Differences in personalities

My babies are 16 weeks old!

Here is the difference between Matilda and Lucas in a nutshell...

Last night I had Matilda, and Duane had Lucas. I was bouncing one
knee up and down rather violently, and singing equally loud. Matilda
was thrashing her arms up and down, and whenever I stopped, she
kicked and screamed.

Lucas was reclining on Duanes lap while Duane read a magazine. Lucas
was quietly studying the pages. I looked at him and said "Can we
swap babies yet?" :-P

Matilda and Lucas were lying on the floor together. Matilda stared
at the light fixture above her, squealing and "ooohing". Lucas had
his head turned watching CNN.

Sometimes I worry about how introspective Lucas is, but, he is very
engaging, too. Matilda will get on our laps, lock eyes and squeal.
But, Lucas will make very strong eye contact, wait for pauses in the
conversation and then "talk". He tries so hard and we sit and
say "Oh really? Is that so?" Etc. He also smiles at us more
frequently than Matilda. She would rather smile at things that
please her, and us when WE please her... but, Lucas will smile
everytime you make eye contact with him.

VERY different babies! (And my mom says I was just like her, and
Duanes mom says he was just like Lucas!)

My little sweethearts!

We're at my moms this week.

Lucas and Tilly are currently NOT camera shy at all, and we have been using the
digital camera to capture them smiling. I also have a couple of them
holding hands, which they do sometimes when they are laying together
on one of their play blankies (These were posted in the previous entry).

They have a wonderful routine now- they go to bed at 11:00 and get
up for their first bottles at 7 a.m. After their bottle we play for
45 minutes, then they nap in their swings. They take a longer nap
after their 11 a.m. feeding, and they go to bed at 8 p.m. but we
wake them up for their 11 p.m. bottle (actually we wake them around
10) and put them down for the night. They sleep in our room in
their "soothing motions gliders".

One question- what are opinions on the baby einstein videos? Matilda
sometimes gets bored and I keep thinking there is something we are
missing in the realm of entertainment. Songs, games, and toys seem
to only take her so far, and then shes ready for something new!

We hope to have some family pictures taken through the holidays. :-)

Now, Duane and I both believe in attachment parenting as much as you can do with
multiples and Lucas NEVER cries. If he starts to cry, he is picked up
an consoled instantly. I do not believe in Cry It Out. They are too young for
it anyhow. But, Matilda is allowed to sometimes "cry". I put it in
quotation marks because its really not a cry at all- its like this
weird whining "fake cry" and if you say something to her she cackles
and smiles. She does this really bad around 5 a.m. because she wakes
up bored and has trouble getting herself back to sleep. I am up every
5 minutes for about half an hour handing her a pacifyer which falls
out of her mouth as she drifts off then she wakes up again. I probably
would try and ignore her, but, it wakes up Lucas, who does cry when he
wakes up. (A true cry).

Which brings us to daytime. Basically anytime Matilda is bored, wants a new toy, or is fighting sleep she starts whining. My mom thinks its funny, and will go up to her and in a baby voice whine back, and Matilda will laugh at my mom. But, when she really needs to nap it IS annoying. She just whines until she falls asleep. Like I
said above, if it turns into a true cry, I get her and console her,
then put her back down. But, the little fakey cries when I KNOW she
just needs to nap we ignore. We touch her cheek, hand her a pacy,
but then we walk away. If I did pick her up every time she did the
fakey cries, Lucas would NEVER be held. The first day I was here my
mom actually lectured me that she hoped to goodness I did ignore some
of Matildas antics because she worried that Lucas was left out because
he is so good natured and peaceful.

So, here we are staying at my moms, and its been hard to keep them on their schedules, because my poor sister is very sensitive to Tilly's crying, and picks her up at every whine. And my mother is worried I am picking her up too much. Love "back seat" parents. Hee, hee.

Lucas HATES formula. We will be discussing this with the peditrician on the
5th. He will eat at first when he is hungry, but then he stops and
cries when his stomach makes any sort of gurgling sounds. He is on a
soy formula, and not sure where we go from here as I doubt its a
formula problem. You just feed him through the crying until he his
stomach stops making noises and then he eats well, or, he stops
altogether. Well, he will sip his juice (for his bowels) just fine
even when his stomach makes noises because Lucas loves sweeties. :-)
So, my mom decided Lucas should have juice at every bottle even though
it makes him poop and we only use it to move his bowels when he has
trouble. I let him have juice again to shut my mother up, and he had
a "blow out" and a belly ache afterwards. So, then she agreed that we
were right to limit it, but lamented how sad it was since he loves
juice.

