Annoying Habit #1: For several weeks now, the boys have developed this INCREDIBLY annoying habit of crying/whining like maniacs when you are burping them in the middle (and heck, sometimes even the end) of a bottle. Once, I was feeding Aidan, and someone began burping Brady and Aidan started doing his crying thing WHILE HIS BOTTLE WAS IN HIS MOUTH. HELLO?! you can't whine about having your bottle taken away when IT HASN'T BEEN!!!
You will be feeding them and everyone (when a third person is here helping) will be happily sucking along, when all of a sudden - it's time for a burp. then all hell breaks loose. Aidan's definitely sounds the most whiny. Brady sounds angry (and whiny). And Gavin is Baby Kong. Gavin is so strong that when he doesn't feel like he should burp yet, he will stiffen his body, stick both arms straight out to the side and turn bright red as he does a half growl/half whine yell. He will wave his body around as you desperately try to hold on to him so he doesn't face dive to the floor and he looks like a Baby Kong who is about to terrorize a small Japanese city. It is hilarious to watch - not so hilarious when you are the one to feed him. Of course the flip side of waiting to burp Gavin to avoid Baby Kong is that he will likely do one large Stealth Bomber spit up long after you have let your guard down. sweet.
Brady on the other hand (Annoying Habit #2) is a puker. i mean, SERIOUS puker, pretty much every time. I always grab two of the super thick burp cloths when I feed him, because i will usually go through both. After his whiny/angry crying spell (and he has burped a couple of good ones) he will sit there with this angelic look on his face . . . an promptly fill the burp cloth. sometimes i don't know how that kid is growing - he is a happy non-sleeper and he pukes up 1/4 of his bottle (it seems).
Annoying Habit #3 (because doesn't everything good come in threes?!): Aidan is a genius. It does not matter how much you give him in his bottle, he will stop drinking at the last two ounces. and you basically have to beg him to finish (which he will do in between whiny cries and smiling and giggling at me). He has been doing this since December and it is getting OLD. Again, another kid, I'm not sure how he's growing, except that he is our most steady "good sleeper". Now some might say "oh, he's probably not hungry" but the thing is, he will eat it (and not spit anything up) as long as you give him a 15 minute rest and you heat the bottle to the near boiling point he likes to eat at (he's his mom's son - i love food when it's HOT! give your tongue a blister hot . ..).
And on to adorableness. Is there anything cuter than Aidan laughing at a simple sneeze? over and over again? I guess cold season will be a riot in our house :)
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Sleep - the elusive dream
Wakey, wakey! Eggs and Bakey!OK, so since the night before i began work again, the boys have been pretty darn good sleepers. Except for the last week or so. Honestly, Curt has borne the brunt of this since I'm so tired from pumping in the middle of the night that I often don't hear the cries for pacifier returns, etc. He's noticed a pattern developing with the boys that they are waking up every couple of hours with short cries. once we go in and give a pacifier back or flip them over they fall asleep and we won't hear from them for a couple of hours. This usually happens between 3 and 4 am with one or all boys and can begin again between 5 and 6 am. ouch.
Because they share a room, of course, we have been MUCH more likely to check on them than to just ignore it since we don't want them to wake their brothers! man are they stubborn. It's 3:30 AM and Aidan has been crying with these caterwauling cries (one whiny one every few seconds) for nearly an hour now. we are pretty sure if we give a pacifier or flip him over he will go back to sleep - at least for a few hours, but we are reading a book that considers this "positive reinforcement", and most of the other stuff in this book has been completely accurate. As you can probably guess, curt and i are up in the middle of the night and at our wit's end. and then of course, Gavin was woken up and began crying too. double ouch. once Aidan finally fell asleep around 4 AM, Brady began a whiny cry. Even though the doors in this place muffle sound pretty well, for some reason our bedroom door will not close any longer and curt has had to put in ear plugs. this is by far one of our worst nights and i hope this "extinction crying" (shout out to all of you Dr. Weissbluth fans!) will work quickly - i don't think either of us can take it for too long!
