My baby girl turns two

Saturday June 25th was my sweet baby girl's second birthday.  I can't believe two years have gone by since that incredible thunderstorm and power outage when my water broke and our little peanut changed our lives.

What a sweet baby she was.  Though now with two newborns, we are suddenly reminded of all the difficulties you just plain erase from memory.  Lilli too had gas issues, grunting, crying inconsolably, cluster feeding (with sore boobs - nightmare!!), the 5:00pm crazies, and issues falling back to sleep after feeding in the night.  But with out our recent reminders, all we can really remember is what a great baby she was.

Here we are two year's later.  She's talking up a storm.  The other night John was feeding her dinner and she lost half of her pizza on the floor by pulling her plate off the table (this is a fun game for her).  John's response was "Lilli, God - " and he caught himself and stopped there.  Lilli however knew what he was getting at and she finished it for him - "Dammit! Dammit!"  Neither of us could actually reprimand her or tell her this is not something she should say because we were too busy laughing our asses off.

We ask her how old she is and she says "Two Babies!".  This is what she associates with the number two - poor thing.  We talked about the babies so much before they arrived that she cannot disassociate the number two, her age, from the fact that there are two babies in this house now.  Either that, or she knows how freaking cute she is when she gives that answer, so she keeps giving it.  Somehow I think the latter might be the case.

Other than the talking, she is doing things that no longer resemble a baby.  The way she climbs the stairs or gets into a chair at the kitchen table.  She can hold a crayon correctly without ever being taught.  She is learning her alphabet, numbers, colors and shapes.  She can play memory games and put puzzles together.  She can partially clothe herself (mainly socks and shoes) and is constantly saying "Lilli do it".

For her birthday John and I bought her a tricycle, and we were surprised when we showed it to her that she knew exactly what it was.  The benefits of daycare I suppose, because we have never spoke to her about bikes.  She loves it and wanted to get on it right away.  She actually did pretty well.  We kept trying to help her get the rhythm of the pedals and all she wanted was "Lilli do it."

As we were in the driveway with the cycle, John's family from Nebraska started to show up for the day.  We had Grandpa, Aunts, Uncles and cousins coming for a BBQ and cake and ice cream.  And also to meet the twin brothers.

John smoked a brisket (which he tended to overnight while up feeding babies - and it was good!) and mom made purple flower cookies (which I forgot to take a picture of and they are all gone now).  I want to always be the mom that makes a cake or treats from scratch.  Last year I made here cake, but with two newborns all I could crank out this year were the cookies, and we purchased a cake with Lilli's favorite TV friends on it, Dora, Boots and Diego.

Dora, Boots and Diego figurines now are her "Guys" that she takes around the house everywhere, including her new water table from Mema.  This is going to go out on our new child safe deck (if it is ever finished) and Lilli can play with water and ice to her heart's content.  She loves water and ice.  No idea where the obsession came from, but it keeps her busy for a good long while.

The entire weekend Lilli was about as sweet as I've ever seen her.  Maybe it was all the attention and gifts (she is spoiled by her aunts and uncles and grandparents), but I also think she might be getting used to the idea of being a big sister.  She loves on her brothers all the time, so if she isn't used to it yet, she should be on her way.  I keep hoping by the time I'm home alone with all three kids, she will realize the babies aren't going away!

She is, and will always be my baby girl, whether she's two or twenty-two.  Happy Birthday Baby Girl, Mommy loves you!

Chaos is an understatement

I don't even remember when my last post was, and I just forgot to look... but I think it was about two weeks ago.  Where has the time gone?  Oh yeah...to my new baby boys and my ever challenging toddler.  Things are generally still going ok around our house, but we've hit some road blocks in the last couple of weeks.

John cuddling a sleeping Will, before our Father's Day weekend meltdown.

