Two hours before dinner last night, I told the small ones that they would need to clean up the bucket of Duplos and the bucket of Thomas Trains that they had dumped out on the living room floor before dinner. One hour before dinner, I reminded them. Dinner came, plates were made up, the rest of us sat down…and two little boys had the nerve to look shocked and distraught that their plates were not among those on the table.

“I will be glad to get your plates as soon as you finish cleaning up your mess in the living room,” I told them….and told them…and told them many times over the next few hours.

My words were always met with a loud/angry/whiney “Noooo” or “Don’t want to”.

No problem :)

Unfortunately, they thought it was better to go to bed hungry than clean up their mess. Fine by me, the choice was in their hands: Do 3 minutes of clean up and eat or go to sleep hungry. They made their choice and stood strong by each other.

What they did not anticipate is that my stubbornness would carry through to breakfast.

Once again they were met with the dreaded words “I will be glad to get your breakfast as soon as you clean up your mess in the living room.”

They lasted about 2 hours with the occasional sad little whine of “Hungry…” here and there. Finally they made a different choice and the living room floor is once again free of Duplo booby traps.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, they are asking for their third! helping of cereal.

Unless you are the parents.

And have twins.

With one child it’s put them back in bed a few times and make the room dark and they’ll generally sleep. Playing with things too much to sleep? put them away. With twins in the same room it all changes. Who can sneak out of bed the most? Who can find something to play with? It all becomes an exciting new game and competition. “I bet I can get on top of the dresser faster than you can!” “Oh look the monitor has a light, let’s go get it!” and so on. Getting them to sleep which use to be a story, hugs and kisses and placing them in their cribs with their favorite blanket and maybe having to check on once more before they’d be out is now an ongoing ordeal of continuously placing one or both boys back into bed, pillows back on bed, covers back on bodies, rinse and repeat till you basically wear them out. Did I mention they are stubborn?

Oh and with a toddler bed comes that other fun new thing, falling out of bed. We are looking to add something to prevent this but until we do it means during the night one or both boys will fall out of bed one more more times and then cry pitifully until Mom or Dad come to rescue them. Oh and one of those falls will of course come about an hour before any sane person should be waking up at which point they of course decide it’s time to get up since they are out of bed anyway. And since one is up he might as well wake his brother up too.

And so the morning starts with two cranky boys who didn’t get enough sleep being looked after by parents who also didn’t get enough sleep.

And then there is the daughter blissfully sleeping away through it all till her princessness decides to awaken at her normal time.

In time they’ll learn to sleep in more and we’ll deal with or they’ll learn to not fall out of bed and things will be better but for now it’s an experiment in sleep deprivation.

When I saw Liam get up and high tail it after him, I no doubt expected a squabble to ensue over said binoculars.

When Liam caught up to Gavin, he put his hands on his shoulders, whipped around in front of him (hands now on the front of his shoulders) leaned forward and planted a big loud wet one (accompanied by a “MWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” sound) right on his face.

I about died. It was the cutest thing. I was grinning, laughing and getting misty-eyed all in the same moment.

The best part was the look on Gavin’s face after this transpired. He turned around with the cutest smile on his face that totally said, “Aww, my brother loves me!”

I will try to remember this moment the next time I see Gavin dragging Liam down by the hair because he wants to sit where Liam is sitting….

Gavin is:

-standing and cruising on furniture
-walking behind the little push toys
-clapping his hands (MIGHT be saying yay, not sure yet)
-saying: all done, more-more, Uh oh and boo (complete with hiding and peeking motions)
-still has 2 teeth, but seems another is thinking about joining the party soon
-signs: more (sometimes) and all done
-standing up without holding on to things (no real steps yet, but he’s thinking about it)
-drinking out of straw and sippy cups just fine
-feeding himself exclusively (well except yogurt and applesauce–Mom’s not ready for that morning mess)
-sleeps through the night ONCE in a while (only nights that his brother is up a lot)

Liam is:
-standing and cruising on furniture
-walking behind push toys
-clapping his hands
-saying: uh oh (and maybe boo, not sure if it was him or brother)
-still has 6 teeth, no signs of more yet
-signs: more
-drinking out of straw and sippy cups without issue
-stands up without holding on–will even tip his cup back and drink, while standing there. No steps yet.
-feeding self completely (see yogurt and applesauce rule above)
-sleeping through the night ONCE in a while (only on nights his brother is up a lot–I sense a conspiracy here)

Not long and my babies will be toddlers… crazy…

A Belly Lament
by Me

On my post-twin body, I’ll be blunt.
It’s my belly that suffered the brunt
For it stretched out so wide with 2 babies inside
now it looks like a butt on the front.

