First Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  We had dinner at our house this year, and things did not go quite as planned.  First, two fancy pie recipes went down the sink before I made a good old Libby's pie in a Marie Callendar's frozen crust.  Then the Fergs had to back out because the plague had descended upon their house and they didn't want to spread their germs to us.  And then we had to take Sarah to the hospital.

Can you spot the owie?

The poor little thing had a nasty hair tourniquet around her toes.  She had cried a lot at bedtime last night, but we thought it was just her reflux acting up.  So that means it had been on there quite a while before we noticed it this morning.  The hair was wrapped around her middle three toes and continued to wrap individually around the ring toe.  Matt was able to cut the hair and dig it out, much to Sarah's screaming displeasure, but the ring toe was so horribly swollen and the gouge was so deep that it was impossible to see if he'd gotten it all.  And since the swelling didn't go down after the unwrapping, we had to assume that he didn't.

We called the doctor, who paged the nurse, who paged another doctor, who told us to go to urgent care to get her taken care of.  We told him that the hair had actually cut through her skin on the bottom of the toe, and he warned us that they might have to make an incision in her skin to remove the hair.  I was just worried that she was going to lose her toe, but since it hadn't turned blue yet, she was still safe.  Matt's parents were good enough to come to our house early and watch Hayley while we took Sarah to Children's Hospital.

It was pretty desolate in the waiting room.  I wondered if we'd see any turker fryer casualties, but apparently the children of northern Colorado were safe this year.

The doctor called us fairly shortly and had a look at Sarah's toe.  She told us that we might have gotten the hair out after all.  Apparently the swelling will stay very tight for a day or two even after the hair is removed, and she couldn't see deep enough into the gouge to see if it was still there.  Now, I debated whether or not to include this picture because it creeps me out, but I feel an illustration is warranted.

Here it comes.

Nasty baby toe.

Looks really painful.

All right, here it is.

Sure looks like the hair's still on there, doesn't it?  Well, we couldn't tell for sure, so the doctor put a little blob of Nair on her toe to dissolve what might be left.  (Just on the top, since the bottom was cut open.  That would sting like a mofro.)  Then we sang and danced for her while the Nair sat for ten minutes.

"On a long and lonesome highwaaaay, east of Omaha..."

"My toe smells like a perm."

Then the doctor came back to inspect her toe with a probe, and oh my god, my poor little Sarah.  She screamed and screamed as loud as her little lungs would let her.  It was horrible.  And since the doctor still couldn't tell us if the hair was clear, she gave us the option of cutting her toe just to be on the safe side.  The idea being that if we cut through her skin, we'd also cut any hair left inside.  I asked if she'd be anaesthetized, and the doctor hesitated and said, "Well... it goes so fast..."  

Maybe I was still raw from the screaming, but I didn't want to do that to her on the slim chance it was necessary.  So we took her home with instructions to watch for any worsening over the next day, in which case we'd come back and get her sliced.  But now, eight hours later, her toe is already getting back to a normal color.  Whether it was Matt's work or the $50 dollop of emergency room Nair, the important thing is that she's keeping all ten toes.  Hooray!

And now, since Hayley wasn't featured in this story, here is a picture of her looking heart-meltingly adorable.

Fun with RetroCamera

How do you do it? (Part Two)

I just spent a lovely weekend in Keystone.  Thanks for the invite, Fergs!  And now we're all back home, the babies are in bed, and I can hear Hayley slurping on her hand all the way downstairs.  Slurp on, baby!

So, back to every single detail of my day.  The intent of this post was just to outline the time management and organization that two babies take, but I keep getting side-tracked with other notes and observations.  I'm running with it, though.  I find that I'm already forgetting details of those wild early days, so it's comforting to preserve this day in the life for history.

So where was I?  Right, playing with babies and wishing I could hold them both at the same time.

10:30 - Time to feed the babies again.  They eat every three hours, which is the same schedule they had when they were brand newborns.  They were on a four hour schedule for a while, which was awesome, but we couldn't maintain that when Sarah decided to stop eating.  She just couldn't take in enough calories with only four meals a day, so we had to add an extra one back in.  Hayley could do four meals easily, but that would require seven different feed times at 7, 10, 11, 1, 3, 4, and 7, and the nap schedule would be disastrous.  So, three hours for everyone!  Eating and napping at the same time is by far my most important sanity saver.  It is everything.  Sometimes one baby will wake up early, and I just can't bring myself to wake the other one up at the same time.  No one is happy at the end of those days.


10:55 - Hayley is done eating and I'm in the middle of Sarah's feed.  The doorbell rings; it's our Early Intervention coordinator, Jolie.  I told her she could come by around 11 so I could sign some paperwork, but I was hoping I'd be done feeding the girls by then.  It throws Sarah for a huge loop to have Jolie come in and coo at her; she's startled and intrigued and she can't even think about her bottle anymore.  It's kind of ironic, since we're using the service to get help for Sarah's eating issues.

