts and that may have something to do with it. I miss singing along with the radio though. I do try to make an effort to play music for the girls. They know the Barenaked Ladies, The Beatles and The Irish Rovers. Mostly they enjoy the musical stylings of their mother. Sometimes I play guitar for them, and always I sing to them. Alexis loves loves loves this. She just lights up when I sing for her, and when I play guitar she stares at me with wide eyes. I know this won't last forever. Soon she'll realize that I was too lazy to learn any more than 20 chords, and I only play songs from the one guitar tab book that I've had since I was 16. But for now I'm her Guitar Hero, and I'll play for her until she pleads for me to stop! Maybe.
The girls are making leaps in their abilities every day. They went from not being able to hold anything in their hands, so holding spoons, hairbrushes, blankets, whatever, in one day. It boggles the mind when I think about it. How did that happen? When did it happen? Why could they not do it one moment and then be able to the next? They babble and coo and talk to anything with a face. There are some stars and a moon that hang from the mobile on their bouncy chair that are often the recipients of a good yarn. I wonder what it is about two dots and a curve that are instantly recognizable to an infant as a friendly face.
Both girls are getting better at tummy time. They seem to enjoy being able to look at the world from this perspective. They also love looking at books, and just today, I put some toys on the tray of our infant swing for Mathilde, and she smiled at them and touched them. Alexis smiled at and touched a teddy bear this morning while I nursed her sister. She will mostly turn her head towards you when her name is said, but not Mathilde. Not yet anyway.
Both girls have been supporting their own weight on their legs for short periods for over a month now. We don't pay much attention to supporting their heads either. They can sit up right when propped up by a pillow, which is handy when one girl is waiting to get changed. It makes a big difference when you can hand your baby an object to ponder while you change the other.
Napping is getting better too. Alexis seems to go down without much of a fight (for the past two days that is), while Mathilde screams bloody murder the second she is in a hover over the crib. It's challenging for me, as I can hardly stand to let them cry. It would be so easy to nurse them to sleep, but then they'd need it to get themselves to sleep. I've stopped swaddling them for naps over the last 2 days, and unfortunately it has cut down on the amount of time that they are able to stay asleep, but we want to foster self-soothing behaviors that help them to fall back to sleep on their own. They love to suck their hands, but still lack total control over the fine motor skills required to always connect their hand to their mouths, and then keep it there. These skills really do fall apart when they are tired, and so swaddling is still essential for bedtime. They sleep a lot longer when they are swaddled.
They are darling. They smile and smile. Mathilde more readily gives up her gummy grins, but Alexis doesn't require much prodding either. The days seem less long now, and I am more relaxed as my confidence grows. This, I'm sure, reflects on them as well. I thought I'd up the level of difficulty yesterday by putting them in their cloth diapers. They hated them. They screamed and cried until I took them off. At least Mathilde tried hers out first before rejecting them. Alexis just said no! I feel some level of guilt about not pursuing this earlier, but I have enough going on without having to worry about adding yet another load of laundry every day. Enough about that.
Well, there you have it. An update and on the day I said I'd have it out. But time is short and so I'm off to get the girls up for their afternoon meal. Until next week.
Happy Spring everybody!
I'm only two days late, but here I am. I'm tired. Alexis has been sick (sort of), and refused to sleep! Okay, so she's down for the count at the moment, but it's only a matter of time! So I think she's sick because she lost her little voice for a few days, but had no fever, and kept her voracious appetite. We didn't worry too much about it, and she seems to be on the mend, but it broke my heart! Tilly is herself and cute as a button.
Grandma and Grandpa are here for a visit this weekend (so I've got a minute to Blog). It's so nice for the girls to spend time with them.
So the previous posts brought about a topic to write about from Toni. She wanted to know if and how the girls interact with one another. I'd hoped to have a video to illustrate this, but this week was just weird with getting their schedules down pat. Needless to say they are out the window this weekend. The schedules, that is.
Alexis and Mathilde do seem to recognize one another now, but only really in short bursts and when they are both well rested and happy. They can spend 20 minutes lying beside one another and not acknowledge the other, but every so often, when we get them face to face, they will smile and coo at one another. And it's really cute.
Up until last night, they shared a crib, but I'm not sure how aware of one another they were in that context. If one cries, the other is usually not affected by it, but who can say what they gain subconsciously from one another's proximity. Perhaps we might find that their breathing is regulated by the other's presence, or perhaps their blood pressure is positively affected. But nothing that I'm able to measure without gadgets. This will change, no doubt, in the future. I'm excited about the day when they learn to play with each other. I expect this to be really fun, but for now, they simply co-exist.
This post will be short. I've used stock footage for the video and I'm sorry that I'm not able to focus on it much this week. As I say, we are working on their nap schedules and learning to read their moods. It takes up all of my time! But I do enjoy doing the Blog, so please keep tuning in, eventually I'll get back into the swing of things!
