#twinlife

Everything comes in twos these days. Our latest double trouble is car seats. This is actually a quadruple need because we need seats for both of our vehicles since Mitch drives the kids every morning! This is one of those #twinlife things that’s just a bummer! The good news is these car seats should last through the rest of their car seat-needing lives. This is just another of the many parts of the #twinlife that I’m coming to accept. Double the babies means double the diapers to change, mouths to feed, bottles to clean, naps to synchronize, and definitely means double the baby gear!!! It also means double the giggles, smiles, kisses, and all of the other sweet #twinlife moments that make it totally worth it. 

In other news, the babies are 9 months…and close to 10 months by now! I haven’t gone to their 9 month appointment yet, so I don’t have all of their specs. They turned nine months and Maddex turned 2.5 the week that school started. I’ve finally decided things are slowing down enough to go to the doctor this week. So, pray for me because I’m taking ALL THREE for well visits on Friday! The twins will have shots, but Maddex won’t (let’s add double the shots to the above paragraph ;) ). I'll add a brief post this weekend with their info from the doctor and their official nine month picture.

Here’s a little random info about my precious babies…

Harper

-Harper now has four teeth! She has passed her brother up. I thought I’d miss her gummy grins, but I sure do love those toothy ones!

-Harper slept from 7ish – 6:15 one night this weekend. Then went back to sleep until 8. She won the “Mommy’s favorite” award ;)

-Harper sometimes speaks on demand. When we tell her to say “Mama, Dada or uh oh,” she’ll often repeat us.

-Harper thinks her siblings are so funny. She is always giggling at Major or Maddex. She also giggles at me every afternoon when I walk in to Mrs. Vickie’s!

-Harper is mostly crawling on her belly, but gets up on her knees juuuuuust a tad bit. She sure can move on her belly though!

-I have decided that Harpy is just a straight Mama's girl (and sometime's daddy). I'm convinced she just does not like people like she loves her parents. For this reason, I think Major is often the favored twin because he's so easy. This means Harpy needs extra mama-lovin'!
-Harpy Elle has also been playing peek-a-boo! She holds a blanket in front of her head then pulls it down...we say "peek a boo!" and she giggles and giggles. The other day she giggled so big, she fell over!

Major

-Major still has his two teeth – one top, one bottom. His other bottom tooth has been threatening to come through forever, but it will not break the gums!

-Major slept from 7ish – 4:45 this weekend which is not so bad! I think I’m close to getting some nights of uninterrupted sleep. I never imagined it would be almost 10 months of night wakings!!

-Major is a crawling machine and is beginning to pull up. Usually when we go in to get him out of his crib, he is standing. This also means he's getting stuck standing up & cries! This happened last night poor guy...I think he may have fallen back to sleep standing up and then woken up & cried some more because he was standing and exhausted when I went in there!

-Major man, in typical boy fashion, loves his food. He often cries when the food is gone, he’s done nursing, or the bottle is empty!

-My sweet boy become mega grump as soon as that bowl of food is empty at night...he is not happy during bath time, pajama time, and Lord help us if I have to put him down to take care of his sister!

Maddex

-Big sis is having typical two year old issues. We are battling fits of not getting her way often! This is such a tough age! She understands SO much, so I think we often expect her to understand everything. I think her fits often come as a result of difficulty communicating! And sometimes they’re just because she’s being a brat ;)

-Maddex looooooves her babies and loves to give them kisses and help them. The other morning Mitch asked Maddex if she loved the babies. She said “I love my buddy boy” and went and held Major’s hand.

-She.is.hilarious. Bedtime is our favorite because she says the funniest things to stall us from putting her down. Last week I wasn’t feeling well and actually went to bed before Maddex. She stood at my door to close it and kept saying the silliest things about swimming and my swimsuit. Then she’d follow it up with “I love you so much.”
-She is definitely a parrot of us...always calling the babies "buddy boy" and "sweet girl."

-Maddex loves jumping, singing, walking instead of being carried, playing games, watching Elmo & Wheels on the Bus, and making silly faces.

-As much as she drives us nuts, she’s so, so much fun!

