The boys did really well last night, Rowan slept for a 6 hour stretch, then a 5 hour stretch, and Elijah did 2 5 hour stretches! I only had to get up once! I felt so rested when I got up this morning. Mary Ellen came as usual, and even though I got 6 or so hours, I still took the opportunity to nap! I didn’t do much in the afternoon, my joints still hurt a little after the walk from yesterday (excuses!). I did some knitting and got some bills paid. Michael came home late today since there were some issues at work he had to deal with before leaving for the weekend. We went to bed early (9pm) since he was super tired and I was too. We’re old people now! Geez!

Last night went really well. Rowan slept for 5 hours, and Elijah did his usual 3 - 4. It is getting easier to put them down after feeding at night. The melatonin seems to be kicking in. Today we went on a long walk, 2 miles! We just went around the neighborhood, I thought they would like that better than going on the main road to Safeway. They both did really well, slept through the whole thing. I don’t know if it was relaxing sleep or if it was so traumatic that they “shut down”. I like to think that it was relaxing… Even though it was a very mellow 2 miles, my legs hurt when I got back. I am so out of shape.

I’m getting better at getting all my crap together and organized to leave the house either for a walk or for a walk. It’s amazing how organized you have to be in order to do it smoothly. We decided to abandon cluster feeding today to see what would happen and I also am careful not to let them stay up too long at one time. Hopefully they will do well again tonight.

Sleep training has been difficult, especially since it takes up a lot of time in the afternoons. We’re finding that they don’t go to sleep very well until about midnight, then they have one long stretch (4 hours), and then another short one or two (2 - 3 hours). Then it’s morning. I’ve been trying to adjust my sleep schedule, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I didn’t get as much sleep today since I ended up talking to Mary Ellen and feeding Elijah whenever she came in. Bottle feeding has become difficult lately, it goes so slowly - it takes maybe about half and hour! Whereas breastfeeding takes 10 minutes. We’re going to try a faster flow nipple and see if that works better. I think they are getting frustrated with how slow it is and protest. At first, we mistook this as getting overwhemed that it’s too fast. We’ll see.

While feeding Elijah today, he burped a really good one, so I put him on my shoulder and after a few seconds, he spit up really big that went all down my shirt, all down his shirt, onto my pants and almost hit the couch. When lifting him to see the damage to my clothes, his diaper started leaking (and it wasn’t pee). Poor guy, he was a mess! After I got him cleaned up, he ate the rest of his food and went to sleep. I got only 1.5 hours since they were hungry again. They did pretty well in the afternoon, they took two long naps. While they were napping, I called my friend in London, Christos, and we had a nice chat. He is always fun to talk to. Whenever they woke up, I noticed that they had really snotty noses and it was getting harder for them to breathe. I thought this was a nice time to try the saline drops and suctioning. Man, did they love that! NOT! They screamed bloody murder. But at least they could breathe better. I also noticed that Rowan is starting to cry some tears.

The evening hours are more difficult. I swear, since we started this sleep training, it’s like now they know that milk is available all the time and they’re taking advantage of it. In the meantime, I “run out” whenever they both are feeding every hour or so. I don’t have the patience to wait however long it takes to get another let down. It could be that they’re excited to see their dad, I don’t know. They seem hungry ALL THE TIME from 7pm to midnight. Michael said “I don’t think there’s been a 10 minute period where you’re not feeding one of them!” I feed them, they seem content, I put them down, they fall asleep for a few minutes, then they wake up and start fussing again. I think they might have gas or something so I’m going to try something called “Gripewater”. If I can only find the time to get to the store (it’s only available at health food stores). It’s also hard to nurse them without interacting with them (so you don’t stimuate them). Elijah will look up at me with those big eyes and give me a really big smile. I can’t help but smile back! He’s just too cute!

The day started at around 4am. The babies woke us up after a good stretch, maybe 4 hours. Michael got up since they were in the bedroom. He couldn’t go back to sleep so he decided to just go into work. There were some things going on that was causing him stress, so he went in to deal with it. They are in “crunch mode” now, and Michael has been working really hard. Now that he goes into work earlier, it seems like he works 12 hour days, every day! But he also goes climbing every Tuesday and running a few times a week. I fed the babies and put them down. Since they seemed content, I took advantage of it and slept with them for about 2 hours. Michael was planning on coming home early since he went in so early but it didn’t work out that way. The car was in the shop and it took longer than he expected, so he didn’t come home until 5. We were planning to go for a walk but it was too late. Oh well, we’ll try again. At least the days are getting longer and the weather has been really nice! We spent the evening talking to his mom and his sister Cathy. After that, we both were so tired we couldn’t make dinner. I went to top foods since I had to pick up a prescription for my yeast thing and also to get chow mein and a sandwich. Well, they didn’t have any sandwiches and their chow mein sucks nowadays. Seems like someone else is cooking it now and doesn’t know how to make it. Gone are the days of hospital chow mein!

