I haven't updated in quite some time but wanted to check in.  It's not only a new year, but a new decade!  What a decade it's been.  Engagement, marriage, fertility struggles, two beautiful twin daughters, and now... surprise!  A miracle pregnancy!

I am 15 weeks pregnant with a little boy.  We're still deciding on a name.  He truly is a miracle baby.  He beat all the odds!  In fact, even though I had pretty awful morning sickness throughout the first trimester, it never occurred to me I could be pregnant, other than, oh sure, I'm pregnant.  RIGHT.  I didn't seriously consider it until I leaned over the tub one day, giving the girls a bath, and I felt something strange in my belly.  I POAS, and it immediately popped up "pregnant"!  I didn't want to get too excited - after all, I've been there many times before - so I put off an ultrasound.  I think I held out about two weeks before my curiosity got the better of me.  Guess what?  We were through the first trimester already!  13 weeks and 2 days was the estimate.

A friend just asked me if a doctor had ever given me statistics on conceiving a healthy baby on my own, and the answer is yes.  I was given a 2% chance of ever conceiving a baby to term naturally (without medical assistance).  I think this was a very generic guess on the part of my RE who only had overall stats from women with my age & medical history.  So I was lumped in with a bunch of really sick people who probably had miscarriages related to a number of reasons, maybe PCOS, diabetes, drug use, drinking etc.  I figured that increased MY odds somewhat, but 2% "plus" is still depressing.  Which is why we gave up on trying naturally & went straight to IVF.  Which is also why I stopped preventing.  I thought, why bother suffering fat ankles with the Pill anymore.

For this pregnancy, I was given a 1/50 chance of there being a genetic issue if the pregnancy had lasted through the first trimester, which it has.  This number is probably a lot more accurate than the other one.  My amnio was on 12/29; we're still waiting on the results, which take about two weeks.  Wish Baby Boy luck!  He's beaten the odds so far, let's hope he goes with the odds this time!
 

I've always said having twins is an excellent study of nature vs nurture, and have come across another shining example! 

To all those "experts" who think you can train a baby to sleep through the night, or to sleep in a nursery vs in the parents' room, is sorely mistaken.  Yes, I am a self-proclaimed expert in this field, and I say this is just not so.  :-)

Take Leigh and Lucy as an example.  Not once did I "train" them to sleep through the night by not responding to their needs, letting them CIO (cry it out), moving their bassinet closer and closer to the door, use the "pickup and love but don't feed" technique, or any of the other many methods I have read about. 

I haven't done these things, because all these techniques have one thing in common that I think no one has noticed - the babies all eventually "learn" to behave as the parent wants, around 4-6 months.  Amazed parents always say, "It took several weeks, but around 5 months my baby "learned" to stop waking up at night and now sleeps 8-10 hours through!" 

Did these parents ever stop to consider that is the natural time frame a baby might sleep through the night on her own?  And because some so-called baby-mind-reading-expert came up with a half-baked idea to sell a book, they have let their baby be miserable for nothing?

Lucy and Leigh both started sleeping through the night between 3-5 months with no help from me, at different times (they aren't identical twins, after all), and completely on their own.  Nature one, nurture zero. 

I realize some babies simply refuse to sleep through the night or even nap longer than an hour or two, and to those parents, I extend a moment of sympathy silence.  All the CIO in the world won't help these babies, and in turn might make them even more insecure and fussy. 

Additionally, my twins sleep in separate rooms.  Lucy is in the nursery, and Leigh is in the bedroom with us.  Did I train Lucy to sleep in her crib?  If you call laying her in there a few times for naps to get her used to the crib, then yes, I trained her.  However, I did the same for Leigh, who absolutely refuses to sleep in her crib.  She wakes up after 20 minutes, senses that parents are not nearby, and cries.  What do you know, babies are distinct individuals with individual needs and sleep habits. 

I'll continue to introduce the crib to Leigh until it becomes familiar to her, but never will I abandon her to let her CIO night after night until her will is beaten down.  (Yes, I realize it's for increasing minutes at a time, but that can seem like a lifetime to a desperate baby).  I simply don't understand parents who can do this!