First of all, just as our pediatrician warned, the boys would start making themselves heard around 3 weeks old.  We are now at just about 4 and we've started to get to know their quirks.  They wake and sleep at different times during the day.  This can be a good thing in the sense that we are not juggling two babies crying at the same time (most of the time), but it's bad in the sense that we are pretty much always on call to quiet down one of the two guys.  The little guy, Will, is now having major intestinal issues, as many newborns do, and crying, crying, crying.  The only thing that will console him is latching onto me in order to fall asleep.  He started going days between poops, which frightened us at first because they are 99% breastfed babies and in my experience, breastfed babies poop about 8 times a day.  The nurses say he's fine, he can go two weeks without pooping and be fine (two weeks! what?!) but its clear he has some struggles with getting things moving.  Intestinal stuff all improves with age in babies, and our pediatrician, like us, does not believe changing a mother's diet has any real effect on the baby.  So we've taken a different approach and started giving him probiotics, which immediately caused him to take 3 large poops in the night.

The boys are good eaters.  They keep this up, we'll be broke.

I hung some chalkboard canvases in the boys room to keep track of their growth and other great things they do along the road.  Here are the latest stats as of last Friday.  Because of the pooping scandal with Will, we were concerned he wasn't gaining enough weight.  His brother is like a bowling ball, and Will is still this wirey little Tootsie Roll.  We know they are two completely separate people and are going to grow at completely separate rates, but it is really hard not to compare them, even to their sister when she was their age.  So we took the boys in for a weight check - turns out the little guy is gaining at a faster rate than his brother, he's just built differently. 

That being said, the breastfeeding is going a bit better.  The main thing is that the boys are gaining weight above and beyond what is expected of them at this time.  The pain is tolerable now, as long as I pump from time to time.  And thanks to my gigantic twin specific breastfeeding pillow, I am managing to feed them tandem from time to time.  A book I am reading says nature gave us two boobs in order to allow feeding two babies.  Well, I am a firm believer that nature has a sick sense of humor sometimes.  The tandem thing is a circus side show, both babies tugging on me at once, laying on this huge pillow, while I just sit there hands free, nothing to do but stare down at myself and the odd spectacle that I am.

My little architect in the making.

This coming weekend we will celebrate Lillian's second birthday.  If this past weekend is any indication of what's to come, I'd say we've definitely hit the terrible two's.  John had about the crappiest Father's Day ever.  Not only did I not manage to get him something (little hard to load the van and go shopping by myself, and this not having an income thing is very weird when it comes to giving gifts to the only person in the family making any money).  But also the poor little toddler's world is upside down right now, and she's seeking attention in negative ways because we are obviously not able to provide her with enough attention in positive ways right now.  One or both of us is constantly holding a baby, feeding a baby, diapering a baby.  We have to keep trying things to figure out what works for her.  Instead of dwelling on what negatives her age and situation are providing, I'll praise her a little for her smarts.  I think she is an extremely smart and creative little girl.  She always wants to color - a girl after my own heart - not to mention that we think she's a lefty like her mommy.  She also loves her Mega Blocks and likes to build houses and castles for all her soft, fuzzy friends.  We have one architect in the family that started his toddler years with a slight obsession with Legos.  Could this be another one in the making?  I love the little thing more than words can express and it breaks my heart just a little that she is struggling right now.  She displays nothing but affection for her baby brothers, so I know someday she will turn a corner and learn to love the new place she has in this incredible little family.

Well, it officially took me two days to write this post.  So I can only imagine when my next post might be, especially if the little guy continues to keep me busy with his crying.  I have so many things I want to post about, I hope to get a few things in before I'm home with 3 babies at once and won't have time to even brush my teeth.

All baby my ass

I wasn't going to post any pictures of myself toward the end of the pregnancy because I am extremely embarrassed by them.  But after two weeks I've decided to let my vanity go and document the way I looked when carrying these babies.  Also, I am trying to get the weight back off and I feel posting this publicly might hold me a little more accountable during my weight loss effort.  Kind of like an on-line Weight Watchers weigh in.