Sarah does manage to eat some more, and when she's done, I notice that both she and Hayley have very sleepy eyes.  Jolie and I have just been chatting so far; I haven't been able to sign anything yet with an armful of baby, and now I need to put both the girls down to nap.  This is kind of a helpless feeling.  I have stuff to do.  I have someone sitting in my house waiting on me to do a simple task, and I have to put it off even longer because the perfect-put-down window is razor thin.  If I catch it, the girls will lie down, blink prettily, and fall right asleep.  If I miss it, they will scream, scream and scream.  Luckily, Jolie is in the kid business so she understands, but I still feel bad and rush through the process.  Scoop up Sarah, take her upstairs, lay her down, kiss her forehead, repeat with Hayley, then stand between the cribs with my breath held.

Yep.  Too late, screams all around.  So now I'm bouncing back and forth between the babies, trying to offer pacifiers, but they just fall right out of their screaming mouths.  I frantically shush, pet foreheads, and keep shoving pacifiers, but to no avail, and I keep imagining Jolie downstairs, whipping out a notebook and writing, "Cannot quiet crying babies."

I give up and go back downstairs.  There's nothing else I can do.  If I pick them up to cuddle them, they'll go quiet, but they'll be even more livid when I put them back down.  So I tell Jolie that they're going to cry for a few minutes, but hopefully they'll fall asleep soon.  She tells me, "Good for you!  It's so great that you can let them cry.  That's going to help you out a lot in the long run."  It's nice to hear that, but as she goes on to talk about the paperwork I'm signing, I can't hear a word she's saying.  I see her lips move, but I'm only thinking, "Crying.  Crying.  I hear crying.  Hayley stopped, but Sarah's getting worse.  She's not going to fall asleep.  She needs a pacifier.  I have to go to her!"  And meanwhile I'm just signing and signing.  I probably sold the girls' organs or something.

Finally, I tell Jolie I need to go check on them, which is kind of embarrassing since she just praised my backbone.  I run upstairs, kiss Sarah's crumpled, teary face (which breaks my heart), and give her a pacifier.  She takes it easily now since she's too tired to put up a fight, and her eyes close immediately.  Success!  And relief!

I finish up quickly with Jolie, and as she leaves, she tells me how impressed she was with Matt for actually coming to the girls' evaluation earlier, and what a fantastic father he is for being so involved with the girls.  She also tells me that I have a wonderful attitude as a mother because I don't try too hard to be perfect or do everything I did before, like keep up my appearance.  Not in those precise words, but yeah.  (I didn't tell her, "Actually, this is exactly what I looked like before, minus the barf.")  But it did make me think.  Matt and I put the same effort level into the girls.  Obviously, I spend more time at home, but I keep Matt posted on everything that happens during the day, and we're equally involved in their eating, their exercises, their sleep scheduling, their milestones, their doctors' appointments, etc.  It never occurred to him not to be, and I think most of my dad-friends feel the same way.  Yet for equal effort, Matt gets praised for going far above and beyond, and I get praised for not trying too hard.  I think that says a lot about society's expectations: mothers are martyrs and fathers are idiots.  I mean, Matt really is a fantastic father, and I know how lucky I am to have him.  But still, we both found it strange that Jolie was all aflutter simply because he came to an appointment. Anyway, just a bit of social observation.

11:15 - Jolie is gone, the girls are asleep, and it's Friday.  DVR'd Project Runway time!  I settle in with a Diet Dr Pepper and thank the girls yet again for being good sleepers.

12:00 - I hear hooting coming from the baby monitor and the episode is only two-thirds through.  Oh well, it was a boring one anyway.  (Menswear... who cares?)  I bring the girls downstairs, but it quickly becomes apparent that Sarah was only pretending to be done napping.  She is pissed.  PISSED.  She starts crying, then howling, then screaming like her hair is on fire.  Her face is purple-red, her eyes are scrunched shut, and her little toothless mouth is huge and quivering with rage.  This is pretty unusual; I've seen them cranky when they wake up too early, but this is a whole new level.  So I pick her up and she instantly quiets in my arms, but she really needs to go back to sleep.  I decide it's time for a walk; even as out-of-her-head as she is, I know she's no match for a gently jostling stroller.

I put both of the girls into their car seats, and of course Sarah starts screaming again as soon as I set her down.  Her baby siren goes off while I strap her in, then strap Hayley in, then go into the garage, get the stroller out of the trunk, unfold it, go back inside, get Hayley, take her into the garage and click her into the stroller, then finally go back inside for Sarah.  She sobs while I carry her outside and click her in, and then halfway down the driveway, she's perfectly calm.  Works every time.