Nature two, nurture zero.
 

My brother told me to read the so-called "study" that links autism with TV/video watching (a study done by Cornell University).  Apparently, the people involved in the study are not doctors. The study wasn't based on any medical data. All it really is is one guy's opinion based on the correlation of incidences of autism and people who had cable TV subscriptions. Period.

No doctor - no scientist! - would ever conclude from these meager data that TV causes autism.  There could be a million other factors these families have in common which also have nothing to do with autism.  It's like saying, autism diagnoses rose more rapidly in counties where a high percentage of households had minivans than in counties with a low percentage of minivans, therefore minivans cause autism!  What a ridiculous study.  I absolutely can't stand when people publish frightening trash like this just for the attention and money.

How about this.  Areas with higher numbers of cable subscriptions are more likely to have more traffic (increased pollution), higher stress jobs (stress can cause all kinds of health issues which can affect egg/sperm quality), and higher numbers of educated people in their late 30s and early 40s who, because they are older, are more likely to earn a higher wage, and can therefore afford cable.  People in this age group are also more likely to have DNA replication mishaps with their oocytes, as proven by the higher miscarriage rate/lower pregnancy rate as you age.

The author of the "study" also wondered why autism is increasing in recent years.  I'll bet I know the answer.  It's getting increasingly popular to have children later in life these days, as women want to advance in their careers before starting a family.  Because they're older and have careers, they are more stressed (working and/or more tired moms - it's not easy having kids when your joints creak, believe me!), have older eggs, and as they have advanced in their careers before having children, are earning a decent wage and can therefore afford cable.  It must be the cable, right?  I'll bet they can also afford to eat out more often than people who can't afford cable.  I think I'll publish a study, "eating out causes autism!"

While I don't condone a lot of TV time, I don't believe a few minutes each day will harm a baby. Certainly it will not "cause" autism. I am convinced autism is genetic and not caused by any external visual stimulus.

That's why I let my babies sit in my lap while we watch "Peep": http://www.peepandthebigwideworld.com/videos/index.html
 

We finally made it out of the house!  It took several days and two tries on the day of, but we did it.  The day after Christmas, we'd dressed the girls and loaded them into their car seats, when all hell broke loose - both babies were crying hysterically.  After a minute of rocking, Mommy started crying too and decided no Christmas in any Park was worth this misery.  We nursed, napped and tried again.  This time, success! 

Of course by this time, Santa had already gone back to the North Pole, but we took a picture in front of his south bay workshop. :-)

 

I had big plans for the girls' first Christmas, but nothing went as it was supposed to

I bought cute little jean/fleece jacket sets for Christmas pictures at San Jose's Christmas in the Park... size 12 months... but, when I went to put on Leigh's jeans, they were too small! Not just a little snug either - WAY too small. 12 months!  She's only 4.5 months old! (17 lbs now)

We tried for three days to make it to Christmas in the Park, but never did go. We'd get the girls all dressed up, then something would happen - a poop blowout, bad weather etc. It took us four hours to get out of the house the last time, and by the time we did it was too dark. So we decided to brave the mall instead and take a picture with Santa.

Upon our arrival, Santa was just packing up for what I'm sure was a much-needed 1-hour break. We decided to go shopping, milled around Target for awhile, and came back exactly one hour later to a line that was probably close to a 1/4 mile long. It looped around and around and went down the center aisle as far as the eye could see.

Needless to say we were not going to subject our twins or ourselves to that kind of wait, so we went home, vowing to take pictures in front of our Christmas tree instead. But, the girls were fussy by now, I had to go straight to nursing, and their outfits were stripped off & they went to sleep. So did we.

So... hopefully your Christmas went better than ours! LOL I'm sure it did as most people are smarter than we are and have one baby at a time instead of two!

We did get a few snapshots of Christmas day, though not as many as we'd hoped, and the girls were just in their jammies. Christmas was fun however! The girls are still sleeping it off.