Tonight, I was incredibly jealous of Michael since he gets to go to bed and sleep for at least 6 hours. It usually doesn’t bother me so much, but having spent the last few days with very broken sleep and very little of it, I was irritable! It was ok though, the babies seemed to know not to mess with me and they didn’t fuss too much.

Today was a pretty normal day. Mary Ellen came in and I napped. I was actually feeling pretty good and considered staying up and running some errands while Mary Ellen was here. But I didn’t. In the afternoon, I went to Shari’s house to pick up more breast milk since we’re out. I picked up all the rest, which makes me nervous. I thought I had a large supply, but we’re using it quick. I think the boys are eating a whole lot more now and I’m not pumping as frequently as I should. Michael surprised me today with some roses and a really cute card (awww). Of course I felt bad that I didn’t get him anything, but he understood! We didn’t do anything special for dinner since we already had our Valentine’s date on Saturday. We considered getting some indian food, but I would rather have him at home than running around getting food!

This morning we both wanted pancakes (as we usually do on the weekends). We headed to the Woodinville Cafe, hoping that it would be too early for the church crowd. We just made it, we had to wait a few minutes but there wasn’t oodles of people standing around. The pancakes hit the spot and we went back home. Michael went out for a run after that. When he came back, I slept. I pretty much slept the afternoon away, with little feeding interruptions. Michael is always trying to get me to sleep and I am always trying to stay awake. Since I see him so little nowadays, I want to spend as much time with him as I can, sleeping comes 2nd!

Today we just took it easy, we were planning to go out in the stroller, but it was raining pretty hard so we decided not to. We spent the afternoon talking to folks. Michael talked to his sister, Tamara, and I talked to my mom. My mom has been super busy helping to take care of her parents, working a busy schedule, getting the house ready for my sister’s wedding, and she recently had to get re-certified for her job (she is a TSA worker at the airport) which meant she had to stay up a lot to study. I hardly talk to her anymore since she is hardly home. So, this morning I woke her up to talk to her and she filled me in with what’s going on. My stomach hurt again and I ran out of acidopholous, so Michael had to run out and get some more. I didn’t sleep in the morning after staying up all night so while he was out, I got a couple of hours rest.

Since our babysitter wasn’t available for Valentines Day, we decided to go out tonight. Waking up from the nap, I realized that there wasn’t enough time to do all the things that needed to be done and be out of the house at 5. It was 4pm and I had to feed Rowan, pump, shower and eat. On top of that, Lorna came at 4 because she didn’t get the email that I sent asking to come at 5. She was very nice about it and left and came back at 5:30(she doesn’t live very far). I was able to get everything done and almost right on the nose. We left at about 5:45. We went to the Redmond climbing gym. I haven’t been there in over a year. To my surprise, my harness was loose (I was expecting it to be tight)! I climbed really easy stuff, but it wasn’t so easy for me. I did a few 5.4’s, 5.5’s and one 5.6. I felt so awkward and uncoordinated and my feet were killing me. I have to get used to having all my weight on the tips of my toes again. We only could climb for about an hour, but that was enough for me! After that, we went to Red Mill for some good burgers. We originally wanted to go some place more romantic like the Asteroid Cafe. We even made reservations. But it’s expensive, and I’m pretty happy with a good burger. At Red Mill, we tried to figure out what we should do as far as what movie to see. There are no movies that start at the 8pm hour so we decided to catch “Hitch” at 8:50 at the Redmond Town Center. That gave us enough time to go to the bookstore and pick up the sleep training book and look around. The movie was packed since it was opening weekend, and we had to ask a couple to move down one seat so that we had 2 seats together. The movie was very good, better than I expected it to be. I recommend seeing it as a date movie. We came home at 11:30, a full 6 hours out! Poor babies were crying when we got in, they just woke up from their sleep and were hungry. I was super tired but was able to feed them and then fall asleep with them. Luckily, they slept for about 3 hours!

This evening was filled with spitups and vomits and other stuff. First of all, right when I got home, I changed my shirt and right away, Elijah spit up on it. Then Rowan managed to burp on it followed by spitup. When I was feeding Elijah later, Quincy starts to make vomiting noises and he was on the couch. Oh, the panic that happens when you hear that noise. I was trying to get something under him before he vomits, but that just freaked him out, so he was panicked and turned away from the towel and spit up on the couch! Ugh, and Elijah started crying because as I was trying to get the towel under Quincy, he was still on my lap and I was kind of smushing him. Only a little Quincy vomit got on the couch, a lot of it got onto the comforter that I was using to sleep, which I immediately put into the washer. As I was heading down to the utility room, I smelled really bad cat pee. Their litterbox got stuck upside down (we have an electronic litterbox) so the poor kitties had no litterbox and peed on the floor! :( I had to clean that up and smelled like cat pee for the rest of the morning. And to top it off, at the 5am feeding, Elijah gave the 2 hugest burps, I thought he would spit up blood, it was so big!