The stroller is front and back, not side by side, and both seats face me.  I put Sarah in the seat farthest from me, since I want her to sleep.  Hayley gets the coveted eye contact seat today.  That's usually the deciding factor in who sits where: the sleepy one gets the back and the perky one gets to be up front with me.  If both are awake, I may decide based on who's being social versus who seems interested in looking at the world.  Or if one is spitting up a lot or just seems to need me more, she'll go up front.  If all things are equal, sometimes I'll switch their positions at the halfway point of the walk.  Or, if it's very sunny outside, I drape their gauzy blankets over them and immediately forget who's where.

I have the blankets over both of them today since I want them to have a little darkness, and five minutes into the walk I peek underneath.  Both of them stare back at me with huge eyes.  That's a little unnerving; they're beginning to resist the stroller!  Five minutes after that, they're both still wide awake, so I give up and uncover Hayley so she can look around.  Sarah stays in the dark though, and finally she drops off.  We walk for over an hour through the neighborhood, past the elementary school with all the kids out for lunch and through the greenbelt area where I can spy on other people's back yards.  I'm hot and sweaty, and I'm sure the girls are too, but at least they're quiet and happy.

1:45 - Back home, I lay the girls on their playmat to cool off.  Hayley's a hot-blooded baby, and she's completely sweaty all over.  Sarah gripes about being laid down, so I pick her up and tell her I'm not about to walk her around for another hour.  Then she defiles her diaper and coos happily at me.  I guess sometimes that's all it takes.  So I change her, lay her back down, and she's perfectly happy to look at her dangly toys.  I watch them for a while and am amazed at how quickly they're learning.  Just a couple weeks ago, it was all they could do to flop an arm in the general direction of a toy.  There was a lot of guessing on our parts, "Did she try to touch the monkey?  She brushed it's foot, was that an accident?"  And now we find them gripping monkey feet and parrot tails all the time.  They still have only about 80% accuracy, but it will probably only be a few more weeks before they're grabbing toys out of our hands.  It's just incredible how much and how quickly they're learning.

2:00 - Sarah starts griping again and I realize I'm half an hour late for their lunch.  Oops.  Sometimes it's hard to stick to the clock schedule, but the most important thing is to keep them synced to each other.  I feed Sarah first since she's the one complaining, and since Hayley's still having fun with her toys.  I do try to mix up their feeding order occasionally, but it never lasts.  It's just to easy to get Hayley's quick feed done before settling into Sarah's endurance trial.  I worry sometimes about Sarah being the squeaky wheel getting all the grease, so I try to give extra attention to Hayley.  Then I worry that Hayley is getting more fun time while all Sarah's time is maintenance.  I don't think I'll ever stop this emotional bean counting, but I don't know if that's bad.  I should always be cognizant of who's getting more attention, because I know that they will, and I want to be as fair as possible.  But if I over-analyze, will that over-emphasize the issue to them?  Or is it even in my power to de-emphasize it?  I guess I'll find out when they start talking and telling me how unfair I am.

2:45 - The girls just about fall asleep during their feed, so I put them down to nap, and luckily they go down easily.  I take this nap window to clean out my closet, something that's been eating at me for ages.  I'd like to work on the shirt I'm sewing for Matt; it only needs buttons and buttonholes and it will be done.  But the sewing room is right next to the nursery, and the machine has started waking up the girls.  Well, there was one time that I started sewing and one of the girls woke up.  It could have been a complete coincidence, but I'm not willing to test the theory.  Lots of baby care aspects foster superstition that way.

4:00 - I have a garbage bag full of clothes to give away, and the girls are making wake-up noises again.  Umm... I don't really remember the rest of the day now.  But you can see the pattern.  Babies wake up, I change them, I feed them, I play with them, they go to sleep, I take care of some business, and it all starts over again.  And again.  Matt comes home around 6:00 when the girls are usually in their last nap.  We talk.  If the babies are awake, Matt plays with them and exercises them on the mat.  Dinner gets made/delivered, and we either eat it with a baby in each of our laps or let it get cold until after they go to bed.  We each informally pick our "ward" for the night and bathe her (if time permits), feed her, PJ her, and put her to bed. They're usually down by 8 to 8:30, and 99% of the time without any fight.  When they're overtired during the day, they scream when they're put down, but when they're overtired at night, they just pass out.  I don't know why, but I'm not complaining!

After I run the bottles through the dishwasher, Matt mixes the next day's formula and fills them.  Then we get about three hours to ourselves, enough to watch a movie, work on our hobbies, or just hang out and play Scrabble on our phones.  I go to bed when I chose to, between 10:30 and 11:30, and it's very rare that the girls will wake me up until the morning.  It's vital to my morale that the amount of sleep I get is in my hands, not theirs.