This is me the morning I was induced.  Wow, right?  People kept telling me I was all baby.  Um, wrong.  I think its just that my belly is so large that it was distracting from the other parts of me that were getting entirely too puffy.  My face and neck pretty much say it all in this photo.  And the dress is one of about 3 things that were still fitting me at this point.

I ended up gaining about 42 pounds with this pregnancy, well over the 35 pound mark I once predicted I would never get to.  But I also thought I would never get to 38 weeks.  They say not to weigh yourself postpartum, but I've always been obsessed with scales (maybe something I should work on now that I have other more pressing things to worry about) so I couldn't help but step on mine the day I got home from the hospital.  My scale pretty much weighed me the same as the doctor's the entire pregnancy, so I knew it was fairly accurate.  2 days postpartum I lost 14 pounds of baby, placenta, and fluid.  I felt like a new person!  Just with a lot less muscle.

Now two weeks postpartum I am down a little over half of the 42 pound weight gain.  I would love to take a picture of me now to post, but I'm in that weird stage where my stretched out belly is still shrinking, my boobs are hideously, abnormally large and they wrap around to my back, my maternity clothes are all too big, and my regular clothes are all too small.  Right now I'm rolling around in workout shorts from college (they must have been big on me then) and a nursing tank.  My feet are also completely jacked up, and I've resorted to wearing my Birkenstock clogs around the house in an effort to get some tendons to loosen up.  I am the picture of high fashion.

I know its going to take a while to get back to pre-pregnancy weight after twins, so I'm really not concerned.  Plus things never went back to where they were exactly after Lillian, so I fully expect this time to be no different.  I am fully aware that the bed rest helped me gain enough weight that I had 5 and 6 pound healthy baby boys, and I am grateful and blessed for how things have turned out so far.  But I do want to eventually feel like myself again, and I think documenting the process will be interesting, if not just for a few good laughs.

Breastfeeding Bites

So I might be about to say some things that some people will find to be TMI.  If the breastfeeding topic makes you uncomfortable, you should stop reading now, this may be graphic.

I'm about to put into writing something I've only just admitted to myself, so this will maybe shock even my husband.  Though maybe not, since we've been here together before.  I pretty much hate breastfeeding.  But at the same time, I am addicted to the idea of getting it right.  I remember it being hard with Lillian, and I am sure I once before thought that I hated it.  But things did eventually get better, and I ended up breastfeeding Lilli for around 8 months.  So I don't remember the hate so clearly or even how I got past it.

Here we are again though, 10 days into infancy, and I keep thinking each new day has got to be rock bottom.  It can't get any worse than this.  So far, it continues to get worse.  Every fiber of my being curls with dread when my babies latch on.  It is like little knives stabbing me in the most sensitive, fleshy, blood filled part of my body.  Their gums are like little chain saws.  I am sore on the outside, but I bleed from the inside.  I can feel the pain shoot up the milk ducks inside my breast as the babies suck the first few sucks.  Once the milk drops this gets a little better, but never completely goes away.

Lactation guru's say if it hurts you aren't doing it right.  Well, I've been to lactation specialists and breastfeeding support groups and everyone tells me "that looks right, that shouldn't hurt". Well, it does.  I had latch difficulty with Lillian.  We finally got it figured out, but not until after I suffered a quarter inch gash in my nipple that now is layers of scar tissue.  So I do actually know now what a good latch is and how trying to latch 30 times to get it right is so much better than suffering through a feeding with a bad latch.

The boys are getting the hang of the latch thing, but their mouths are so small right now, and I hear boys take longer to catch on, so it may be a while before the process is set to memory.  So some feedings are ok and some are torture, resulting in 30 minute latch sessions drowned in baby screams and mommy's tears.