Feel free to join in my limerick game– let me know if you write one, so I don’t miss it :D

Here is a snapshot of my night.

7:30pm– The boys start getting cranky and rubbing their eyes. Looks like time for bed. They’re wanting to nurse, so we did that and once they were done, I put them down for bed. This was about 7:45. Both boys disliked this option and began screaming. Meanwhile, I’m trying to get Lidia to brush her teeth so she can go to bed, too.

7:45-8:00– I wear a path in the carpet going back and forth. Lay Liam down, say goodnight again. Lay Gavin down, say goodnight again. Back out to the bathroom to see that Lidia is doing what she’s supposed to be doing to get ready for bed.

8:00–Get Lidia in bed.

8:15–Finally it’s quiet.

I did some cleaning and such, but then my sister called and so I spent some time talking to her.

at 10pm I decide I better bathe tonight, since I’m sure I won’t be allowed to do so int he AM (good call). Called Adam to say goodnight and I was asleep by 11pm. Not too terrible.

12:30am- Lidia starts crying. This is odd, as she doesn’t wake up very often. I went to check on her and she had quieted by the time I got to her room. I asked her if she was okay and she said yes. She didn’t seem to need anything, so back to bed I went. Took me a long time to fall back to sleep.

1:30am- Liam wakes up. At this point I was thinking I just want him to go back to sleep. Decided to nurse him. Before I was even done nursing him, Gavin woke up. Put Liam to bed, grabbed Gavin to nurse him. He starts messing around and not really nursing anymore (falling asleep?) so I put him back in bed. This was just after 2am.
About 10 minutes later (just as I was dozing off again, of course) Gavin is back up again, screaming. Over the next 2 hours, I was in and out of their room, trying to settle Gavin back down. I am not sure what his problem was. I gave him ibuprofen, I held him for a little bit (and he’d cry the nanosecond I made a move to put him down). Nothing was working.

Finally at 4am, I decided to try nursing him again. At this point he was agitated and cranky and, while he was wanting to nurse, he wasn’t wanting to do it right. He bit me 3 times. OUCH. Finally, he settled in and nursed again and I was able to put him down when he was done.

At around 4:30, I climb back into bed. At this point I’m so riled up I am having a hard time falling back asleep. I finally started dozing when, at 5:15am, Liam was back up. I tried to put him back down twice, but he was having none of that, so in my delirium I just decided to nurse him again. I put him back to bed around 5:30. Took me a while, again, to go back to sleep. Last I looked at the clock, it was 6:30am. At 7am, Liam was up again. He woke up Gavin. Guess I’m getting up now.

I’m so exhausted and the worst thing is, there isn’t a thing I can do about it.

*sigh*

So, yah, I feel like crud and Adam is off getting actual sleep in California. Bah.

Since returning from vacation, I have seen a lot of Liam–in the middle of the night. On most nights, he goes through these 2 hour bouts of up and down. He’ll calm for a few minutes, and just as I start to doze, he’s up again. Gavin, on average, is up once a night, usually around 3:30am, wanting to nurse. At this point, I’ve been letting him, more because he won’t settle back down otherwise. Soon we may have to be a bit more insistent that he goes back to sleep without it.

At any rate, last night wasn’t *too* bad. Lids had swim lessons, so I put one boy in a sling and the other in the umbrella stroller and we managed it alright. They were just a big cranky as we didn’t get home until bedtime and the screaming began as soon as we got into the house. I was smart and put the boys in their jammies before swim lessons, so I just had to change diapers, put Lidia to bed and nurse and lay down the boys. Of course there was some screaming, but finally by 8:45 everyone was sleeping. Gavin woke once not long after I put him down to sleep, screaming as though he was in pain. He did not seem completely coherent, though. He wouldn’t even take the plug at first. Eventually, after I held and bounced him for a few minutes, he took it and sighed, then opened his eyes a teensy bit for the first time since I’d been in there. He went back to sleep, then, until his usual 3:30am (Hey, it’s better than the 11:30am we used to be able to set our watches by). Liam, then, was up at around 4, then back up at 6:30 at which point I groggily brought him into bed with me, where he finally fell asleep just in time for his brother to wake up at 7am. Bah. Oh well. (Did I mention, I am not a morning person??)