Now for a few random, cute pictures of my kiddos lately...

I walked over to get a pic of them playing together and Maj looked up at me and made this face! Silly boy!

Check out those teeth - one top, one bottom on the same side

Same as brother, but opposite side! And y'all, this picture makes me die every time I see it. My sweet, sweet giggly girl.

Love my big girl - wanted a picture of herself after I was taking pics of the babies.

Holding his bottle - too big!

Standing in bed - too big!

Look at Maddex's tower that SHE built! I was ready to catch it if it fell :)

Kisses

Going in for that kiss

I took Maddex to a princess breakfast at a local performing arts studio. She wanted nothing to do with the princesses and just wanted to run around in this room and look at herself in the mirror.

Her silly face

This picture was taken when Major was trying to get at the camera. He ended up knocking it down. Boys!!!!

"Look Mommy, I so pretty!" Yes, sweet girl, you are! I pray she always sees herself that way!

Grinning babies

Pretty sure Harpy said "Cheese" when I was taking this ;)

Workin' Mama

I started back to school this week, and I think I'm in for an exhausting year!!! I'm really excited about this school year. As tiring as this week has been, it has reinforced my calling to be a working mom. I'm not sure my brain can focus in paragraph format, so I'm going to resort to bullets for this post :)

• The babies are doing phenomenally at Mrs. Vickie's. They've settled into a routine and are taking rock star naps. Fortunately for me, those weekly naps have translated into awesome naps at home on the weekend! This mama is super happy about that!
• Maddex is also doing great at Mrs. Vickie's. She's happy to be back playing with her friends, especially the twins Maggie & Mitch. When I ask about her day, the first response is always "I played with Maggie & Mitch." She is also taking great naps, on a nap mat, in a room with Maggie & Mitch. Ah-ma-zing!
• Picking up all three babies each afternoon is serious work! It takes several trips back and forth from the car to get them all in and out at home. The babies play really well when we get home which I'm thankful for. Maddex still seems to be getting used to this transition & is throwing fits a bit more often than normal. I'm hoping this week she'll become accustomed to our new routine.
• Work is awesome. My students seem super sweet so far, and I'm really, really looking forward to teaching this year. It's the first year in 3 years that I won't spend part of it pregnant! I have fantastic teammates and love the other 7th grade ELA teachers; having great students & colleagues can really help with those tough teaching days!
• I really feel like everything is falling into place in my universe now that I'm back at work. I love my babies so incredibly much, but I know that the Lord built me to be a teacher. I'm thankful for a job that allows me holidays and a summer with my children, but I'm very glad to be back at work!
• There are a few things I'm still trying to adjust to with our new schedule...
• Sleep: the first week of school, the babies were still not sleeping great. By Friday, I was really feeling worn down and starting to feel sick. I decided we'd try to let them cry or fuss again if they woke up. Friday night I put Major in the crib & Harper back in the pack in play in the closet. Y'all, the change of scenery made all the difference. They have only woken up once each night the last 2 nights and I really haven't had to let them cry! Major just loves the crib and Harpy must just love sleeping in our closet :)
• Cooking: I've found it pretty difficult to come home and get dinner ready. I've been staying after school for a while trying to get the hang of things & we end up getting home between 4:30 & 5:00. The kids are great, but it's tough to make dinner and manage all of them. Before I know it, it's time for the babies to be fed, bathed, and put to bed. Since I've been away all day, I really want to spend as much evening time with the kids as I can. I'm trying to get a hold of cooking on the weekends & using the crock pot so that when we get home, I can play with my babies.
• Cleaning: This house is a wreck! Well, not so much tonight, but it was by the end of the week! With both of us working so much and being pooped, not much cleaning was happening beyond dishes and a load of laundry or two! I've got to figure out some way to stay on top of even just the basic cleaning during the week. It's so tough because once the kids are in bed, I'm so worn out (I know many of you have been there!) and crash! My mom came over yesterday and helped me clean during nap time...that was a HUGE help! But, I don't want to spend my whole weekend cleaning! This weekend I've spent any nap times or when they were playing happily working on cleaning or cooking for the week. I'm headed into the workweek already feeling tired! 