The girls are nearly 5 months old now.  The time has absolutely flown by!

I thought I'd post some "then" and "now" pics... they really have grown so much!

Just a quick video of Leigh's new habit.  She does this all the time!

Immune changes implicated in endometriosis

High levels of psychologic distress in infertile couples
(Normally I can't stand Sarah Palin, but I think we would agree on this one - this study was a waste of money)

Embryo cryopreservation time does not affect pregnancy outcome

As always feel free to use my login info to read these articles:

un: lisachu
pw: fertility

 

You know you're a mom when...

... your coworkers are laughing at you because, during a Webex while you were sharing your desktop, you left the search words "green baby poop" in your Google toolbar.

 

The blog continues    

It's been awhile!  Though I am of course blissfully happy with my two beautiful daughters, it's been exhausting.  Exhausting is the understatement of the century.  I haven't left the house but three or four times, and I miss everyone and the outside world in general.

I was going to discontinue this blog since we've created a new family blog, thebiakanjas.blogdrive.com (sign up there for more pictures and baby updates) but I think I'll keep this one going to write down my personal thoughts about parenting twins.  It's certainly a challenge!  I know several parents expecting twins soon (congratulations again!) and who knows, maybe they will find this blog somewhat helpful.

The Birth Story - Our Twins are Born!



Leigh and Lucy were born without complications on August 5th, 2008 by planned c/s.  The girls had no respiratory issues whatsoever, and were about 6.5 lbs each, fairly large for twins.  Neither Steve nor I could see them when they came out, since there was a curtain up, but we could hear them crying. You've heard of love at first sight - for me, it was love at first sound!  I started crying the second I heard Leigh's tiny wail.  Until that moment, I hadn't realized how terrified I'd been of something going wrong and the worst happening.  But, she was perfect in every way.  Then came Lucy, whose cry was even louder (she is definitely Daddy's girl!).  I already loved those girls like I've never loved anyone or anything before - I never thought it could happen so quickly, or that I would fall so hard.  I didn't know babies could be so beautiful!

I held them briefly, then was wheeled into the recovery room.  After that things become a blur.  It was time for the babies' first bath, I remember, but I'd started to get nauseous from the anesthesia, and I spent the next several hours hugging a washbasin instead of my babies.  I don't remember how long.  Eight hours?  Twelve?  

I remember the chaos of doctors, nurses and visitors.  But finally, Steve and I were alone with our daughters.  We put them into one bassinet - they were so small they both fit! - and the girls were reunited for the first time out of the womb.  They were so beautiful and perfect in every way.  We knew we were truly blessed to be a family at last!


The C-section

The c/s was very easy.  It alleviated a lot of my worries, as there were fewer unknowns.  I'd heard getting the spinal was painful, but for me it was nothing at all.  The numbing went slowly, which was scary - I'd just seen that "Deliver Me" episode with the woman who felt the doctor's scalpel during her C-section! - but I ended up not feeling a thing during my surgery.  I couldn't even tell when my babies were born.  Perfect!  I didn't want to see, or hear, anything, except for healthy crying babies.

Recovery from the c/s was also easy, thanks to Vicodin.  For the first 2-3 days, I was thinking to myself, this c/s was a piece of cake!  I don't know what all those other ladies are complaining about... then, I stopped taking the Vicodin because of the girls' jaundice (bad for their livers)... whoa.  It felt like someone had sliced me open, rooted around and then sewed me up again.  Wait, that's actually what happened.  But recovery went quickly; the only tricky part was trying to sit up in bed, which was painful for a few weeks.  

However the worst part of the c/s was the nausea after, since I was too sick to hold the girls or breastfeed.  I even missed their first bath.  We had a lot of visitors come and go, all of whom saw me dry-heaving into a plastic basin.  A true Kodak moment.


Jaundice

Unfortunately, both girls had jaundice and had to spend 48 hours under bright "bili lights" to help break down the extra bilirubin in their systems.  This was a total nightmare.