Have a great week everyone!
I am obsessed with parenting books. Well, books in general, but parenting books especially right now. And it's driving us all nuts. As you can see from the video we (meaning I with Ivan dubiously agreeing to go along with it) decided that it was a good time to take away the girls' pacifiers. We don't see anything wrong with pacifiers in general; if used correctly they can be a wonderful tool. And babies need to suck. Also, the offering of a pacifier at night is seen as a significant factor in reducing SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Sydrome). We were all for it! While we were co-sleeping, it worked really well too. Onc hardly has to wake up to insert a dropped pacifier when your baby is an inch away. Now consider what this is like when the babies are in their own room and there are two of them. Twice as many dropped pacifiers equals twice as many trips to the nursery. So in a desperate act to restore my sanity, I took the stupid things away. They're young, they won't remember, it'll be easy....right? WRONG!
But I suppose I should have started with the fact that we kicked the girls out of our room. That was actually going quite well....for them. I kept them in sucking all night and they were happy little clams. Even once we removed the pacifiers (suckos) they were fine. I was simply nursing them to sleep. Nothing wrong with that! Wrong again. Can I rock them to sleep? Nope! Oh and apparently they're supposed to have two three hour naps per day. And this is where I became extremely confused and ended up messing up sleep for everyone in the house. (Well, Ivan managed to get some sleep bless is heart.)
I read and read more books. And when I ran out of books, a well-meaning girlfriend brought over even more books. And all of these books contradicted one another. So on Thursday, with a stack of parenting books and a whole lot of newly acquired free time, I set about putting the girls down for the first of their 3 hour naps. I nursed them to sleep, (then learned you shouldn't do this), I rocked them (whoops), I walked them around (oh dear!). And they slept. In the afternoon, I put them back down in the sleepy-awake state that one popular book directed me to do. They slept again for 3 hours. I thought "Oh dear, these girls have been so tired all along, look at all the sleep they've been missing out on!" And then night time came, and if you were predicting that they would not sleep at all, you were RIGHT! They were tired though. Yawning, kicking, crying the whole time. I could get them down for an hour and then they were up again. I thought I was going to lose my mind. I pleaded with Ivan in the morning to please take the car to work and come home at noon so I could get some sleep! Thankfully, he did this.
After a phone call with a voice of reason (thank you, G) and 2 cups of strong coffee, I began to see the light. The girls had been fine all along. They were already "sleeping through the night". One five hour stretch, a feed and then a few more hours etc. I had been convinced by some well meaning Nanny-turned author that a 3 month old baby can and indeed should sleep through the night by our definition. Ridiculous! So last night, we took the hour we needed to get them to sleep calmly, knowing that eventually they would go to sleep. And at 3 am after 6 hours of uninterrupted blissful sleep, I went into the nursery, fed my first girl, then my second girl, and then put them back to bed. All the while thinking how wonderful it was that I was still able to nurse them, how wonderful it is to have this quiet time to spend with each of them, one one one. (On to Toni's topic next week). I rocked them, and stroked their hair and just loved them. And I realized that I already know what I need to know. It's not everything there is to know, but it's enough. I come pre-programmed with all the information that I need to raise healthy and happy people. It's already in me. So away with Dr. Sears (no offense, I'm sure he's a lovely man), and down with Ferber (who lets their baby cry it out?!). I'm going with the well intentioned Mommy method. The oldest, tried, tested and true!
Don't forget to set your clocks back and change the batteries in your smoke detectors!
They don't know it yet, but they're about to be kicked out of the big bed (I think). As most of you know, there was a huge recall of all Storkcraft cribs a while back. We've been using that as an excuse to co-sleep with Mathilde and Alexis, when really we were all about getting more sleep. And maybe the snuggling wasn't so bad either. I've been telling Ivan (and myself) that once the girls hit three months, they'd be out. Today is 11 weeks, so if you go by my method of counting, they're three months next Friday. By Ivan's method, that won't happen until March 12th. Yesterday morning, I put them in their crib for three hours in the morning and they actually slept there! Who knew? So to continue the experiment, I put them in there at 3am after after a middle of the night feeding. And they're still there at 7 30am (I had to feed them at 6am). As well, yesterday the replacement crib brackets arrived from Storkcraft. If you're into signs, and I often am, you might consider that one a sure sign that it's time to kick them out of the Big Bed. I may just kick them out of our room all together! (Since we can see into their bedroom from ours anyway).
We've had a good week. We're dealing with the thrush issue one treatment at a time. It's not that it's a big deal to give them their medicine, really, it's just that the yeast is a hardy thing that's happy to stick around once it's been let in the door. Add another baby to an already tricky equation and you have thrush paradise! Just when it gets kicked out of one joint, it finds another to take up residence in. So you really have to be on top of this one.