13 weeks old!

These were from around 10 weeks of age:





The babies started sleeping longer stretches at 10 weeks. I cheated
and added rice to their bottles because they only woke up at 3 a.m.
to eat ONE OUNCE and it actually seemed to make them sleep deprived
and irritable until about noon the next day because that extra ounce
laid on their stomachs and they "pooped out" on their 7 a.m.
feedings! Once we added the rice (two tablespoons was all) they now
lay down after their 11 o'clock feeding until 6:30 in the morning.
After this we moved them back into our bedroom and Duane and I are
now sleeping together again. :-) My mom couldn't believe we waited
until they were ten weeks old to add it. She said it used to be
standard to add it at 6 weeks. Our peditrician doesn't recommend it,
but they had already prescribed it to Lucas for spit up issues, so it
was more a matter to just adding the same to Matilda.

They both have the same sleeping schedules and eating schedules, and
really are both easy going.

I feed them at 6:30 (at the same time- I prefer to feed them
individually, but for this meal they eat together)), then I use the
treadmill until around 8 a.m. and do yoga. I then do laundry and
clean- this is the only time of day that the twins are content to
just swing and daydream. After their 11 o'clock feeding we take turns
playing in the bouncy (I sit beside them and press buttons on their
toys and rattles) or under their playmat together (same, only we also
bicycle their legs and sing songs during this time). By about 6 I am
wore out and when Duane gets home I go to sleep about 8 and get up at
11 to help with the last feeding until the next day!

We still haven't mastered tummy time I am sorry to say. Matilda was
having horrible temper tantrums and wouldn't eat afterwards. Now I
wait until shes already having a tantrum over something and then use
it to do tummy time!

They are both happy babies and have good dispositions. She is still a
bit demanding, but, I have decided that if I wasn't comparing her to
Lucas (the most well tempered baby ever) I would probably say shes a
good natured patient baby, too!

I am an introvert and while I don't miss "me time" exactly, I
do get "sensory overload" from a lot of twin interaction. This is why
I still require the naps at night even though they now sleep in good
6-7 hour blocks at night. I just get exhausted after hours of
playtime. However, one good nap and I miss them terribly, and get up
all hours of the night to just look in on them.

I told my mom that God gave babies smiles
at 6 weeks of age so mommies kept feeding them. Ha! Up until that age
its pretty thankless. Once mine started smiling I felt as if I was
the most blessed person ever. :-)

We haven't started a nap schedule yet. I am not sure how one does
this, and won't get to see replies to this message since we don't
have internet and I am on Duanes uncles computer. If anyone wants to
chat, call me and give me nap secrets! As of yet, both babies at 13
weeks still like to sleep some after every feeding. I am guessing as
they are awake for longer and longer spells that I will be able to
find a good naptime schedule.

As of yet, they only bathe once a week and I get very
nervous getting them in and out of the tub, so bathing makes all of
us restless and anxious and we all three nap afterwards! I wash their
hands, feet, face and privates everyday.

8 weeks old!

We see the peditrician for their 2 month checkup on Wednesday, but, we
no longer have internet so I am doing my catch up now.

Both babies are now over 10 pounds. They are such good babies. All my
friends and relatives seem amazed that I hold phone conversations and
cook and clean the house. Partly, because Duane lets me sleep for 5
hours when he gets home from work everyday, and partially because the
babies don't have colic.

As soon as we went to powdered formula, Lucas stopped having gas. I
guess the extra water helps him make poopies. :-P I now recognise that
the first week at home with them was so hard because I didn't
understand what their cries meant. I would hold them when they needed
a diaper change, change their diaper when they were hungry, and feed
them when they wanted to be cuddled! But now I speak "grunt" (Lucas)
and "Squirm" (Matilda) and it has made life with newborns much easier.
They stay on a 4 hour schedule, they don't cry without reason, and
are easy to soothe. My only worry is the swings. They are both
addicted to them!

Also, they aren't having any developmental delays for 35 weeks. They
both smiled on schedule and do everything the babycenter updates say
is appropriate for each week. Both smile, both hold their heads up and
like to sit on our laps. They track and follow objects, and they like
to see where sound comes from. We hold their hands, sit them up and
let them study the world.