The good part about last night's marathon crying session was 1) they were still very happy to see us in the morning and 2) they went down VERY easily for their naps. they were a little bit crankier the rest of the time (so were we), but they were pretty solid little sleepers when they were napping. Shock of all shocks, I re-read our sleep book and it talks about the naps being too long (guess I shouldn't read in the middle of the night while I'm exhausted and pumping) and how that can interfere with night sleep. hmmm . . . so we shortened the afternoon nap on saturday and tried to go out to dinner with the boys after some shopping. Let's just say, I think brady ACTUALLY melted down in the restaurant. thank goodness it was just an american chain and we were by ourselves near the window or we might have been thrown out. Me holding him and rocking him didn't get him to stop - little punk. HOWEVER - they have slept really well the last two nights . . . let's hope this pattern sticks . . .
Friday, February 13, 2009
Nannies, thumbs and rolling over
Safari Friends (B, A, G)I have been back at work now for about 6 weeks and so far things are going pretty well. The week before i went back i had the same feeling all women do who enjoy their career and love their kids to pieces "i can't believe i'm going back to work and going to leave these precious kids with near STRANGERS. am i a bad mother? bad person? especially if there are parts of me that are looking forward to it? Will they love the nannies more than me?" I made a decision to SUCK IT UP. we are talking about 7 hours a day (i have reduced hours for one year) and i live 5 minutes away from work. i come home for lunch, people.
We have hired two nannies on the other hand who do NOT have the same ability to be close to their families. Tess and her mother Marie are from the Phillipines. Marie is in her 60s and has lived here for about 15 years working as a nanny/housemaid for Qatari families. Her daughter Tess is in her 40s and has two daughters in their early 20s who live and work in Doha and she has a 7 year old boy and a 14 year old girl who live with family in the Phillipines and she hasn't seen in at least 2 years. HEARTBREAKING. so i can suck up being gone a few hours a day and enjoy how dang EXCITED the boys are to see me when i return. you'd think they won the lottery or something. (well, they did with curt and I as parents! :) ) Aidan will stop whatever he is doing until i come over to give him a kiss - this includes eating. Today he actually whined until Marie switched with me so I could feed him. Maybe he will be our mama's boy. :)
Aidan grows a mohawkGavin has found his left thumb and BOY does it taste good! He has always needed to suck more than the other two for comfort and it seems the pacifier doesn't cut it anymore. Now, I don't think thumb sucking is a big deal (i was a pacifier kid until just before kindergarden) but Curt is against it (typical thumbsucker). This evening Gavin was sucking away happily on his passie after his bottle and took it out and promptly stuck the thumb in and began slurping away as though THAT had milk in it! I think thumbsuckers have it good - no pacifier to fall on the floor (for us to come and put back in in the middle of the night), it won't get mixed up with his brother's, etc. Curt remembers the hardships that came with trying to quit (wearing socks on his hands, hot sauce, etc) and is firmly against it. So when I see Gavin going in for the thumb (again) i start laughing and curt gets this sad/frustrated look on his face. So do we have any votes out there - pacifiers over thumbs???
Where Gavin loves his thumb, Brady is a hardcore pacifier fan. He will spend hours grabbing his passie, pulling it out of his mouth, looking at it, putting it back in. Last night he was playing with it and having it make a popping noise when he would pull it out of his mouth. I don't think curt will need to worry about thumbsucking from him.
Aidan is our number 1 roller at 22 weeks!!! the other night he rolled from his tummy to his back during his evening nap without making any noise about it. when i went in to give brady his pacifier (see, thumbs can't get lost!) i was befuddled about why Aidan was on his back when we usually tummy sleep them for naps. turns out the next day, he had also rolled over during his nap time and Tess and Marie were surprised as well! Well that same day, Brady rolled over during his nap! Aidan is our most consistent so far and seems to be trying to roll over anytime he is on his tummy - now we just need to get him to roll back the other way! We figure Gavin has a little more heft to move, so it just two more days to get the rolling thing down. Does this mean we can now put them to sleep on their tummies without feeling like the SIDS police are going to hunt us down???
