8 weeks old

8 weeks old! Hard to believe.

Michael being silly.

Malia being sweet.

Gigi and PopPop loving the little ones.

Jason got an awesome dance game for his birthday that the kids just love to watch people play. Check out the video.

Aunt Jami will do anything to get her niece and nephew to smile. Michael was swaying and moving his arms to the beat and Malia was smiling up a storm. Of course they stop as soon as the camera is rolling. These kids must love music already.

Exercising our necks

7 weeks old

Sleeping

Jason and I have been working on getting Malia and Michael to sleep well at night and during naptimes. We seem to have done well with the nighttime sleeping (most important one). We get 4 or 5 hour stretches between feedings at night. Once they are 9 pounds each I will cut back on the amount of time they have at the nighttime feedings in order to completely eliminate the need for nighttime feedings at all. They will help out too, with sleeping for longer stretches. Basically they will get all they need during the day, and then at night just relax and grow.

For naptimes, we are now putting them in their room for naps. We just started this today. I expect there will be some protesting these first couple of days, but that's just how it goes. We have to get the kids to realize what the routine is in order for them to go with the flow. They are napping right now in their room.

I'm reading a book about getting your baby to sleep 12 hours by 12 weeks old. I have to wait until they are bigger before I can start implementing the tips, but I'm excited at the thought of babies sleeping twelve hours at night. The book says they don't need to sleep the entire time, if they wake up early they will lay quietly there either playing with a toy or entertaining themselves another way.

When they are older, we also are going to try and see if they can sleep without swaddles. There is a lot to come in the next month and hopeful it will go smoothly.

Cloth diapers have been going well. I love love love the bum genius pocket diapers for nighttime. I double stuff them so they will soak up all the nighttime business. Then during the day we use the flip system which has a waterproof outer cover and then I just swap out the insert unless it is a poopy diaper. Poopy diapers will have the outer cover put in the laundry. I think my stash of covers is good, and Jenna and Gigi have made some new inserts I'm excited to try. When the kids sleep longer stretches, I think I can do diaper laundry every other day. Right now I do it once a day (one load) in order to get my nighttime diapers cleaned for the next night.

So that's the update. This is an older picture, because I haven't hooked up the camera to the computer. I took a really cute video that I will post later this week of the kids in their bumbo seats.

Do you want to see the placentas?

My doula took a picture of my placentas before encapsulating them. I'm not posting the picture here. If you want to see it, just ask me and I'll send you the picture.

The placentas are what kept our babies healthy and alive for 9 months. It's wonderful and I'm so glad that the placentas did their job. It is very interesting to see the picture, because they are not two separate pieces, the placentas fused together into one.

Internal organs are not pretty looking, that's why they are on the inside of our bodies. A heart is not pretty, but it keeps us alive and we should not say "disgusting" or call it "gross". The same goes for the placenta.

6 weeks old!

Cloth Diapers and Snow

We still don't have our latching and eating totally mastered, but we are doing much better. Michael is a great eater but a bad latcher (he takes three or four attempts sometimes to get it right). Malia latches on pretty well the first time, but she gets lazy with eating and messes up the latch.

Anyway, I think it's time to try cloth diapers. We will start with only the daytime. Then we'll bring them in at night when we are ready. I have experimented with the different kinds of diapers here and there and found that right now I really like the pocket diapers. I put an absorbent insert into the fleece pocket. The liquid goes through the fleece and is absorbed by the insert. The kids seem to like these better right now, I think it's because they don't feel as wet when they do soil a diaper.

So I have 12 of these and we change them five times during the day (we change twice at night). So that means 10 diapers. I should be good for one day with my current stash. We'll do every other day of cloth and then I'll decide to either throw in some other varieties of diapers (Bum Genius Flip) or I might make a fleece pocket for the other diapers to keep them feeling drier. It makes them cry less severely. Or I guess I could do laundry every day - No!

In other news....

We got our first big snowstorm of the year.

Gigi and PopPop gave us their snowblower and we are so happy they did!

Lastly - we have a baptism date scheduled. March 6th. If you are interested in coming - let me know. I'm happy to have anyone come who wants to come. It will be in Hillard at St. Brendan's (same place Jason and I got married).

One Month Old

One month old

(we will use the monkey as a size comparison in all growth photos)

The kids had their one month checkup and they did great. The both weighed in around 8 pounds. Both are in the 50th percentile for height. Michael is in the 10th percentile for weight and Malia is between the 10th and 25th percentile for weight. The doc said that is expected for twins - lower weight. He also said in boy girl twins, the boy usually gains weight slower in the beginning and then it will switch and she will slow down on the weight gain.

We are doing much much better at understanding their needs. And we can tell the difference between a stinker and an actual poop (it's all in the sound of the toot, juicy = poop).

Jason goes back to work next week, so if you are available to visit in the daytime you can come and keep me company with the twins. I did really well on my first day home alone with them. The one hard part was when they both woke up at 4pm very hungry. I haven't figured out how to tandem feed when I am home alone. I'm suppose to practice that. I think the pillow I have is kind of crappy, so I'm going to try out Pam's (she has twins and has let us borrow tons of stuff). So at 4pm when they both woke up hungry at the same time, I had to feed one while the other one screamed at me. It's very difficult. I don't think they ate very well, which was probably due to me feeling stressed during the entire feed. Malia finally settled down to a nap, but Michael was fussy the entire time until the next feeding. Jason came home to Michael screaming his head off - "Welcome home honey!" He reassured me that he knows that will happen sometimes and it didn't bother him. I just felt bad, because we had a great day up until then.

Malia is smiling at us now. It doesn't happen all the time, but its great when it does. Michael is still working on it. He smiles in his sleep (which is how Malia started) and he laughs in his sleep. He should be smiling at us any day now. We can't wait. It's really such a touching feeling when your baby finally smiles at you. Malia is probably thinking "Finally, I'm first at something!"

I want to get pictures printed and put up in frames on the walls. So that is the task I am starting when I have time.

Thanks to all those who have visited and also those who have fed us. We truly needed the help and would not have survived if it weren't for all of our wonderful friends and family. We love you!

Professional Newborn Photos

Ok, Pam posted the newborn photos from Malia and Michael's photo shoot. They are adorable. I can't decide which ones I want to get framed. Check it out for yourselves.