My main issue now is that they are now alert for long periods of time
and I am a dullard with baby games! I sing only three songs- Old
MacDonald Farm, Itsy Bitsy spider, and The Brady Bunch theme song. Ha!
I am improvising on fairy tales. We just don't get out much to buy
baby things. I sleep as soon as Duane gets home, and he comes straight
home from work. We haven't used a sitter yet because I don't
particularly trust anyone with them. :-P

I think the first couple weeks I was home I screwed up my thyroid. I
only took my medication once or twice a week, and now I feel a bit
rundown and lethargic.

I am at Duanes work with the twins, and then we are going out to dinner as a family.
His boss just came in here, she looked at us and said "I can't believe
how good those babies are. I can't believe it".

OK, maybe they aren't *that* good... maybe I just know what they want
and take care of it. We are implementing attachment parenting as much
as possible, so they never do cry for long. They are never more than 3
feet from one of us 24 hours a day. Whatever it is, screw all those
hateful women who would hear I was pregnant with twins and apologize
and say "Double Trouble". My TWO babies are better than their one
babies ever were apparently, because I actually think I could of
handled triplets as easy as these babies have been. HMPFH!!! Sorry if
I seem like a braggart, but I really got sick of everyone telling me
to anticipate my life being "hell" with twins. Its not been anything
like that at all. Watch if we have a third one- she/he will have colic
for 6 months, LOL.

Lucas and Matilda 8 weeks 1 day






Anyone here doing attachment parenting?

tummy time, smiles and shopping

As far as when to start tummy time, The issue was with Lucas "spit 'em ups" we didn't
know when to do tummy time. We decided to do it right after we diaper
them before they eat. That way they won't have spit 'em ups! We are
doing anywhere from 1-5 minutes after diapering for the 7 a.m., 11
a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. feeding. The others are their "sleep times" so
we don't want to wake them up.

They both do fairly well- Matilda is better at holding her head up and
is already able to turn it from one side to the other which I read
occurs a little later than now. Lucas has a larger head than Matilda,
and he can't hold his up as high. Plus, he can suck on his hand when
he is on his tummy, so we have to keep pulling his hand away. When he
discovered that he could suck on his hand, he decided tummy time
wasn't too bad! Matilda hates it and screams. :-(

Matilda really was smiling last week! She has smiled at me all
morning, and I was able to take two pictures of her grinning when she
was waking up waiting for her diaper change (the diaper abruptly ended
that happiness!).

I do all the shopping on weekends while Duane cares for the twins, and
when I got home yesterday he had cooked a pork tenderloin in a pepper
marinade, steamed broccoli with a southwest spice, and long grain and
wild rice. I think he is why I feel rested right now. He lets me catch
up on sleep on the weekends and gives me time to myself while he cares
for the twins... but, get this... the babies are wanting to sleep
through the night. They are behaving at night the same way they did at
3 weeks when I moved them from a three hour schedule to a four hour
one. They started this the past week. They no longer wake up for their
late ight feedings, and they don't finish their bottles when we do
wake them up. I am going to make them hold off until 8 weeks though.

Hard Day's Night

The other night at 3 a.m. I was stomping up and down the living room
singing Hard Days Night at the top of my lungs to get Matilda to sleep.

She has decided that she likes to be wide awake and HELD in the wee
hours.

Anyhoo, I am totally sleep deprived. I actually feel more rested
other than the wee nights with Matilda. Today I even did one of my 20
minute "Walk away the pounds" videos. Exercise is a good way for me to
freshen up when I feel tired midday. Especially since its hard to nap
when Duanes not home. I just keep checking on the twins!

They sleep in bouncy seats during the day, and their twin pack and
play at night. Duane and I take shifts at night- this is working for
me but not him. I can get by on interupted sleep, but he can't. He
needs a full 6 hour block to feel rested, and who has that? His mom
had been coming up a few days a week, but it doesn't help me rest. I
actually feel like my guard goes up and feel more tired when she
leaves than when she was not here. However, it makes it easier to feed
as it never fails, whoever I am feeding the other one will start
screaming! I can see why twins learn patience early. Eventually I will
stop trying to placate the screaming one and make them wait their turn!

Well, thats my update. Everything is wonderful here, just exhausted. :-
)

Weight gain

The babies gained 24 ounces in 14 days! Thats ten more ounces then
they needed to gain. :-) Lucas now weighs 7 pounds 1 ounce, and
Matilda weighs 7 pounds 9 ounces. Shes chunky. We sing "She's a
brick house" when we are burping her. My SIL heard this and
said "Glad you two are enjoying your toys". LOL

The twins are 5.5 weeks old and still treat us like we are
just "food receptacles" is that normal? Matilda might be grinning at
me now, but not even sure about that- could be sleep grins