Both Steve and I were in superparent mode - meaning we were incredibly oveprotective - and we would panic when the little masks the girls wore would slip off, because then our newborns were staring directly into a light similar to what you get in a tanning booth.  In our defense, the doctors had given us reading materials on the bili lights which said the UV light was harmful to the eyes, so we (the parents) should not look directly at them.  Well, here were our newborn daughters staring directly into a UV light not a foot above their tiny little faces, with no eye protection!  Those slippery little masks were the bane of our existence for the next 24 hours.  We were up every five minutes - literally - for mask checks, because that's the amount of time it would take for them to come off. 

We were going crazy until Steve's sister Kathy, a former pedi nurse, said to use cloth tape.  It worked like a charm, and all the nurses in our wing were very happy that we made this "discovery" as it made their jobs a lot easier.  You would think someone before us would have come up with this, but apparently no.

Tape didn't necessarily make the girls happy - remember it had to come off every time they nursed, which was every 1 1/2 hours - so they had a little skin rash here and there, but for us that was much better than risking cataracts at an early age.


Breastfeeding Twins

Before the girls were born, I bought a book called "Oh Yes You CAN Breastfeed Twins!".  I had intended to follow every instruction to the letter, but it didn't turn out that way.  All I can say about the subject is, I think everyone's experience is probably very different, since people and babies are very different.  So I try to keep an open mind, and not get discouraged that my experience isn't going as smoothly as someone else's.

Starting out

Having twins is an interesting study of nature vs nurture.  Leigh is a great breastfeeder.  She latches instantly and perfectly every time.  She stays awake for the most part, nurses her share quickly then goes to sleep.  A breastfeeding mom's dream!  

Lucy, on the other hand, had real trouble in the beginning.  She didn't latch - or suck - well, even when I could wake her to nurse.  It would usually take an incredibly frustrating 20-30 minutes minimum of a wet washcloth to the face, feet, chest and neck to get her to wake up enough to latch.  Or, we would wait until after a diaper change, since that usually made her mad and woke her up (we called her our angry eater).  Then, it was a constant battle to keep her awake enough to nurse at least 15 minutes or so.  It soon became apparent that she also had a weak suck reflex, and she wasn't taking in enough milk (they determined this by weighing her before and after a feeding).  We had to supplement.

Supplementing.  It sounds so harmless, but what a nightmare that was in the beginning.  The hospital lactation consultants told us under no circumstances to use a bottle the first couple of weeks, because that could lead to nipple confusion (or as I like to think of it, bottle preference), and to use a syringe instead.  I hate syringes.  Not only is it incredibly slow, but the babies were frustrated, since they wanted to suck (at least, Leigh did - Lucy would just let it dribble out the side of her mouth as she snoozed) but there was nothing to suck, and they would cry and squirm.  Some of the milk ended up leaking out so we didn't know how much they were getting.  Every two-three hours we went through this, which took about an hour and a half when you factor in the nursing, leaving little time in between feedings.  

Needless to say, we got no sleep - not longer than a 20 minute nap at a time - until I decided to relent and try a bottle.  I held out for three weeks, which is when the pediatrician finally pushed a bottle on us.  I waited so long because was worried our babies would get nipple confusion and then my life really WOULD be hell.  Fortunately, that didn't happen.  My babies still prefer the breast to the bottle, so much so they sometimes cry and refuse the bottle to the breast!  

Our pedi recommended the Playtex wide-latch bottle, with the disposable liners.  Her reasoning was that the wide latch was more like the breast and would prevent nipple confusion; also, the liner collapsed and would cause less gas.  We tried it, but ended up using Medela bottles because we had already bought some before the babies were born, and they didn't leak everywhere like the Playtex bottles.

It's now ten weeks later, and I'm very comfortable breastfeeding.  It took about 6 weeks before I stopped being so sore (though I still hurt for a little while if the babies break their latches).  The first two weeks were especially bad, and it slowly got better from there.  But no matter how bad it got, never once did I want to quit breastfeeding!  There were times I chose pumping over nursing, and in the beginning Ibuprofin was my best friend, but stopping altogether never once entered my mind.  I remember my husband bringing it up once, when I was in tears from the pain.  I just looked at him!  Give up??  Never!