And that's it!  That was my very long-winded description of "how I do it" with twins.  It's a full day, but as long as I stay on top of my schedule and basic home maintenance, I don't feel like I'm drowning.  It doesn't always work out, of course.  Just last night, the girls missed their last meal, Sarah woke up to eat in the middle of the night, then Hayley woke up an hour early and Sarah woke up an hour late, and the schedule was chaos.  But I got them sorted out by dinner, and they both went to bed full, happy, and on time.  And tomorrow is a new day to get it right from the beginning.

So the moral of the story is:  Don't pity twin moms, because we probably don't have it as bad as you think.  But don't make fun of us for being obsessed with our schedule, because we couldn't survive without it!


Now here, have some silly Sarah faces.

How do you do it? (Part One)

That's what people ask me a lot, and it's kind of embarrassing how manageable taking care of the girls is.  I mean, it's time-consuming, but it's usually one steady stream of work, not a juggling nightmare.  So I thought I'd outline my day so people can see what taking care of twins is like.  At least, what taking care of good-natured, fantastic sleeping twins is like.

(Excruciating detail warning - I like to be verbose for posterity, so I won't be offended if you get bored and wander off.  Seriously.  There aren't even any pictures.)

7:00am - My alarm goes off and I immediately hit snooze.  I had set it to go off before the girls wake up so I can shower, get dressed, and have some nice, caffeinated tea, but at the moment I don't care about any of that.  The girls have been sleeping solidly since 8pm and I've been sleeping since 10:30pm, so I can't say I'm deprived.  I'll just never want a shower more than I want to sleep.

7:15am - Alarm again.  Snooze again.  I hear grunts coming from the baby monitor, but no one sounds upset yet so I go back to sleep.

7:25am - Hayley's gone from grunting to cooing to griping, so I finally get out of bed.  (Matt is already halfway through his morning routine.)  I go into the nursery to find Hayley writhing around, looking flushed and confused.  As soon as she sees me, her eyes focus and she breaks into a gigantic grin and flails her arms and legs.  I stroke her hair and she tosses her head around and squeals crazily.  It's so close to laughter, but not quite there yet.  I play with her a little longer because it's one of the best times of my day.

Then I check Sarah; she's awake and quietly looking around.  When she sees me, she gives me a big smile too.  She kind of bites at the air with her grin, like she wants to smile wider but doesn't know how.  She also does some limb flapping and gentle cooing, but it's nothing near Hayley's exuberance.  That's okay, though; I know that she's at her happiest even if she's more subtle about it.

7:30am - I try to determine who's in a better mood.  The happier baby will be fine to stay in her crib while I carry the crankier baby downstairs.  The walk will put the cranky one in a better mood, and hopefully that will sustain her while I go back to pick up the happier one.  This is the sort of logistical thing that I had to figure out at one point, but it's just mindless instinct now.

Everyone's happy, so I take Sarah downstairs and lay her on her playmat.  That makes her cry for some reason, so I put her in her baby rocker instead.  Then I get Hayley, lay her down in the bassinet downstairs, and put her bottle in the microwave.  While it heats, I change Hayley's diaper.  Then I measure out her Prevacid in a plastic syringe, shoot it into her bottle and swirl it around.  I put a bib on Hayley, which makes her grin crazily again.  (I don't know if it's because she knows she's about to get fed or if she's just happy to be handled.)

7:40am - I pick up Hayley and sit in the recliner closest to Sarah so she can watch us.  Sarah's sitting quietly, and she'll probably stay that way, but it's best to be in a position to make interesting faces at her in case she starts griping out of boredom.  I give Hayley her bottle and she drinks it way too quickly.  I stop her every couple of minutes to burp her, but it's also to prolong the eating experience for her.  Otherwise she'd be done in about five minutes and I don't want her to get shafted on the eating/cuddling time.  She still finishes in under ten minutes, though, so I hold her a little longer and kiss her chubby cheeks.

7:55am - I put Hayley down in the swing.  I don't know if she still requires upright time after eating, but I'm never motivated enough to try laying her flat and risk getting barf in her hair.  I pick up Sarah and put her in the bassinet.  Hayley starts whimpering, so I try to give her a pacifier but she won't take it.  The attention seems to be enough, though, so I go back to Sarah and repeat the bottle/diaper/medicine drill.  We sit down next to Hayley and I give Sarah a little extra cuddling before we begin, since she eats better if she's happy.  Unfortunately, she can't figure out her sucking motion immediately, so she cries around the nipple in her mouth until I soothe her again.  We repeat the try/fail/cry/soothe cycle a couple times until she finally gets it and drinks hungrily.  After a few ounces, she loses her latch and we have to go through it again.  I feel bad pushing the bottle into her mouth when she's crying and making her even more upset, but I remind myself that she's crying because she wants to eat but can't.  However, that means that when we near the end, the only way I can tell if she's full is if she screams extra hard when I try to get her to latch again.  Some feeds are better than others, but it's rare to have a completely tear-free one.

