Friends, Fences, & Food!!

We haven't had too many visitors since the twins were born, but today Josiah had a special treat in that when Karen & Sharel came over to see the babies, they brought Hannah (Josiah's buddy) with them. I got this cute shot of them smiling real big together (tough moment to catch!)

Sharel and Karen both got to feed the twins and interact with them a bit as well, which was fun for them. The whole time Josiah was trying to get Hannah to come and play with him, but she was more interested in the babies at first and was telling him to "be gentle" whenever he came around one of the babies. There is definitely a difference in how 2-year old boys respond to babies compared to 2-year old girls as demonstrated today.

As we have previously shown in other posts, Josiah loves to line up his cars in an orderly fashion. Today he enclosed himself in a nice car fence! When we took this picture, he was actually saying the word "cheese" as well.

Now for those of you who have been wondering, "How do you guys do it?" The answer is that we have had to be super organized of late and the funny thing is, the house seems more in order now than it was before! Funny how the busier you get, the more organized and efficient you become. In this photo, David lined up many of the various things we use to feed the twins. We have 3 kinds of formulas (regular, sensitive for fussy tummies, and high-calorie type), infant gas drops, multi-vitamin drops, saline nose drops, hand sanitizer (since we wash our hands so much), bulb syringes for suctioning noses and mouths when needed, bottles, breastmilk containers, & breast pumping supplies. And not pictured here is the Ivory soap, which David said he will now always associate the smell of with breastmilk, since that is what we use to clean all the supplies. It was recommended to us to use that soap in the hospital because it is mild.

Another thing we have done is to keep track of all the feedings and relevant data on the twins on a steno notepad. This is good because we can see what is going in them (in milliliters) as well as what is coming out of them (in counts of wet/poopy diapers), which is very useful when we go to the doctor to show them a record of what is happening with each boy. Caleb as many of you might know likes to hold his #2's in for a few days and then apparently waits for Daddy's shift in the night (hee hee hee) to let it all go in a giant blowout. So, this morning I looked at the record of the night's events and saw that David put one very thick, darkened hashmark under the poopy diaper section for Caleb. Then this morning he told me that it was so bad he had to change outfits! I had to laugh....sorry honey! Anyway, this record is really helpful, and especially when you are sleep deprived it is nice to have a record that you DID feed them and that it wasn't just a dream! Incidentally, the 2 shifts (David from 8pm-1 or 2am and me from 1am or 2am to the morning) are working well for us. Thank you Sarah from TPOM (Tacoma Parents of Multiples) group for suggesting this! I figured that if I didn't pump milk (which takes 30 minutes including the clean-up afterward), at the most if I was trying to do all the feedings I would get little 2 hour chunks of sleep here and there and that just would NOT work! I am thankful for my 5-6 chunk of sleep because that is at least something to get me through the rest of the night.

And just a little food for thought for those of you out there wondering....I figured that if we changed each twin's diaper before each feeding (which we almost always need to do) it amounts to around 480 diapers a month (16 diapers a day). Isn't that insane? Thankfully, as they get older the diaper changes are less frequent, but still...that is a lot of diapers!