Not much new to report in the past week or so. They're still growing like weeds, we're still not getting much sleep, and they're still getting cuter by the day. I have a couple of pictures in the new Month 4 album. We haven't weighed them since Monday, when James weighed 11 lbs. 13 oz. and Kathryn was up to 10 lbs. 10 oz., which was around a half pound gain for each of them over the previous week.

They are starting to get some longer stretches of sleep, but it will take some work to get the timing right (for us) and turn it into some sort of schedule. Kathryn just won't eat if she's not hungry, so trying to get more calories into her during the day, or "topping off the tank" before bed just doesn't work for her. James will take at least some of his bottle most any time, but he still seems to be on his own timetable for now. The lack of sleep is getting a little rough. We're both pretty exhausted almost all the time, and most non-baby projects and activities are on the back burner for a while, but I know there's light at the end of the tunnel and before long we'll all be able to get a full night's sleep more often. Thank goodness for our weekly reprieve, knowing we get at least one night a week of undisturbed sleep is such a help.

What is changing fast is their personalities. We've gotten over most of the tummy troubles, though they still both have some fussy times when nothing seems to make them happy -- we tell them to stop acting like such babies! :-) Fortunately these are usually short-lived. They are spending more time awake, and happy, and are beginning to really enjoy watching their mobiles and other moving toys. Kathryn studies everything around her and will happily sit in her swing for a long time just watching the mobile go around before finally falling asleep, or in her bouncy chair swatting at the spinny toys in front of her. We get some smiles out of her, but usually she is quite serious. James has turned into Mr. Giggles, smiling and even laughing at almost everything -- diaper changes, toys, and especially Daddy and his silly songs.

Three months!

Three months old tomorrow! They're still growing by leaps and bounds, and getting cuter every day.

We weighed them the other day on a package scale. Kathryn is up to 10 pounds, and James nearly 11 and a half pounds. As if on cue (our pediatrician said we could start working on sleeping through the night at ten pounds), Kathryn slept for nearly six hours that night, and James almost seven. Last night was two five-hour stretches, but with a lot of fussing in between. At least we're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel and beginning to believe that we may, someday, get a full night's sleep again.

The last of the Month 3 pictures are up, including a size comparison with the same stuffed animal they were holding in their hospital photos (taken just before they went home at three weeks old). They now weigh just about three times what they did when they were born, and have grown over five inches in length -- that's a third of what they measured at birth!

Sleep has never been so sweet

Last night I slept for almost eight hours straight, thanks to the help I mentioned last week. It was great!

This morning, James rolled from his tummy to his back for the first time! The first time on purpose, at least, he did flail around enough to flip himself once early on, but this was much more deliberate, pushing up with one arm until he got onto his side, then over onto his back (not sure exactly how he did that, I'd looked up to tell Russ to come see). He is also smiling a lot now, making cute noises, and almost giggling.

Last week's formula change (to Enfamil Nutramigen) seems to be helping Kathryn's tummy troubles quite a bit. She's eating better, sleeping better, and has been much happier the past couple of days. During her tummy time, she has been concentrating on trying to scoot herself along with her feet, and does a surprising job of it sometimes. She's also gotten her legs up underneath her with her butt in the air a couple of times.

They both had their last pulmonologist appointments on Tuesday to officially discontinue the apnea monitors and to get their first Synagis shots. We will have to go back monthly through the winter this year and next for the shots, but we're hoping that we'll be able to get our pediatrician to do them instead since they're much closer to home. The shots are to help prevent severe RSV infections. RSV is a common virus which most kids have caught by the time they're 2. It usually causes nothing more than mild cold symptoms, but it can be very severe in preemies and babies with lung problems.

Of course, they were weighed and measured while they were there. Kathryn was 20 1/2 inches long and 9 lbs. 10 oz., and James was 10 lbs. 6 oz. and 21 3/4 inches!

It's hard to believe they'll be three months old in another week...

So this is what they call the "colic"

Last night at around 3 am, Russ handed me the baby girl (he was on late shift last night) and said "See if YOU can figure out why she's been crying for the past two hours."