Today they had their follow up appointment with the doctor. They still have thrush, even though I was so good with the nystatin. They have to go to a more powerful medicine, one that they ingest rather than a contact drug. At least it’s a very small amount (.4 ml), so it will be easy to give it to them. Elijah was so cute at the doctor’s office. I dressed him up in the “AB/CD” shirt (the letters are shaped into the AC/DC logo) and the nurse totally loved it. I heard her raving about it to the other nurses. When the doctor came in, Elijah looked intensely at him and smiled a lot, and the doctor couldn’t help but be taken by his utter cuteness! Michael came home early and we planned to go out in the stroller, but our sleep hormones took over and by the time we woke up, it was too late. Oh well.

Last night, it was pretty successful sleep training them, at least for the first time. They did sleep quite peacefully for 3 - 4 hours, but then after that, both of them decided to eat every 2 hours well into the afternoon. I was trying to sleep during the night, so that we all get on the same schedule. But it doesn’t seem like that’s realistic until they start sleeping longer. So this meant that I hardly got any sleep today, since Mary Ellen doesn’t come on Thursdays. We made a shopping trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond today. It went ok, but I felt so rushed, like I’m sitting on a time bomb, about to go off at any minute. Elijah cried on the way there, but both of them were very quiet in the store, then once we got back to the car, Rowan started crying, he was so hungry. He cried all the way home. Getting in and out of the car is really complicated. Here’s the sequence of events coming home:

1. Grab one baby and diaper bag and bring them into the house downstairs
2. Go back out and grab 2nd baby and baby bjorn and bring them in
3. Take the most fussy baby out of the car seat and bring them upstairs and put them in their bouncy seat
4. Go back down, grab other baby and diaper bag and bring them up, put them in the bouncy seat
5. Wash hands and change shirt (if nursing shirt not worn)
6. Feed most fussy baby and swaddle and put them down
7. Feed other baby and swaddle and put them down
8. Go back down and bring car into the garage

Whew! After I came home, I had to start the routine (feeding them every hour), but I fell asleep so I missed one of the feedings. At least I was able to get an hour or so of rest. They didn’t settle into their hammocks very well, so we just put them in their bouncy seats in the bedroom. Probably trying to get used to the dark/quiet coupled with a new bed is too much for them. So, after they get used to the dark, we’ll try the hammocks again. This time I stayed up at night since Mary Ellen was coming in the morning.

This morning Rowan gave me another big smile at 6am. I tried to wake Michael up multiple times (5:45, 6:30, 7:30) and finally I gave up. He ended up sleeping in until 10am. I like to come in with a baby in the morning and their wiggles and cooing noises wakes him up to happiness. Of course, it can always backfire and they can start screaming in his ear. But so far that hasn’t happened. Anyways, it seems like Rowan is most smiley in the morning, but he does seem to do it more during the day. Mary Ellen came back today, she had a bacterial problem and was cured with antibiotics. If it was viral, she wouldn’t be able to come for another week or so! I took a nap until noon, as usual, and then after feeding them, I fixed my lunch (breakfast burritos of course!), and then I got out the stroller and went for a walk. I kept them in their swaddle blankets since it was fairly cold out (40s), and put on their hats. The hats that were WAY too big when we were in the hospital is almost too small now. I was kind of surprised. Rowan slept through the whole walk while Elijah cried the whole time. I couldn’t really do anything about it and he will have to get used to it, so I just put on my iPod and walked fast. We walked to Woodinville-Duvall road and back, maybe 1/2 mile total. It is so much harder when you’re pushing 50 pounds uphill! The stroller is 30 lbs and each baby is 11. I was sweatin’. It was fun though, and it will be even funner and probably more comfortable once we get the Mountain Buggy (in early March). The tires are air filled for a smoother ride. Can’t wait! It was a really nice day though, very sunny even though it was cold. After we came back, I started them on their sleep training ritual which was to feed them every hour from 3pm to 6pm. After the 6pm feed, then I give them a no soap bath in the sink, then we swaddle them up and Michael reads them 2 books, then we put them down in their hammocks. Elijah was sleeping before I got done with Rowan, so he missed out on story time, but Rowan was a captive audience for Michael. They did really well, Elijah got fidgety at around 2 hours, Michael soothed him for an hour and then I fed him. Rowan did an amazing 4 hours. It was very weird to have the baby monitor. From when they were born, we always had them in our sights at all times, or at least in the same room. It was so odd to have them in our bedroom with the doors closed and only listening with a monitor. We started to watch “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle”, it’s pretty funny so far. I actually went to bed with the rest of the family, amazing!