Monday, February 9, 2009
Aidan loves Daddy!
Floor fun with mom (Aidan, Gavin, Brady)
Saturday, February 7, 2009
is it really three times the diapers?
well, yes and no. certainly three bottoms take their toll on the environment. for the first couple of months when they were eating every three hours, i think curt and i felt like that's all we did. i think the harder part of parenting for three is the soothing. sometimes you have to dig down REALLY DEEP to find the patience for just one who seems to cry without explanation or remorse. and then if that happens to another baby (or another), you may feel like you are on fumes with your patience. this is when we HAVE to use tag team. the way i look at tag teaming, is if Curt says "I need a break" then i have to begin with my patience as though this is the first time the baby has cried. and sometimes that's hard since i'm not deaf and have been listening to the episode myself for a very long time. the good news for us is they don't seem to set one another off with crying (most of the time, naps are a different story for Brady and Gavin).
Brady at 3.5 months
Speaking of sleep, how did we begin to get some? well, until we were in Texas, we were doing feedings at 8 am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm, 12am, and you guessed it, 4 am. yes, we had help. my dad was visiting for a month, Curt's folks were here for 2 weeks and while we were in texas my parents were helping with the late night and early morning feeds as well. but it was pretty freaking tough. especially when we factored in the time i needed to pump milk as well. yikes. so i had purchased a book in a moment of desperation called "12 hours sleep by 12 weeks". It had this entirely too technical system of decreasing the 4 am feeding by a half ounce while drastically increasing the other feedings and then have you wait up to a half hour after they first stirred at 4 am before you would feed them. after about a week of trying this, we were FRIED. before this book, they would stir and we would wake everyone up to feed them. now, we would hear them stir and curt and i would both be awake that extra half hour AND then we would still get everyone up to feed them. we were sleeping LESS than before - not a good mix. after talking with as many people as we could to find out what they did to get their kid to get rid of the 4 am feed we finally said, screw it. if they make any noise (we were sharing a room with them at this point) we get them up but just feed them an ounce or two. don't even unwrap the little buggers. it took 2 or 3 days and they quit waking up. i put this story in here because it became painfully clear that friends were SO sleep deprived by this point (it was 12 weeks of this for us) that they really don't know what worked or how they did it. it just evolved/happened. life doesn't completely happen like that for multiples, so i feel like we need to try to remember, if only for when we meet others who will be sleep deprived and grasping at some sort of technique so they don't feel like they are starving their kid by making them go 7 hours without food. :) we got rid of the midnight feeding at about 16 weeks. we went in for their 4 month check up and i asked our dr. when we could get rid of it since we had heard for such a long time that we needed to make sure they were eating well and often as premies, blahblahblah. when i told him we were waking them up to feed them at midnight he nearly jumped over the desk! He said "You have my permission to stop waking them up! From now on, just feed "on demand" (seriously? that's a sick joke with three)." well, that night we went home, finished feeding and laid them down by 9PM and they SLEPT until 7 AM. they were probably so THANKFUL mom and dad quit waking them up and forcing them to eat! :)
they have pretty much slept 9 PM to 630 or 7 am since then. now, they do have the occasional wake up, but they aren't crying for hours. for instance, when i got up to pump (3:30 AM) just a little while ago i could hear LOTS of talking. I go in to see dear little aidan trying to sleep through his brothers' monologues to their mobiles. Both Brady and Gavin were outside their covers, turned sideways in their cribs and talking up a STORM! i put their "dummies" back in their mouths (pacifiers in this part of the world), and yes all of you good, anti-SIDS parents, and I flipped them onto their tummies. they have not made a peep since then and they will likely sleep until about 7 am now. we have ordered larger wraps since they have outgrown their original swaddlers and i can't WAIT for them to get here!!! keep those suckers tied down tight! Speaking of sleep, some sleeping pics . . .