So today was Lidia’s day to bring snack for preschool. No problem, we planned ahead and I had something ready. Only, I forgot to purchase the beverage to go with it. Okay, well, we’ll be adventurous and run to the store on the way to preschool, I thought. We arrived at the store. I got all the kids out. I realized I forgot the diaper bag. Not the end of the world, except my wallet was in it. GRR.

Load everyone back in. Head back home. Get the diaper bag. Back to the store. Unload everyone. Run in, grab said beverage. Pay. Load everyone back in. To preschool. (By this time, we are already 10 minutes late). Finally, we deliver the girl to school. Not the worst morning we could have had, but a pain in my butt, none the less.

Got home and put the boys down for a nap, except now I’m going to have to wake them up as it’s almost time to go get their sister. (Did I mention the myriad of construction that is blocking the route from her to preschool? I have to take quite the creative route that adds a good 5 or 10 minutes to the trip)

Oh well.

Adam will be back Saturday night. Hopefully I can stay on top of everything.

Over the weekend the guys turned the big 9 months old!

In honor of this occasion, Liam cut his 2nd tooth.
Gavin thought about it, but will remain toothless for now. He doesn’t seem to mind. He may just pop 2 at once–there are 2 suspicious bumps on his lower gum, accompanied by cranky behavior…

In related news, the whole fan damily trekked to the doctor’s office today to see just how much these bugs have grown.

They are looking quite healthy, of course, and came out with a clean bill of health.

Gavin measured in at 28 inches tall (putting him in the 40th percentile) and weighed 18 lbs 11 oz (putting him in the 19th percentile).

Liam measured in at 28 1/2 inches tall (putting him in the 58th percentile) and weighed 18 lbs 9 oz (that’s the 18th percentile).

So, Gavin is still shorter than his brother, though he is closing the gap–however, he has now reclaimed the lead in the weight race (he was the “big guy” at birth, after all), pulling past his brother by all of 2 ounces. If you remember 6 months, he was 15 ounces lighter than his brother. All in all, they are staying pretty close in size, which is nice for the purposes of dressing them–no need to have 2 different dressers and separate clothing by size. Makes mom’s life easier for now. I’m having to put away a lot of their clothes from summer and summer is not even over! I’m buying 12 months now, which are a bit big, however they’ll work for now and (hopefully) get us into at least the beginning of winter… Time will tell.
Soon I will be ordering them some cute little shoes form Preschoolians because they offer a 40% discount for twins!! Can’t beat that! (Thanks for that tip, Laura!)

Their next appointment will be at 12 months! That will not be a fun one. It will consist of vaccines and a finger poke–blood for a standard lead test. Yuck. I remember all too clearly doing that with miss Lidia when we came home from Russia. The poor thing. Took them forever!! Maybe I should make sure the Dad can come with us on that one…

Here is a snapshot of last night.

11:30 –You know there is something about 11:30. 6 nights out of 7, a baby will wake up at 11:30. You can almost set your watch by it. And it’s not even the same baby every night–weird.

Anyhow,

11:30pm–Just as we are falling asleep, Liam wakes up and fusses a bit. It wasn’t serious fussing, so we did not go right away. He got quiet. Ten minutes later, he fusses a little more. Gets quiet again. A couple minutes later, he gives a few more fusses. He went back to sleep, and I was off to sleep, too. This is monumental because for some reason, these guys will not usually just settle back down. Whenever we have given them a bit of time to see if they will fuss back down, it escalates into that panicked “OMG WHERE ARE YOU” cry, and well, I can’t let them cry like that.

5:00am– What?? 5:00?? HOLY COWS! Liam wakes. Well, it’s 5! I bring him in bed to feed him, because, well I’d be hungry after that long too! Way to go Liam! I dozed a bit and then put him back to bed around 5:30 or so. A visit to the bathroom and I hit the pillow hard.

6:15am– Yes, 6:15!!! Gavin wakes. Alright then! Bring the boy to bed and feed him! He certainly earned it! At this point I’m nearly ecstatic that this is only the 2nd time I’ve had to get up all night. Still, I manage to doze a bit while he’s eating, and then return him to his bed at around 6:30. As I’m coming out of the boys room, Adam’s alarm goes off. Luckily, it did not wake the boys. I went back to bed and at 7:30 the boys woke up for the day.

I guess I would consider that sleeping through the night!! Little by little we are having more nights like this. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for a repeat tonight!