8:20am - (OMG, this is so long already...) I set Sarah back down in her chair next to Hayley in her swing, then sit down in front of them.  I pet their feet and make faces at them, and they smile and coo at me, but they're starting to wind down.

8:30am - They go back down for their first nap just an hour after they wake up.  They're both smiling when I lay them down, but they quickly realize that they're not being held anymore and they start crying.  It's a gulping, irritable, scrunchy-faced cry that they only do when they're overtired.  Hayley takes her pacifier fairly easily, but Sarah tosses her head around and cries about it like she does with her bottle.  I finally get her to hold onto it just long enough for her eyes to close, and I bolt, shutting the door behind me.

8:35am - It only took five minutes to put them down, and I know that I'll get at least an hour to myself now.  If either of them wakes up, they'll be sleepy enough to take their pacifier without a fight and immediately fall asleep again.  It really is that easy.  I do some dishes, eat my breakfast, read my e-mail, and do some planning for an upcoming camping trip.

9:40am - Hayley starts yelping and I'm actually disappointed that their nap was "only" an hour.  I know so many parents would kill for one predictable hour every morning, so I try not to take my sleepy girls for granted.  But just like a lot of hassles seem perfectly normal to me, so do a lot of my blessings.  They sleep for an hour minimum, but sometimes I can get an hour and a half or even two out of them.  I really am spoiled.

I go upstairs and get my excited baby greetings again.  I put Sarah into Hayley's crib so they can squirm together and accidentally grab each other's arms.  They've only just started looking and smiling at each other, so I'm trying to encourage their relationship.  I change them both out of their pajamas and into onesie outfits, which they tolerate because I'm smiling at them and touching them.  But when I try to put a cute little hoodie on Sarah, she loses patience and starts crying.  I take it off and cuddle her, but I can tell she's in a bit of a mood.  I wonder if she's still tired and cranky, but it would be impossible to put her back down, so I just go with it.

9:50am - I take the girls back downstairs and lay them on their playmat together.  I used to lay them head to toe, but when they got more active they started kicking each other's heads, so now they lie in the same direction.  They still poke each other's faces with their hands sometimes, but there's a sweet spot that I can position them in where they're mostly safe.

Sarah cries when I lay her down again, which is frustrating because the playmat is usually her happy place.  (Maybe she remembers getting kicked?)  So I pick her up and cuddle her while Hayley plays, but seeing Sarah's sweet, blissful face in my arms just makes me feel guilty.  The happier she is being held, the more I feel I'm being unfair to Hayley.

Now, this is absolutely the hardest part of having twins for me.  I'm constantly worried about giving them equal love and attention.  The real point is to give each one enough love and attention, but I keep getting hung up on the equal part.  Which is why it's easier for me to lay them both down on the mat and scratch their bellies and make faces at them at the same time.  No one's getting held, but it's fair and it's easy; everyone is getting equal mom time.  So even though Hayley is perfectly happy playing and is so not keeping track of who gets held and for how long, I still feel like cuddling Sarah is somehow subtracting from Hayley's love.  I know that by that logic, I should be able to even things out by cuddling Hayley for the same length of time later, but because I have that sense of subtraction, that can feel like two wrongs making a right.  I KNOW.  It's so stupid and backwards and it doesn't benefit any of the three of us.  I really am trying to get over it, but it's harder than logic makes it sound.  Feeding, diapering, and all the practical stuff?  That's easy to deal with.  This is when my two arms feel so painfully inadequate.


Good lord, it's past 11pm now and I'm not even to noon yet.  Are you still with me?  You're awesome.  But it's time to slap a "Part One" on this and go to bed.

Three months

So much has changed in three months. Sooooo much. And I did a poor job of documenting it. I'm sorry.

Don't worry about it.  It's only my CHILDHOOD.

Life is more harmonious now. I've learned a lot about how to handle two babies, and the girls have gotten happier, calmer, gigglier, and more entertainable. So life's been improving at double speed.

Mommy doesn't call me as many bad names anymore.

I love the girls more and more now. That sounds like such a negative thing to say, doesn't it? Like that necessarily means that I used to love them less. But it's a different love. The more time I spend with them and the more their personalities develop, the more I am loving them as their own little people and not just their potential.

We are pretty charming.

On a shallow note, they have both grown up from adorable but bleary preemies into gorgeous babies.

Hayley is a whopping twelve pounds; she's more than doubled her birthweight. I call her Chunk, Matt calls her "the little butterball," and we sing "Hungry Eyes" to her with the words changed to "Thunder Thighs."

Guess who?

But we love that she's eating and gaining weight well. We tell Sarah to be more like her sister, because she hates eating and is only ten and a half pounds. I call her Tiny Ass because she was in newborn diapers for over two months. I also call her Fatty Fatty Fat-Fat when she has a good weigh-in, to encourage her.