Update: The girls are now three months old, and I rarely need to use formula.  Maybe once/day, if that.  The milk is starting to stock up in the fridge, and just tonight, I put 4 bottles in the freezer.  I hope I don't jinx anything by writing this, but I think we are past needing to supplement with formula at this point.  Hooray!

Engorgement

It took awhile for my milk to come in - about 4-5 days.  I saved every drop of colostrum and gave it to the girls.  I had bought a Medela double pump, one of the best available, because I'd heard some hospitals only had single pumps or worse yet, single manual pumps!  But it turns out the hospital-grade pumps were awesome, better than my Medela, so I wish I'd left my pump at home.  One of the many things I would do differently next time.

There were several lactation consultants at the hospital, which was great.  They showed me how to pump, how to hold the babies (trickier than I imagined!), what a correct latch looks like, how long to feed them, how to keep them awake etc.  I don't know what I would have done without them!  I can't tell you how nice it was to be able to pick up the phone, and within minutes a lac consultant would be by my side, and I didn't even need to get out of bed.

However, one frustrating thing about the lac consultants was that everyone gave conflicting advice, and some seemed to offer just plain bad advice.  For instance, when my milk came in, I became "moderately engorged" (I don't even want to imagine what "severely engorged" is like!).  My boobs went from an A to a DD, felt like rocks and hurt like hell.  Even a light brush against something was very painful, and yet the lac consultant told me to manually express milk to alleviate the pressure.  To demonstrate this, she grabbed my boob in her kung-fu grip and squeezed down like a vise.  A couple of drops of milk oozed out, after I nearly passed out from the pain.  She told me to keep doing this for 10-20 minutes, until the pressure was relieved. At two drops at a time, you can imagine how long this would take.

I remember standing in the shower, letting the hot water run over my chest, trying to squeeze my incredibly tender breasts and bawling my eyes out from the pain.  Really, it was like torture.  That is when I decided to try the pump instead.  15 minutes later, engorgement was relieved, painlessly!  What was that woman thinking?  

Tandem Nursing

Parents of twins have told me that tandem nursing is the way to go, otherwise your twins will tag-team you to death.  So this is what I was determined to learn, tandem nursing.  However, if I could do it over again, I would not have tried tandem nursing until I was COMPLETELY comfortable with breastfeeding and both twins were as well - maybe 6 to 8 weeks along.  

Then lac consultants showed me what a correct latch looks like, and different nursing positions, particularly the "double football" which is used for tandem nursing.  What I wish the lac consultants had told me is that it's probably not a good idea to try a double football hold until your breasts are ready for some serious tugging!  I definitely would not start off with a double football while learning to breastfeed, because it was incredibly painful and made me choose pumping or formula over breastfeeding when the pain was just too much.  Ten weeks later, I'm still not really fond of the football hold, since it's uncomfortable for me.

Pros:  Besides the obvious time-saver, I love having both babies in front of me and being able to cuddle them at the same time.  You don't have one baby crying for attention while the other is nursing, so there is no guilt of ignoring one baby while nursing the other.  You can sing and talk to them at the same time without any time pressure of finishing up so you can get to the other baby.

Cons:  If you have a very fussy eater who has to burp fairly often during feeding, tandem nursing is next to impossible.  But the main reason I don't like tandem nursing is that for me, it's painful.  It's hard enough to keep an eye on one baby's latch, let alone two at once.  My babies (and again, all babies are different!) are gassy, and when they feel a tummy bubble, they tend to thrash around and break their latch painfully.  Additionally, with the "double football" hold, there is the feeling of being pulled in two directions at once which also makes for more broken latches - possibly I'm not doing it right, but I'm doing exactly what the lac consultants at the hospital showed me.  It's an awkward position for the babies because the way my twin nursing pillow is designed, the babies' feet are pointing directly behind me, which means their heads have to either crane around to the front to be at the right angle, or my nipples have to twist out to the sides uncomfortably.  Someone should design a better twin nursing pillow!  I use the EZ2Nurse double, which besides being a bad angle, is firm with squared sides - leaving no room for the babies' "underneath" arm to comfortably rest.  My aunt invented a twin nursing pillow called the Nursing Nest, which would be great for most people but doesn't work for me.  I think you need to be, um, larger up top.