I put her in the sling and walked and walked and walked and walked and she settled down and fell alseep and I could finally sit down. By the time James was hungry again at 5:00, I was, fortunately, able to put her down in the crib without waking her.

This scenario has repeated itself several times ofer the past few days, at different times of the day and night. When it happens, she's pretty much always happy to be in the sling and walking around, sometimes happy in the sling and sitting down, sometimes happy in the front carrier, and eventually she'll settle down enough to be put down.

Poor thing has been having all sorts of apparent tummy discomfort, for which we are trying various remedies. A side effect of this is that what feeding schedule we had is out the window, as she'll get hungry, take an ounce of forumla, and refuse any more until an hour or two later, when she wants more NOW.

On the plus side, I ate lunch and a bunch of sweets and then had a four-hour nap / sugar coma this afternoon. I woke up about every hour, but I couldn't convince any part of my body to move, so I went back to sleep. I feel much better now.

And we got a pair of Bumbo seats, which they're still just a tad too young for, but they seem to enjoy them in small doses already.

Help is on the way

I am slowly beginning to dig my way out from under the piles of chaos and laundry that have overtaken the house in the past couple of months. Eventually I will work my way down to the suitcase that still needs to be unpacked (yes, from July). Fortunately I always segregate dirty & clean clothes when I pack to go home from a trip, and dump the dirties into the laundry first thing, so there shouldn't be any new life forms in there.

The nursery has been somewhat organized, but not really. Now that the babes are beginning to outgrow some clothes (no more preemie sizes! yay!) and we have received a number of larger size outfits as gifts, I'm getting them separated into "too small", "too big", and "just right", and finding homes for each stack. The organizing binge has extended into our bedroom, where I'm slowly working the closet back into a state where I can find he clothes I want to wear (not that I'm wearing much besides sweat pants and T-shirts lately, but I do go out on occasion).

This productivity boost has come from a couple of sources. First, the babies are settling into a decent schedule and sleeping much better at night. We put them down around 7 or 8 pm, they sleep until midnight or so, get another bottle, and sleep until 4 or 5 am. Of course it's not always this easy, sometimes they're hungry at 11 pm and then 3am; this morning it was 1 am and 6 am (which wasn't bad at all, especially for Russ, who had gone to bed shortly after 9 pm). Most nights I'm still on the "late shift", so I handle everything -- feeding, fussing, whatever -- from 9 or 10 pm until at least 3 am (usually 4 or 5 am), then wake Russ and grab 2 or 3 more hours of sleep myself until he leaves for the office. The biggest improvement so far is that they've been fussing a lot less between feedings at night, so I can snooze instead of jumping up every 15 minutes to calm one or the other of them.

Our other good news is that we'll have some help starting next week. We'll have a post-partum doula for a 12-hour stretch Wednesday night into Thursday morning, so we'll both get a full night's sleep and a relaxed morning. She comes highly recommended, and will also share her experience and knowledge with us. We have also enrolled in a program with alocal non-profit organization that offers a few hours per week of help to families with multiples.

Yesterday the kiddies looked so cute in their outfits that we had a little photo shoot on the sofa. The results are on the Month 3 page. There are also a couple of shots Russ took of Kathryn and I after story time.

How babies survive

And then, when I'm running on perhaps 3 hours sleep, and they've been fussing and crying and being generally uncooperative, they do this:




And my heart melts all over again.

(A few more new pics in the Month 3 album, too.)

New trick

Why are they screaming and screaming and screaming at 12:30am?

At first, it appears to be hunger. They don't both awaken at the same time, the second one waits just long enough after the first to let me think I can get away with feeding one at a time. Then everyone's crying because I've taken the bottle away from the first to get the second one up, find the Boppys, and get another bottle prepared. Once we're settled again, they're happy for a few minutes, and then start crying again.