Gavin at 3.5 months
Brady at 3.5 monthsAidan gets ready for a bath and then bedtime!
It's time to record their lives
So since they are now 5 and a half months old, I figured I could breeze through the exhaustion and just share some of the super cool things about being mom to supertwins.
Aidan James, Brady Allen and Gavin Dean roared into the world on September 9, 2008. My water broke around 3 AM and after Curt and I rushed around like maniacs because we just weren't ready (even though my bag had been packed for weeks) we managed to get one last picture of me pregnant and a snack for the road before we headed to the hospital. Curt dropped me at the ER entrance and as I sauntered into the nearly empty place, i said to the gentleman "My water broke" with a huge grin on my face. Immediately I had a wheelchair and about a million nurses because they remembered me as pregnant with triplets.
They tried to put 3 different heart monitors on my belly to find their heart rates but the boys kept moving around making it nearly impossible. Finally about 5:00 AM they were taking me to the OR. I remember looking at Curt (since he couldn't be in the OR) and seeing that he was getting emotional. I then began to cry and told him things were going to be OK. He leaned over the hospital gurney and said "I don't want to lose you." It was the most touching and scariest exchange we have ever had. I had been scared of having a c-section in Qatar, but Curt had always been so upbeat and confident. To think about him saying this still gets me choked up, but I never want to forget it.
After they gave me the epidural and I was kinda feeling my body being moved around, I said to the anesthesiologist, "Did they cut into me yet?" He looked down at me and said "uh, YEAH." good to know. then i heard the first baby pulled out at 5:59 AM with a loud cry, the second baby pulled out at 6 AM - another loud cry and baby #3 at 6:01 AM with a loud cry. Curt said he could hear that in the hallway where he was waiting so he felt good knowing they were making some noise. just before they took the boys to the NICU, they brought each one of them to my head. They were swaddled up so much i could just see their perfect little faces, which the nurses let me kiss. it was pretty amazing, even if I ached because I knew I wouldn't get to see them for at least 24 hours.
The other day we were looking at some video Curt had taken from those first days. He is in the NICU and recording himself talking to Aidan in his isolette and i SWEAR Aidan responds to Curt's voice by opening his eyes and then moving his little tiny limbs around! It is something I don't know that you would have picked up on in the emotion of the moment, but when you watch it on video, there is no doubt. Aidan was responding to his Dad's voice.
Some of the interesting cultural things we noticed:
- you get flower arrangements when you have a baby. scratch that, you get JUNGLE arrangements - literally, the one we received from colleagues was as tall as me sitting in a chair and almost as wide - and it was tame compared to some we saw being trucked in
- people don't put their babies (or children) in car seats. when I was taking Aidan home from the NICU (last boy) one of the nurses asked who was driving me. i told her no one, that curt was home with the other two. she then asked who would "hold the baby"? i said "His car seat will hold him." and she actually said, "do you think that's safe?!"uh, yes, safer than me trying to hold on to him while i'm driving, or in the event of an accident. immeasureably safer. . .
- we have been told many times that Curt is the envy of Arab men by having three boys. And the reason we are given time and again is because they are boys, Curt does not have to worry about their reputations like you do with a girl. He does not have to worry about finding proper mates who will care for their daughter. ooooookay . . .
- you can choose your dr's nationality. At the pediatrician's office (and OB/GYN) they are listing the dr's nationality out beside their name. Apparently that is important to some people. I'd rather see where they got their degree from! and just so you know, we have found 3 EXCELLENT pediatrician's in the hospital for the boys. I've only been to gyno's and GP's in the US, but I would put these dr's up to US dr's any day. we are incredibly pleased with the care the boys have received!
a couple of hospital pictures below:
Aidan and I Day two
Dad Feeding Gavin
Sweet Gavin Sleeping Day 2
Aidan wide awake Day 1
Brady Day 1
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