One more con - at least it is for me - it's difficult to tandem nurse without help from someone else putting the babies on/taking them off.  I haven't mastered how to lean over to pick up the second baby while all strapped into the pillow with another baby already on.  It feels dangerous, and takes forever to set up.  For these reasons, I tend not to tandem nurse unless I have help, and both babies are crying at once.  Otherwise, my favorite nursing position is in bed, lying on my side.  That way we can both take a nap after!

Troubleshooting our problem eater

One baby is a fussy eater.  She started off being the sleepy one who I could barely wake up to nurse and would sleep through feedings if I let her.  She soon grew out of the sleepy phase and straight into a fussy one - now she screams bloody murder during feedings, bottle or breast, and gulps air.  It took me a long time to figure out why, and at times I'm still perplexed that she screams and cries when there is seemingly nothing wrong.  I started off by calling the pediatrician, who prescribed Zantac for GIRD.  This didn't work, and Lucy hated the medicine adding to the tears.  Then I took her to our "newborn clinic", where they weigh the babies before and after feedings to see how much milk they take in and also offer helpful breastfeeding advice.  All the nurses and doctors stood around amused as little Lucy screamed her head off, between sucks.  At least someone thought it was funny!

They concluded I have a fast let down, and Lucy can't swallow fast enough so she gets upset (and as a result, swallows air).  The more upset she gets, the more she screams, even after the initial let down has slowed - because by then, she's frustrated and desperate to nurse.  The answer?  Try to pump a little to relieve the pressure before feeding her, and if she screams anyway, then be patient and try to let her nurse (and scream!) for as long as she will, taking 5-10 second breaks as necessary, then burp her once after five minutes and start again (the general rule of thumb being, try not to burp until at least five minutes has gone by if possible).  Nerve-wracking, but at least she is eating.  They say she will grow out of this phase by the third month.  (Updated to add - it's now three months, and she has grown out of this phase!)

Steve and I are SO glad we have one non-fussy eater, because if they'd both been fussy like Lucy, we would have felt like total failures.  At least we know it's the baby, and not something we're doing wrong.

Milk quantity

In my case, I don't make quite enough milk, so we have to supplement.  I think the reason is that I have Hashimoto's disease; apparently people with Hashimoto's often have problems with milk supply.  Maybe if I pumped more... but when??  I have one fussy feeder with a weak suck, so she takes a long time to eat the right amount.  Since I don't have much milk, both babies nurse for a long time.  Put it all together, and this means that by the time one is finished, often the other one is ready to start, leaving no time for pumping... or eating... or sleeping... or showering..!  I usually pump once or twice during the day if there is time, and a couple of times at night since the babies are sleeping for longer periods now.

The doctor recommended Fenugreek, which I take religiously.  It does seem to help.  Slowly I'm making more milk, but not enough for two.  Maybe enough for one and a half babies.  According to my doctor, this is pretty good, since almost all moms with twins have to supplement sometimes.  My babies were pretty big when they were born, so I didn't have any time lapse before they started demanding large quantities of milk.  At three months, they are up to about 3-4 oz per feeding, every 2 hours.  They're huge!


Surviving the First Eight Weeks

Really I don't know how we did this.  I didn't sleep more than 20 minutes at a time, which I don't consider sleep (more napping).  My OB told me to try and get a minimum of 4 uninterrupted hours of sleep/day, because sleep deprivation is actually a form of torture (she wasn't kidding).  No way did I get anywhere near four hours.  Heck, one hour would have been nice.  