Developmentally, I don't know if the girls have made huge measurable strides this week. They smile more, to be sure. They're still working at holding their heads up while they're on their tummies. Tilly seems to be vocalizing more perhaps. She was telling her father an elaborate story last night.
They love having their diapers changed. Bath time has become much more fun for them too. Well, the getting and staying wet parts anyway. They do NOT love getting out of the tub at all, and that's usually when bath night tanks. The happy parts make it worth it though. Well, that and the lovely smelling baby that you get in the end too.
We've also gone a week without using formula. We'd been using about 2 oz to top up Lexi every other evening or so (Tilly doesn't take the bottle well). But I finally gained the confidence to say that they're getting enough without it. Also, I'd probably been sabotaging my supply by not offering her the breast anyway since it's all about supply and demand. Going by the the dirty diapers, I'd say they're getting what they need. Breast feeding sure is mysterious though. Just when I think I've gotten the hang of it, something always comes up. The girls are always evolving their feeding schedules, so that just when you think you've got something you can work with, they want an extra feeding, or even to skip one. I've given up on thinking they might just get through the night without one. Sometimes they do go three nights in a row without a 3am feed. Then, for whatever reason, they want to eat every three hours during the night for a couple of nights. They're still really young though. I can't expect them to form a schedule yet. I'll worry (maybe) if by 6 months they haven't found their patterns. In the mean time, Ivan bought me a beautiful chair that's been waiting for me in the nursery, and since they're getting kicked out of our room tonight, I'll have a chance to put it to good use!
That's it from this house for this week. I'm starving and need to eat so that I can feed the girls. I can hear Lexi stirring and Mathilde has since gotten up and is in her mechanical chair. I'd like to get her out of it. If anybody has any topics they'd like me to talk about, I'd be happy to take requests. Raising twins has, is and will be an adventure! Take care.
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!
Alexis (and a certain other Lightwood Lady) are 9 weeks today! Two months yesterday if that's how you're counting. As I said last week, this week is about our girl, Lexi. Which is not to say that we've been ignoring the accomplishments of Tilly, au contraire. But everybody deserves a bit of the limelight, and when you're a Twin, you probably need it more than most.
So if I had to describe Alexis in terms of who she is it might be hard at this point. She is, after all, a baby. True, her personality is developing, and no doubt she is her own little person. She is also a person in perpetual transition, and so Ivan and I have avoided putting labels on the girls. For example, we don't say Lexi is the good sleeper, or Mathilde is the good eater. Because this this changes daily anyway and it's unfair to peg them so early. We might end up fostering the traits of those labels when they might have otherwise turned out differently. So that said, here is a glimpse of Lexi in her ninth week.
Lexi sleeps fairly well. She usually eats her final evening meal around 11 pm, and then sleeps for 5 hours. She wakes then to feed (around 4 am) and then goes back to sleep for 3 or 4 more hours. I can't complain about that! I don't even wake Ivan any more because there is no reason to. Everyone is pretty happy.
Lexi eats very well from both the breast and the bottle. We still supplement every once in a while in the evenings when my milk production slows down. Nature is funny that way. We need the big feed right before bed to tide her over and encourage longer sleep periods, but that is when the production is the lowest. That said, apparently the milk is very high in fat at this point, but it's hard for a mom to trust that. Quantity is more convincing, especially when your baby gives you the "stink-eye" once your milk has run out. And you can't really tell her when she's eye balling your other breast that you're saving it for her sister!
Lexi still does not acknowledge her sister but has been acknowledged herself! And talked to. But that's for next week.
She is quiet when others are not. As a result, Lexi more often finds herself in one of our parent helping chairs or swings. She needs less. She is not fickle with her smiles, when you get one, she means it and it's wonderful. She is less vocal about her problems (wet diapers, hunger etc) and as a result she doesn't get held as much as a we would like. Having said that, she gets held a lot! But only because we make a point to do so. Lexi is observant. She is often content to watch and inspect things.
Lexi is pretty and slight. She looks like herself and her sister.
In summery, our Alexis might be described as an introspective, content and lovely baby. That seems ridiculous to me though. Because sometimes she is very loud, very angry and not very pretty. It's fun to imagine the person that she will become and it's easy to think about her as a writer or even a scientist. But she could just as easily become a police officer or a figure skater. All we can do is nurture that potential and encourage her to become herself. Which is what I should be doing right now, incidentally. So we're off to the rain forest for 20 minutes of play, tummy time and rolling over. Maybe there will be an airplane ride or two, and maybe she'll finally look at her sister and really see her. Or maybe she'll scream, and throw up on the giraffe. Anything is possible!
Have a terrific weekend everyone!