I'm hoping that much of my exhaustion and craziness is due to a new routine plus the start of the school year. I really think that in a couple of weeks school will settle down and we will all be able to find a routine that balances work and home.

The babies turned nine months this week & Maddex is exactly two and a half! I'll have an update about that later this week, hopefully. I'm going to end this post with some ubercuteness involved my favorite twins and some of their tricks. If the videos work, check out Major's dancing skills & Harper's talking.

We're sleeping, people!!!

I'd like to document our journey toward more sleep at night, but I want to warn you...it involves crying. So, if you're here to judge me, go ahead and click that little X in the top right corner (or the red circle in the top left, Mac users). The twins' sleeping habits have gotten progressively worse. They were getting up 2-3 times each at night, sometimes more. This meant around 6 times that I was getting up with babies each night. It was exhausting! I mentioned in my previous post that it was time to do something about it. I decided to employ the controversial method of "cry it out." So here's how our journey progressed:

-Night one: Major and Harper both had a time where they cried for a good while. I couldn't let it go ridiculously long, so I got each one of them after a while fed them, and put them back down. They each work up 1-2 more times in the night where they fussed/cried for a shorter while and went back to sleep. I also fed them early in the morning (anywhere between 3 & 5) because I plan to keep one early morning feeding. So, this night I was still up with each baby twice, but I felt like we were moving in the right direction.

-Night two: each baby woke up once and cried/fussed for a while then went back to sleep. Again, I fed them each for an early morning feeding. Major woke up one more time after that and fussed for a few minutes then went back to sleep.

-Night three: Harper slept "all night" (until her early morning feeding) and Major woke up once and fussed for a few minutes then went back to sleep.

-Night four: We were sleeping. Babies would sleep from 7/7:30 to anywhere between 3 & 5. At this waking, I'd feed them & put them back down. They sleep until anywhere between 7 & 8 in the morning.

It has been HEAVENLY to sleep for longer periods of time again!! This method worked for me and my babies. I did not feel like they cried excessively or too often and it worked! We are all much happier now that we are sleeping!

UPDATE: I started this post early last week and never got around to finishing it. Literally, the night that I typed the above information, the babies' sleep began to regress - BOTH of them! They're killing me, those stinkers! I will say the last week or so has not been as bad as it was, but they are each waking up twice a night. Harper is back to the habit of waking up between 2:30 and 3:30 and then screaming one hour after I put her back in her bed. I'm not sure if she sleeps during that hour or if she wakes up just a little while later. It's the oddest thing. I haven't decided what to do about this, so I'm just avoiding it and feeding them when they wake up. I'm going to talk to their pediatrician at their 9 month check up and read up on some other sleep training options.

A few other notable experiences since my last update:

-Harper seems to have gotten the same stomach bug as Maddex. She was crying really early one night, so we checked the video monitor and saw a suspicious dark circle by her head. Turns out she had thrown up sweet potatoes. We got her and the bed cleaned up and she lay with me on the couch for a while. She had several little bouts of "grow up," but it was much easier for me contain her baby throw up. Eventually, she passed out and I was able to put her back in bed. She seemed a bit cranky the next day, but I think that was from loss of sleep the night before. It made me SO sad to see my sweet babiest girl feeling bad :(

-Major is a CRAWLING FOOL! As soon as he took off a couple of weeks ago, he was everywhere! When Maddex started crawling, she stayed on our rug for at least a month. Major goes wherever he wants and get into whatever he wants! This means I'm starting to have to fuss at him and it breaks my heart...but he doesn't care! He seems so much more content now that he's crawling - he is always entertained! Harper isn't crawling yet, but she can get around by pulling herself on her belly. She seems more frustrated by her lack of mobility. I don't think it'll be long before she is chasing her brother around!

I have been wanting to finish this entry forever, so I'm going to cut it off here and get it posted. I have several other topics to blog about: First day of school, Maddex's 2.5 birthday, and the twins are 9 months tomorrow! I've not done a great job keeping up with my blog the past month, but I'm really going to try to do better despite the fact that I'm back to being a working mama!

Check out this cuteness....these babies LOVE each other!!!