That lasted about a month.  It was a combination of things - having so much extra laundry/dishes to do, having to breastfeed, stressing out over my milk supply, having to pump after each feeding, getting a system down, getting familiar with changing diapers (I'm down to 30 seconds now, but in the beginning, it took me forever!).  I also was in "super mom" mode - the slightest whimper or stirring made me look up.  Then, if they were too silent I'd have to check on them to make sure they were still breathing.  I just couldn't sleep!

But slowly, things have gotten better.  The main change is that recently, the girls have started sleeping through the night!  It happened suddenly.  One day they were waking up every two hours, the next Lucy slept 6 hours straight on Daddy's chest while he snoozed on the couch.  After that, she was sleeping 8-10 hours straight!  Leigh wakes up more frequently but twice now she has slept 8+ hours.  Usually she wakes up once or twice in the night, but she eats and goes straight back to sleep. 

I think the only bad part about having twins is that each doesn't get enough individual attention.  For instance, a lot of women "wear" their babies to bond with them, and so the baby isn't sitting alone while the mom is out of the room to do chores.  With twins, it's really tricky.  I could technically do this, but I havent' been able to do chores or even work at the computer wearing two.  You can't sit down with twins, unless your chair doesn't have arms on it.  You can't bend down to pick up something low.  You have to watch walking through doorways.  All around it's impractical, for me at least.

Then there is the crying.  When both girls need my attention, it pulls my heart in half.  Which one do I ignore so I can comfort the other?  It's awful!  Especially now that both girls are rejecting the bottle because they want to breastfeed, and want to cuddle.  I can't do that with two unless I tandem nurse, and that just doesn't happen when I'm by myself.

The upside is, when they're older, they'll have a built in playmate!  I can't wait!  Ok I can wait, my little girls are growing up much too quickly for me!

I couldn't have asked for better babies.  What's sad is that I was so sleep deprived the first 8-10 weeks, I didn't take any video of the babies while they were still tiny!  Now they're big - outgrowing even their 3-6 month clothes - and my skinny little chickens are gone forever.  If I could give any new moms advice, it's to remember to enjoy every minute, even the sleepy ones!  & to take lots of pictures! (Fortunately we had a great photographer take pictures of the girls while they were still newborns, so we will always have those to remember those precious first weeks!)


Cute stuff

The girls are smiling!  Both smile big, all the time, and even laugh a little.  Leigh loves to talk - she says "AINYA AINYA AINYA" when she's hungry & hungry NOW!  LOL  Lucy says "gee" (like "ghee") in her tiny little voice.  Gee, I'm happy, and gee, I'm cute, and GEE, I'm mad.  They both babble other things, but these are the recurring themes.

Lucy used to grab her hair, pull and cry.  She's always had more of a startle reflex than Leigh, so she reaches out and grabs the nearest handy object.  Sometimes, it's her hair!  Poor baby!  It's so funny, though.

Lucy has curls on the top of her head that stick straight up, so that she looks like Cindy Loo Who, the littlest Who in Whoville.  Or maybe Alfalfa.  Soooo cute!  Leigh's hair is spiky, and sticks straight up.  Very much like her uncle Kevin's hair, lol.

Leigh is our talker.  She will sit and talk to us, to no one, to the ceiling.  Oh, and she LOVES the ceiling fan.  She'll look at the ceiling and talk to the fan, and if we turn it on, she gives a great big smile!  Steve calls it her first boyfriend.  

Leigh is also an inappropriate smiler.  She smiles when Lucy starts crying.  And the other day, I put them too close together and Lucy started kicking Leigh in the head (in revenge, probably).  Guess who was smiling as she was getting kicked!

Both girls smile, but Lucy smiles much more frequently.  She starts off by smiling on the right corner of her mouth, then the whole right side of her face, then the left follows so her smiles are lopsided!  Sooooo cute!  Leigh's smile appearances are somewhat more rare, and what is especially cute is when she smiles, then goes right back to solemn face... and one time, right back to sleep.  Hilarious!

Love my girls!  I heart being a mommy!