Words hurt, you know.

Yes, yes, we will stop the weight comments and sibling comparisons when they're able to understand us. We really do want mentally healthy kids; it's just too entertaining to smile and say terrible things that they can't understand. That's probably a sign of sociopathy... I'm not going to look too deeply into that part of myself.

Someone please adopt me.

Sarah's eating actually is a real concern. Sometimes she'll eat peacefully and sometimes she'll freak out and scream at the bottle like we're jamming a hot poker in her mouth. But even on a good day, she still doesn't have a big enough appetite to support good weight gain. She's been improving on her own a little, but mealtime is still a real chore. It's just so frustrating when you know she's hungry but she simply refuses to eat. She's like an ancient god who gets enraged when her tributes are offered incorrectly.

You'll rue the day you dishonored me.

On the plus side, both girls sleep amazingly. They were good sleepers from birth, but now they're all organized about it. When the sun goes down, they go down too, and all we need to do is plunk them down in their cribs and say, "Good night!" They were waking up around 3am for one middle of the night bottle, but the last couple nights they've slept all the way to 7am. Forget that "sleeping through the night means five consecutive hours" crap. We're sleeping through for real now! *knocks on EVERY piece of wood*

Divine providence

During the waking hours, the girls can't get enough of Looking. It's their favorite skill. They like to Look at dangly toys, bright lights, the clock pendulum, the TV, their feet and each other. But nothing is more limb-flailingly spectacular than Looking at mommy and daddy first thing after they wake up.

OMG I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN HOURS!!!

Recently, they discovered Batting when their wildly flailing arms happened to connect with some of their dangly toys. That was exciting enough, but now they're both on the hairy edge of Grabbing, which is blowing their tiny minds. Sarah is slightly better at it, but Hayley made a good, concerted effort today. She slowly raised her arm and tried with all her might to aim it at the dangly giraffe. She totally whiffed it, but her hand ended up near the parrot, so she moved her gaze and aimed for her new target. Another whiff, and then her arm collapsed with the mental and physical effort. But I love how hard she's trying!

A for effort!

I love spending my days with the girls. Now that they no longer require constant triage, I get to really enjoy interacting with them and watching their brains grow. Even the smallest things, like Sarah rubbing her fingers together today, are amazing because they're brand new accomplishments in coordination. I feel like now is when I'm really watching them being born. Everything that it means to be human, every tiny piece that we take for granted, is indivdually falling into place.  They've already learned so much, and they've still barely even begun.  I can't believe how lucky I am to be able to watch it happen.

Matt may have a hard time talking me out of a third.

Funny how a full night's sleep changes your outlook, huh?

Day 3

We have a couple new parenting quotes from Matt.  While washing Sarah's hair: "Let's scrub that soft spot and give you nice, clean thoughts."  And while feeding Hayley, a succinct: "Grow some teeth, you weirdo!"

Today is day three of Matt at work and me at home.  It's going surprisingly well; even when I get stereo screaming, it's just not as overwhelming or anxiety-inducing anymore.  I feel more practiced and confident at this mom thing.  Hear that, girls?  You can't scare me anymore!  I'm onto all your tricks.

Being a stay at home mom is dangerous, though.  I'm not making any money, and it's way too easy to go shopping every day.  The girls are always quiet and happy in their stroller, and the same old neighborhood walk gets boring.  But there's Flatirons!  And the Highlands!  And Cherry Creek!  And Lodo!  It's so pleasant and indulgent to go leisurely shopping on a weekday afternoon.  It makes me feel like the ladies who lunch.  I just have to remind myself that they're rich and not buying formula and diapers for two.

And now, have a sweet little Hayley face.  I'm proud of this picture; she's a hard one to shoot.  She inherited her mother's knack for always having her picture taken in a weird expression and with multiple chins.  But here is a glimpse of baby serenity!

This is how it goes

One baby wants to sleep, one wants to squirm and make faces.

We had our third pediatrician appointment this week, and as you can see, Hayley's off her oxygen!  It's SO much nicer now that she's cordless.  Now we can hold her on either side of the room without dragging a tank around, we can pick her up without worrying about catching the tube and yanking her head back, we don't have to mess with tacky stickers on her temples or fix her cannula when it's jammed into one nostril, and we don't have a noisy, hissing and popping oxygen concentrator steaming up the nursery.  Freedom!  Oh, and yes, I'm also very happy that my child can breathe.  The next step is to take them to altitude, but they won't be ready for that for a couple months.  Just in time for Oktoberfest!

Just some cuteness

Here are some average-quality pics from my phone. I need to get on Matt to process his fancy camera pictures.

Last day at the hospital, and their first time together since birth

Baby tetris

I can't even handle this level of cuteness

Hayley foolishly exposing her soft underbelly

No sense of self-preservation at all

Baby, TV tray, same thing

Sarah's off her oxygen!

