Makechnieland: Picture Tuesday, 5 weeks old

Oh these baby girls. They are getting cuter and cuter. This week I've noticed that they're starting to fill out a little bit. They still seem really scrawny to me when we get them all undressed for baths but with their teensy clothes on they look a little thicker to me than before. And they are definitely a little bit heavier when I pick them up. It's really fun.

I've been waiting for them to start smiling and this week I've got my first couple of smiles. They are still very much figuring it out and their smiles are few and far between so it will probably be a bit before I can catch them on camera. Today they each flashed me one big beautiful smile, on separate occasions, which absolutely took my breath away, and then I spent the next 20 minutes making ridiculous noises and voices and faces trying to get them to smile again. But no luck.

I thought I'd try to document what our typical day is like at this point even though it still varies quite a bit. Starting in the morning:

5 or 5:30 am - the girls usually wake up to eat. Glenn and I feed them and then put them back down to sleep. Then I get dressed in my exercise clothes and sometimes get a moment to check my emails or read a few more pages of a book before or throw in a load of laundry if need be.

6 am - I go in to get the boys up and ready for school and Glenn leaves for work. Usually Tate gets up right away, gets himself dressed and downstairs. Finn takes a little more coaxing and usually needs a few minutes alone and meets us downstairs a bit later happy as can be. We eat breakfast, pack Tate's backpack and..

6:35 am - We are out the door on the way to the bus stop. Finn usually rides his bike but sometimes he walks with us. The bus leaves by 6:40. Finn and I wave to Tate on the bus, chat with some of the bus stop ladies then walk home.

7:00 am - Finn and I finish breakfast and clean up dishes then change loads of laundry then I either spend a bit of time on the treadmill or do a workout video really quickly and try to be done working out and showered before the girls wake up to eat again.

8:00-9 am - The girls wake up to eat. If they're both awake and mad at the same time, I feed them both at the same time by propping one up on pillows next to me on the couch and feeding her a bottle with one hand, while balancing the other on a nursing pillow while she nurses. It makes for some kinks in my arms and wrists but at least one baby girl isn't screaming for 15 minutes while she waits for her sister to eat. Then we get the girls dressed and I finish getting ready for the day. At this point I change more laundry, change sheets on beds or fold a load or two and on good days get dinner prepped before we head out to play for a bit.

10-11 am - Finn and I get the girls in their stroller and they usually fall asleep while we go for a walk to get out for a bit. Sometimes we go to a friend's house. Sometimes we go visiting teaching. Sometimes we meet someone at the park or bowling alley or just go on our own. We play for about an hour and then head home for lunch.

11:30-12:00 pm - Finn and I eat lunch and the girls get hungry again too. Sometimes I feed Finn and the girlies and then I eat after Finn goes down for his nap. Sometimes if the girls are still sleeping, I do more dinner prep while Finn is eating.

12:30-1pm - I take Finn upstairs and read him a story and he takes a nap.

1-3pm - Kenna, Taryn and I hang out. Depending on how they're doing that day we could be snuggling while they fuss for a while or if I'm lucky, they go down for a nap as well and I get some alone time. I do laundry, shop online sales for next year's clothes which I have shipped to Aubry so I can pick them up this summer (that's a post all on its' own!), do some research for recipes or trips or sometimes read and lie down for a quick nap.

2:30-3pm - Finn and the girls wake up. Sometimes I feed the girls before we go to the bus, sometimes right after we get home.

3:35 pm - Finn, the girls, and I go to the bus stop to wait for Tate and then walk home with him.

4-5 pm - The boys have an after school snack and then I do some reading with Tate or a short piano practice and then the boys play, or depending on how tired Tate is that day, watch an episode of Wild Kratts until Glenn gets home.

5-5:30 - Glenn comes home! We have dinner. Sometimes I've made something earlier in the day, but if I didn't start something that morning, I rarely get around to pulling something together during the afternoon. The afternoons get crazy. We still have some freezer meals to draw from and once in a while we just order in pizza or salads from the snack bar here on camp.

5:45-6:30 pm - We go bowling, play at a park, play a board game, have FHE if we're doing really good and have planned ahead, or just play hide and seek or read books. Sometimes we decide to have a family movie night which means that we do early baths and then watch movie until 7pm when they go up to bed.

7 pm - The boys go to bed, we bathe the girls (every other night), feed them, then Glenn and I take turns showering and then meet downstairs to watch something and talk for a while. The girls usually conk out about 8pm but we're afraid to go to sleep thinking that they'll just be up in another hour so we wait as long as we can and then feed them once more.

9:30 pm - Glenn and I are struggling to keep our eyes open and we finally cave and force feed our sleeping babies one last time and then get them and ourselves into bed as fast as we can!

1:30-2:30 am - on good nights the ladies let us sleep this long. A 4-5 hour stretch has been rare this week. We can usually count on at least 3 but we're lucky if we get 4-5. Usually one of the babies is crying, Glenn goes downstairs to get a bottle ready, I stumble into the babies room and change the crying baby and then wake her sister and change her then we take them both into our bed to feed them. After they're done eating we put them back to bed and promptly fall back to sleep ourselves.

4:30-5:30 am - the whole thing starts again. Depending on how the night went, our day is different by a couple of hours, which makes it hard to plan appointments and visits since feeding times vary, but we're figuring it out.

Overall, this whole two babies thing has been way easier than we anticipated. Mostly due to the fact that the babies are such sweeties. They've had more fussy days this past week but even on hard days, they're not too terrible. Taryn's joined in on the fussiness and I can honestly say she's been just as fussy this week as Kenna, which is kind of nice. No one likes to have a reputation as being the difficult one, right? This week there have been a few mornings where the girls eat, and then about an hour to and hour and a half after they eat (which is usually when they should be asleep), they start fussing and they cry non-stop unless they're being held, and sometimes even then, until I feed them again. I usually cave and feed them a half hour early if they're pulling this stunt, so it sometimes means holding two babies, one on each shoulder, for an hour. Luckily, they don't do this every day. Another HUGE factor to the twins being easier than anticipated is how the boys have handled and supported the transition. I'm speaking primarily of Glenn, of course. Who has been a champ. So supportive and helpful during the evenings, every night, and on weekends. When Glenn is home he sends me upstairs every afternoon when Finn is napping and lets me sleep too. Finn and Tate have handled it brilliantly as well. They have been so patient with having much less attention. It's hard not to feel bad for them, knowing how different things are now and how distracted I am, but they are dealing so well.

We've still got a LONG way to go schedule-wise. I'm anxious to get the girls on a reliable napping schedule and sleeping longer stretches at night, but they're doing so well for only being 5 weeks old so I just need to be patient and remember that it will come with time. So far so good.

Here are the little ladies. Kenna and Taryn at 5 weeks old: