A whole lot of stuff

(Thought I'd start with this picture because it makes me laugh. Looks like we're telling them scary stories.)

Why, hello there blogworld! Yes, 'tis I, Rebecca the pretty much silent. Somehow I have found a time where one baby is asleep and the other is out at Home Depot with his dad and, amazingly enough, it isn't time to pump. So, here goes nothing -- my attempt to actually update this darn website.

-- Happy New Year! I tried to post one last 2012 post... didn't happen. Ah well.

(Oh, come on. That was hardly 20 minutes. That barely even counts as a nap! I just sat down! How did S figure that out and wake up and start crying?! He's brilliant, I tell you.)

(A bit of placating. Lets see if that worked...)

(Nope. Sigh... Guess we'll try this again later... Hopefully before 2014...)

(OK, S is down for a nap, again, and D is entertaining himself rolling around on the floor in front of me slobbering all over his favorite Eeyore doll. Let's see how many more bullets I can make it through.)

(I hate the days when their naps get so out of synch...)

-- I turned 38 yesterday (OK, that started as "yesterday" but now it is "four days ago"). Wow. That just sounds old. (It's possible I said that about 37, too.) But, 38 just seems so close to 40. Yes, yes, it's not OLD, exactly. It just seems very "adult." I was thinking the other day how I truly don't feel 38. I feel 27 and I think I have ever since I *was* 27. Do we ever really "feel" our age? Will I still feel like I am 27 when I'm 60? I mean, physically I feel about 85 right now, but mentally I feel like I'm 27. Will the boys make me feel older or younger?

-- Another thing that happened yesterday (yeah, yeah, four days ago...) -- I paid the storage bill for our last little frozen embryo for the next year. We talked about it and we're pretty sure we don't plan on using it -- we always wanted two kids and, hey, look, two kids! And, at the moment, the thought of adding more children to the utterly exhausted chaos that is our house right now seems INSANE. But, we decided a while ago that it would be better to make the "official" decision when we weren't just absolutely mind-numbingly exhausted and risk regretting it later.

-- It's funny, as just plain *bad* as I was at being pregnant (weeks of bleeding, short funneling cervix, constant regular contractions from 15 weeks on, restricted activity, bed rest, premature rupture of membranes, premature birth) and as wonky as I felt (I swear my brain was pretty much mush the second half from meds), I really, really liked being pregnant and I miss it. That may be why I'm holding onto that last embryo as a "just in case."

(Oops, D got bored with Eeyore... off I go again...)

(OK, for a moment at least they seem to be both down for a nap...)

-- Yeah, that exhausted thing. Did I mention I'm exhausted? (Well, today isn't as bad as it was the day I started writing this...) The boys are 8 months or 6 months adjusted age. While better than when we first brought them home, our sleep patterns are still majorly screwed up.

(Nevermind, D wasn't really down...)

(Maybe now...)

-- Anyway...The boys' patterns were finally settling down to getting up once in the middle of the night, waking at 6 am or so and then sleeping again to 8 or so. And then we went out of town for a night for Thanksgiving and lost the entire thing. Suddenly they went back to getting up every 2 or 3 hours and I could no longer function I was so tired. So, we did some sleep training starting a week or two ago and we got them back to just getting up once in the middle of the night and then at 6 or 8, depending on the baby (S is an early riser, D likes to sleep in). Unfortunately, though, I draw the second "shift" and still seem to get no real sleep. The other night, S woke up and cried for 30 seconds every hour from 2:30 until 6:30 -- just enough to wake me up and interrupt my sleep. Then, at 7:15 he woke up for the day. I get about 2 1/2 hours of sleep before my shift starts and then, sometimes, 4 hours after it if I'm lucky. My husband gets solid sleep from 2 until 9 am. And, has the audacity to complain that he's tired.

-- Sometimes I feel like crying I'm so tired. I wish we could figure out a better way to do this. Some days are better than others but having two just makes sleep difficult. It's so rare that they are on the same schedule. We try to force it a bit, but it doesn't always work. I've read that identical twins are better at sleep synchronization than fraternals. I asked a friend if her identical twins (who were born at the same gestational age (due to twin-to-twin transfusion) as my fraternals) were more in synch and she said "oh, yeah, sleep was easy. We had a "family bed" and I slept in between the boys and just rolled over to nurse one and then rolled to the other side to nurse the other with my husband on the other side of him and our two year old daughter on his other side. It was lovely. Everyone slept fine." Oh yeah? Bite me.

Ahem. I didn't say that.

-- Part of the problem is that I'm still pumping so I get up to pump at the shift change. We've tried to figure out a way for me to sleep through until they wake up, but it never works.

-- And, right now, pumping isn't going particularly well. I'm pretty sure it's a hormonal thing. I had some kind of...only word I can come up with is "reset" about two weeks ago that involved intense pain for two days and felt like cysts rupturing and then I've been in "ovulation mode" for the past three days or so. (It's weird to have all the signs of O'ing and, for the first time in 4 1/2 years, nowhere or reason to record it or use it.) I think the hormonal change is messing with my milk supply. And, my mood. My birthday was a craptacular day on my part. I was a bit on the bitchy side. Woohoo. Hormones.

-- Yep, still pumping. Can't seem to stop. Might be addicted. Somehow it makes me feel better even though my nipples are in horrible shape and it's becoming logistically more difficult. Not sure when I'll give it up. We've been talking about it. I wanted to make it to at least 6 months adjusted. I did. Now I'm not sure what my goal is. I'm very reluctant to wean off of it.

-- The biggest "news" on our side is that we're officially in helmets, now. Sigh... I HATE them. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE. We did everything we could to avoid them. The boys' tortocolis (basically short, tight muscles on one side of the neck -- looking cockeyed when straight ahead and stuck one direction when turned) started as soon as we got them home (actually, you can see evidence of it in pictures when they were in the hospital despite all the repositioning they did there) and it was impossible to reposition them and get them turning more freely. We've been in weekly physical therapy since August. We've been doing stretching and strengthening exercises everyday. We've propped up. We've used a noggin nest. We've finally gotten rolling and tummy time and head lifting to work. We repositioned. We carried. We have been getting biweekly osteopathic manipulation. And, yes, the tortocolis finally got better. But, the flat heads (plagiocephaly) that came from it didn't. So, helmets. We started a week ago and are in for probably 3 months or so. They don't seem to mind them that much.

I, on the other hand, HATE them.

(Whoops. S is up...)

(OK, a miracle has occurred. My husband has taken both boys to school to go for a walk inside for a bit -- we've all been gong stir crazy from the snow and cold. This is the third time since April that I have been in the house alone. It's weird. And kind of nice.)

-- We call the boys Colonel Mustard (S) and Captain Ketchup (D) because their helmets are yellow and red and the exact color of the plastic bottles mustard and ketchup come in. The helmet colors are in honor of Iowa State and Iowa (my DH's alma maters -- he went to both for various degrees). He has plans to decorate them. Right now they're both being ISU fans (red and yellow). Colonel Mustard may soon transition into a U of I fan (black and yellow).











-- Other than helmets -- the boys are doing great. Laughing and babbling all the time. Rolling both ways. Considering pushing up to crawl. Beginning to get the hang of sitting up. Starting on solids. We moved away from cereals after both of them started to refuse them (after S initially seemed to love it). Now we're all about squash and carrots. S seems pretty finicky -- he loves it or hates it. Loved peas for a few days then hated them. Then he gobbled up the squash -- until yesterday. D finds the process amusing and eats a little bit before he gets tired of it. He's finally seeming to get the hang of it a bit and more is actually getting down his throat and not just on the bib.

-- They're still pretty skinny. D is about 14.5 lbs and S is 15.25 lbs. (Less than the 5th percentile and between 5th and 10th for their adjusted age, respectively.) Still about the median for height. Crazy that S is now quite a bit bigger than D. S is definitely a better eater -- both of solids and milk. The doctor is happy with their growth so we're good. We're working on getting them to eat more. When we try, though, they tend to just throw it up. It's funny, though, that we know all these babies that were born around September or later who outweigh our boys by a pound or two or more. It seems like we make little babies and all of our friends make giant babies. On the plus side, we've been able to get more use out of their clothes at different stages...

-- I really am just amazed by the boys every day. They are adorable and I just love watching them figure out new things.

-- Anything else? I'm starting in on the "sabbatical" portion of my leave soon. The part where I actually have to get some writing and research accomplished. I'll be going into work three days a week or so this semester. I went in yesterday for a few hours and I felt so lost. Hopefully it won't be too ridiculously difficult to get back into the swing of things. As much as I love being home with the boys, I am looking forward to exercising a different part of my brain for a while and occasionally getting a chance to *miss* them.

Wow, this got long. I really have to work on organizing my thoughts better and getting out short updates occasionally... I seem to say that a lot.

(But, hey, what would my posts be without an insanely excessive use of parentheses?)

Anyway, hope everyone is having a great 2013 so far!