Is it gas? Try burping each of them (again, prompting cries from the one who is without bottle while I burp the other), aha, success. Happy again for a few minutes, and then both start up again, crying so hard they don't even want to eat. OK, try diapers. One poopy, one wet. Clean pants should feel better, but that's not the problem. Try wrapping, unwrapping, different positions, and finally stumble upon the solution...

They want to be held while they eat (Why is this a surprise to us? Not that long ago, it was all we could do to keep them awake long enough to suck down an ounce and a half of formula). At the same time. At midnight. And they're now both too big to scoop up in one hand.

More sleeping stuff; Increasing cuteness

Sis demanded new baby pictures, so here's one. I took this the other day because he looked so cute and peaceful, snoozing away. That's about it for pictures this week, other than Daddy trying to assemble the new swing. I'll have to take some more over the weekend. They keep getting cuter, so we sometimes find ourselves incapable of doing anything but sitting and watching them even when they are sleeping. Doesn't do much for household productivity, but it sure is fun.

On Tuesday we had an appointment -- hopefully our last! -- with the GI specialist for Kathryn. Her reflux has improved and she'll be off the medication (Zantac) completely in another few weeks if all continues to go well. The other news there was the weighings: 8 lbs 5 oz. for Kathryn and NINE POUNDS for James.

I'm not sure where the week went. I have spent most of my time in a sleep-deprived daze. The house isn't falling apart yet, but it's teetering on the brink. If you don't hear from me in a week, send in a search party. Have them look under the collapsed mountain of laundry first.

This week both babies started sleeping through the night, just not at night. They've gone 6 hours between feedings, but from 6pm to midnight or from 4am to 10am. This is despite keeping things dark and quiet at night, even during feedings, and having them out in the light & noise pretty much all day, even for naps. Friday night they ate at 7pm, midnight, and 5am, which was wonderful. I wish I knew how to stop the dial right there and have it stick for a while.

Of course, 5 hours between feedings doesn't mean that we get 5 hours of sleep, but it's better than the 3-hour schedule they were on for a while. Preparing bottles, feeding, changing diapers, and clean-up takes at least an hour, even feeding both at once, and usually closer to 90 minutes. By the time both get rocked., pacifier'ed, and otherwise settled back to sleep, it can be two hours or more. Sometimes one or the other of them -- occasionally both at once -- will just need to be held while they sleep. Sometimes for an hour or two. Sometimes without moving at all. By the time I unwind and get sleepy again, my brain is eyeing the clock and telling me no sense in sleeping now, they'll be awake again in an hour (And that's the time they'll go ahead and sleep for another 3 hours :-).

We've got our schedule working pretty well. I take the "late shift" while Russ goes to bed around 9 or 10 pm. I take care of feeding and anything else needed from then until 4 or 5 am, though I sometimes wake him a little earlier if they're ready to eat and I can't keep my eyes open any longer. Then I sleep until 7 or 8am, depending on when he leaves for the office and when my internal clock wakes me (I have a lot of trouble sleeping late, or sleeping at all during the day, and once I'm awake past around 3 or 4 am, I might as well make a pot of coffee because I'm up for the morning). After several days of this, I'm a basket case, because sleeping in one or two hour naps just doesn't do it, even if it adds up to 6 hours a day.

Fortunately, a couple of nights a week, we switch and he takes the late shift while I sleep. On those nights I get in bed as early as I can and read or watch TV. Even if I don't actually fall asleep until 11:00, I can be up at 4 am feeling (relatively) awake and refreshed. An hour or two of quiet time and five or six hours of uninterrupted sleep during normal sleeping hours does the trick, as long as something doesn't awaken me in the middle of it. That hapens sometimes, and it makes me very cranky. I'm still pretty zombie-like even with the good sleep, but it gets me through the next several days of up-all-night.

Yesterday they suddenly spent much more time awake and wanting to play & be entertained during the day -- James in the morning and Kathryn in the afternoon. I think they planned that out during the night to make sure we'd have no time to get other things done. I am hoping this is a sign that they are starting to get night & day figured out, and that we might be on our way to sleeping at night and being awake in the daytime. Stay tuned...