Crazy milk-tongue face

"Why do I get dizzy when I squeeze these tubes?"

The girls out in the world

That last picture was taken today when I went out for frozen yogurt.  The lady at the table next to me was a grandma and nanny, and she fired this list of questions at me: "Aren't they too young to be outside?  Are you breastfeeding or supplementing with formula?  What kind of formula are you using?  What kind of diapers?  How many pounds of baby weight do you have left to lose?  Are you swaddling them at night?  Don't pet my dog; you don't have any wet wipes and you'll get the babies sick!!"  It was all rather blunt, but she was really just excited to talk shop with a new mom.  And I totally petted her dog with my elbow.  I'm not going to leave a dog unpetted.

Settling In

The girls finally came home from the NICU on Friday at 9 days old.  9 days sounds a lot shorter than the time actually felt.  It was hard, but it was also a routine.  Care time was at 2, 5, 8 and 11, so we made the 8am and the 5pm before and after work.  When I first came home from the hospital, I wanted to camp out at the NICU all day long to be with them.  What else did I have going on?  Why on earth wouldn't I?  But after the 8 and then the 11, I was so exhausted I couldn't take it, especially with no place to nap.  So we had our two visits a day, and I pumped and slept and pumped and slept the rest of the time at home.

On Thursday, the day after they told us "one more week," suddenly the girls turned a corner and sucked down their entire bottles, which was the last criteria to go home.  They told us we could room in with the girls that night and then take them home in the morning.  So after five o' clock care, Matt and I took advantage of our free NICU babysitters for the last time and had dinner at the Cheeky Monk.  Then we came back to spend the night in a creepy little windowless bedroom which was jammed randomly into the hospital like a room for psych experiments.  It was a rough night; the girls were disoriented being away from the familiar NICU, and Hayley was particularly afraid of the dark.  We ended up keeping the TV on all night long on mute so she'd have enough light to feel at home.  She and Sarah alternated their freakouts, which was kind of convenient, since there was only one to soothe at a time.  But it was frustrating to see one fire put out and sleeping peacefully while a new one started up.  We couldn't help thinking, "If we only had one, it would be quiet right now!"  Also, they still had their heart and oxygen monitors on, but the leads weren't that secure so we woke up several times to frantic your-baby-has-no-heartbeat alarms.  That was really annoying, but the monitors were helpful too.  When one started fussing, we could look at their heart rate and see if they were melting down or just sleep grunting.  So it was a long night, but we made it through unscathed and took them home the next day.

The first few nights at home were a reeaalllly big adjustment.  I won't lie; there were tears every day.  It's not that the workload was even that bad; the girls do sleep a lot.  But it was incredibly overwhelming to turn on a dime like that and suddenly live life on a three hour schedule.  Matt and I each handle one girl per feeding session, so we couldn't even break into shifts and get more sleep.  Feeding/changing/comforting takes about an hour, so there's no more than two hours of sleep at a time for either of us.  (One and a half if I stay on top of pumping.)  It's not terrible in itself, and we haven't even felt that sleep deprived, but it's just the relentlessness of it that made that initial adjustment so demoralizing.  As Matt put it, we know that they'll be sleeping longer in four months, but when you're living three hours at a time, that feels like a geologic era away.  On top of that, there was the intense guilt for having negative feelings at all when we'd finally brought our babies home, so it was a rough time.

Luckily, it only took a few days for us to get into a routine and adjust our expectations, and now we feel like we've got a pretty sustainable rhythm going.  However, we know that's going to change when Matt goes back to work in a few weeks, and also when the girls become more aware of their surroundings and sleep less.  So we've started planning for the future, the first step of which is to get onto a shift schedule at night.  We've tried a couple ways of feeding both at once, but there are no clear winners yet.  I tried crossing my legs and putting each girl into a knee crook, but they're still too floppy for that.  I put them in their car seats and held a bottle in each hand, which worked better, but it was hard to get a good angle on the bottle and inconvenient to take them out to burp them.  Now I'm envisioning a wedge with some small side bumpers to keep them in place.  Then it will be more open for me to pick them up as needed, and I can make sure the angle is right.  We can put both of them on the wedge and feed them with a bottle in each hand, or we could alternate holding one and using a bottle propper with the other, so each girl gets held every other feeding.  It's the best option I can come up with since they're still too weak to nurse.

Now this brings me to a really sore subject.  I know it's stupid to pay attention to internet comments, but they can still really hurt when you're new and inexperienced and just trying to figure out how to make everything work.  I shopped around for bottle proppers and here are a few of the comments I found:

"What ever happened to mother baby bonding time. ... Their only small for a short time and every moment should be charished. Shame on whoever buys this product and shame on amazon for allowing it to be advertised."