So now that there are two of them instead of the normal one, my boobs are doing double duty compared to Lilli.  The lactation consultant in the hospital told me to pump and bottle feed whenever I felt sore and to not feel bad about it (as I was already bleeding by day 2).  A few days ago, I started pumping every other feeding to give myself a break.  Turns out the pump isn't really my friend either.  I have to keep it at the absolute lowest setting possible, barely turned on, and it is still toe curling painful.  Today I've been pumping all day and now am considering a regular feeding to give myself a break from the pump.  It's a vicious, vicious cycle.  Not to mention the last time I pumped, my milk dropped from the sound of the pump, not a crying baby.  That's not normal.

Most people would say, with all the adversity, "Why don't you just give it up?"  Yeah, logical.  But I can't bring myself to do it.  I have nothing against formula feeding, but for some reason, I cannot up and quit what I've started with these little guys.  Mainly because my daughter received the benefits of breast milk for 8 months, shouldn't my sons receive the same?  There are more reasons than just the idea of being fair, but that is the big one.  Lillian is just as healthy as she can be, and I want the same for my boys.

So bitch and complain I will do, to my husband's dismay, until we can find a solution.  Maybe its partial breastfeeding and partial pumping or partial formula feeding.  Right now I have to just take it one feeding at a time.  Which is part of the reason this is hard for me.  I'm a planner and would like to start planning how this is going to work while home with a toddler.  The good thing about having the twins as second and third children is I know a little more about breastfeeding and how to handle my specific issues.  The problem is, there is a first child I need to consider when planning this majorly time consuming feat.

Honeymoon phase

 Sam and Will are one week old today.  They are in that wonderful phase right now before they make themselves heard.  Sleep, sleep, sleep, eat, poop, sleep, sleep, sleep, repeat.  They went to the doctor yesterday and both are gaining weight and only a couple ounces shy of their birth weights.  Things are falling into place and going incredibly well right now.  We are just waiting for that 3 week-ish mark when they will start to say "Hey, I'm here now, pay attention to me, hold me, feed me, let me pee on you more than once a day."

Pretty much what the guys do all day (and night - thankfully) long.

 They both seem quite mild mannered and don't make nearly as many noises as Lilli did at their age.  We had to move her from our room at 10 days old into her own crib because she was so loud.  The doctor said boys are just lower maintenance than girls.  I don't know if he was joking or not, so we'll just have to see.  But if that is true, I will be pleased. 

Baby Will says "Please mom, I don't have time for this."

 As of the past several days we are accumulating about 5-6 hours of sleep a night.  With Lilli at daycare for a few weeks, this is enough to run on.  I actually feel a lot like I did the last month of the pregnancy because I doubt I was getting more than 6 hours of sleep, and it was also interrupted, probably even more so.  The only hard part now is chasing or playing with Lilli when she is at home with a body that is totally crapped out.  But I get stronger everyday and am so happy to be moving around!

Baby Sam just as content as he could be.  Full belly, happy boy.

 We spent part of Memorial Day at my brother and sister-in-law's house.  Lilli's cousins give her a lot of attention because she is the only girl in the family that is still little and close by.  For sixteen year old boys (identical twins) they are so cute with her.  They kind of beg for her attention.  We've concluded of late that Lilli is very coy with males.  She acts as if she wants nothing to do with them, whining "Nooooo" when they want to hold her.  All the while she has this sneaky little smirk on her face, so you know she's just playing with them and hoping for a reaction - which she of course gets.  I think she is very smart, beyond knowing her letters, I think she has an instinct about people and is psychologically manipulative beyond her years.  Can't wait until she's 16.  Maybe she will use her powers for good and be very discriminatory when it comes to male attention.  A mother of a beautiful girl can only hope...

We love Aunt Kathy's purple flowers.

Kicking around her cousins' soccer ball.  We like the looks of this!

Duck and Duck's new source of nourishment sleeping on a bed of flowers.  Genius.

And the purple bow is also a constant - can't get her to wear any other color.

Life is good right now.  Not that is wasn't before.  We may be in the honeymoon phase or we may not, we shall see very soon.  One can always hope that they have the best babies in the world.  Could I be pushing my luck to get two of them and a super great toddler?