"Babies need holding for their emotional health. If you want a whole nation of psychopathic demons in the future, just neglect to hold your babies at all."


"That's really pathetic."


"ya that is just really sad. never in a million years would i ever use something like that w/ any of my kids."


But the whole reason I'm getting a propper is so I can hold one of my babies when I feed them!  I only have two hands; I can put a bottle in each one, or I can save one for a baby.  Occasionally someone will add "I guess it could be helpful for multiples" in the middle of their judgmental frenzy, but that's almost worse.  Like, "You're a pathetic, negligent, cold-hearted monster if you use a propper, but I suppose if you have twins you have to be."  And unfortunately, there is a grain of truth to that.  I wouldn't call it monsterdom, but I simply can't give each girl all the attention that I want to.  If they cry at the same time and Matt is not immediately available, one of them just has to wait to be picked up.  How many single babies get the "yeah, yeah, in a minute" treatment on their very first day home?  I'm sure it will go a long way toward building character and patience in the future, but that's not what this time should be about.


Still, there are benefits.  We may not have a single center of the universe, but we do have two.  And when there's time to sit back and enjoy them, there's a positive feedback loop of adorableness.  "Look at Hayley!  But look at Sarah!  Hayley's hair!  Sarah's knees!"  Every time I hold one, I think there can't be anything better and I'm afraid she's my favorite.  Then I feel that way all over again with the other one.  And when they clumsily flop their limbs at each other or a hungry Hayley tries to suck Sarah's nose, I can't imagine a single baby could ever be that cute on its own.  So yeah, we may have more hassles, but everyone has hassles of some sort.  Not everyone has this:

Happy One Week Birthday

Our beautiful little girls are one week old today.  It feels like I've had them forever, and it also feels like it can't possibly be a whole week already.  Time is slipping away!  They're growing up too fast!

Sarah is our baby A.  She started off extremely small early on, to the point that the doctor thought she would become a vanishing twin. But she caught right up and stayed just slightly smaller than Hayley through the rest of the pregnancy.  She was on the bottom of the dogpile in utero, and was more of a slinker than a kicker.  She did protest when I leaned too far forward and trapped her against my thighs, though, and I suspect that she was the one who bounced on my bladder like a trampoline.


Sarah was the first one out, so her little squawk was the first one we heard and cried over.  When I saw her for the first time, after the nurse laid her on my shoulder, I couldn't believe how beautiful she was.  Objectively, too, not just emotionally.  She has a round, well-shaped head with short, lightish hair and a perfect face, with long, spindly eyelashes and little pink lips.  Her eyes are blue-gray, but it took days for us to see them open for longer than a second.  Her right ear is folded over at the top, just like her daddy's, and her pinky toes are folded under like her Grandpa Doty's and mine.  Her skin is pale, and even after the slight jaundice goes away, I think she will still be more golden than pink.


Sarah has a flaming temper, although it's mellowing as she gets healthier.  She used to get so angry that she would screech like a baby pterodactyl and desat her oxygen down to 50% if she didn't like the way the world was treating her.  But luckily, in the past couple days she's gotten better at maintaining both her oxygen and her composure.  We're also getting better at learning her hot buttons.  For instance, I thought a skin-to-skin bottle feeding would be a nice bonding time for her and Matt, but she refused to eat and spat her milk out until we gave up and swaddled her tightly again.  Then she was more than happy to take the bottle peacefully.  She has very definite opinions about the way she wants things to be, but when she's happy, she's incredibly sweet.  She loves to be cuddled after her meals and I love to oblige her.  

Hayley is our baby B.  She was wildly active throughout the pregnancy and liked to make the ultrasound tech fight to get clear pictures.  She gave me the strongest kicks and made my belly skin ripple and roil.  As soon as we decided on her name, she quickly got the nickname Flaily Hayley.


Hayley looks completely different from her sister.  She's particularly beautiful too, but her features are less classic and more striking.  Her hair is long, thick and surprisingly dark for having (originally) blond parents.  Her eyes are huge and almost all iris, which are deep, dark blue, and her lips are wide.  She has an incredibly expressive face that goes from alarmed to bewildered to shocked to skeptical, and when she gets drowsy I can trigger the most adorable smile by tickling her chin.


Although we pegged her as the wild one during the pregnancy, Hayley is really easy-going.  She does have her moments though, and her whole body turns bright, tomato red when she gets angry.  Inexplicably, taking her temperature is one of the surest ways to set her off.  It's only an armpit probe, but to her it's the deepest violation.  She calms down easily though, especially when milk is offered, and she's equally happy to eat swaddled tight or naked bellied.  From the moment she was born, her eyes were wide open, and even when we're cuddling she loves to stare intently at the world around her.  So far, that's only been her NICU nook, and I can't wait to take her home and show her the world beyond.