Day 170

Your Help Is Requested

Our daily routine generally includes a 45–60 minute walk in the stroller. The babies seem to really like it: they either doze peacefully or stare in fascination at the sights in the out-of-doors. We live in a really wonderfully walkable neighborhood, so it’s generally a pleasure for whoever’s pushing them along, too.

It doesn’t hurt that it kills an hour during the otherwise grim march from their last nap of the day to bedtime.

The problem is that we’re entirely at the mercy of the weather. When it rains, we don’t go for a walk, and when we don’t go for a walk, we’re all stuck in the house. Getting out and about is good for them, and it’s good for their caretaker. (Me.)

So: suggestions on things to do with the babies when a walk isn’t possible? Preferably that can be accomplished with a baby-to-parent ratio of about 2:1?

Day 169

It Goes On

Today we continued along the path to solid foods, introducing the more conventional rice cereal. Rice cereal is… weird. It looks like instant mashed potatoes, and when mixed with formula is, if possible, less appetizing. Eloise was not impressed with the special of the day, but Julian contentedly nommed it down. Tomorrow we’re going with applesauce. (And yes, yes, I know you’re “supposed” to wait 3-4 days before introducing each new food, but I just can’t, in good conscience, keep shoveling this bland mush into their mouths. If they like the applesauce, we’ll settle on that for a few days.)

The other thing going on is our continuing struggles with sleep. I meant to write a long, detailed post on our adventures with sleep training (and may yet, if I find the time and you, dear reader, express an interest) but the short version is that we went with Dr. Ferber. Julian has never really been a problem in terms of sleeping through the night, but we needed to get Eloise down to a single wake-up to feed, and we’re still working on getting them to nap reliably during the day.

About a week and a half ago we decided to eliminate Eloise’s final night feeding, and that’s been something of a battle. Even though she should be able to sleep through the night without eating, she emphatically does not want to, and is not shy about expressing her displeasure, loudly, at 4:00 in the morning. The last two nights have seen me spending those gray hours between 4:00 and 7:00 sitting in the glider with her sleeping on my shoulder, since she’s currently refusing to go back down into her crib. The challenge is exacerbated by the presence of her brother, who can sleep blissfully through almost anything, but not his sister wailing at 4:00 in the morning. We’re now planning to whisk him out of the room at the first sign of an Eloisplosion since otherwise they take turns working each other into a frenzy and no one gets any sleep.

As if that weren’t challenge enough, we’re also trying to wean them off sleeping swaddled. Yes, at this point, the babies can only fall asleep if tightly wrapped, which means if, say, they wriggle out of their blanket in the middle of the night, they can’t go back to sleep… ELOISE.

Our plan is to use the spirit of the Ferber method: we’ll put them down unswaddled and each night wait a progressively longer amount of time before picking them up and swaddling them. That sounds like it might work, right?

Right?

Please, God, let us get more sleep tonight.

Day 168

Solid

I can’t believe it’s finally time, but the twins started solid food for the first time today.

We’d been seeing signs that they were ready. For one thing, Julian’s been gobbling down more and more milk recently, so he seemed to be getting hungry. They’ve both also taken a strong interest in watching us eat, and they’ve had good success with slurping formula off a spoon when we practiced. And we’ve been excited about it, too: it’ll be fun to introduce them to new foods and new flavors, and figure out what they like and dislike.

The standard food to start babies with is rice cereal, but let’s be honest: rice cereal is basically gruel. I have no problem with them eating rice cereal on a regular basis—it’s healthy, easy to digest, not particularly allergenic, and so forth—but there’s no way my children are going to be initiated into the world of food with the same stuff that got spooned out to orphans in a Dickens novel.

For their ceremonial first meal, we decided to go with avocado. Avocados are pretty good for you, and they’re totally delicious, and they’re a pretty awesome shade of green, which we thought would make for an entertaining mess. So, this morning, I took a nice ripe avocado, put about two teaspoons of it in a bowl, mushed it up with a fork, and added water until we achieved the consistency of a slightly thin smoothie.

And what do you know! The kids liked it! Sure, it kind of went all over their faces, and a large amount got smooshed down their chins and on their cheeks, but they ate it! And seemed to enjoy it!

Check it out:

Tomorrow, we’ll give them a little rice cereal for “breakfast” and gradually add maybe a fruit in the morning, or an evening vegetable. For the first few weeks, I’m given to understand, solid food is intended as a supplement, not a replacement, for the nutrition and calories they’re getting from milk and formula, so it’ll still be bottle city around here for a while. Huh, I guess that means bottles and spoons to wash every day. Awesome.

Back to Work

Wednesday was my first day back at work. As quickly as I became a mom, I have now become a working mom. While there’s no question that it’s a pretty big transition, I suspect that every transition in my life henceforth will be dwarfed by the transition of going from zero to two babies in an instant.

As part of my preparation for my return, I bought some new clothes and succumbed to the “Mommy Chop”:

Sadly, I ripped that brand new shirt on a nail later that day. Argh.

It is very disorienting to be in the office doing things that feel quite familiar and normal while thinking about all the things going on at home that had been my “new normal” for several months. For the most part it feels as though the twins exist in one dimension and my office exists in another, and I warp between them. Matt somehow discovered a portal between the two dimensions and brought Julian and Eloise on a field trip to visit me this afternoon.

I have a whole host of different emotions about being back at at my job: excitement about using my brain in a wider variety of ways; concern for Matt having to spend so much time on his own with the babies (something I still find daunting); and fear of being so overwhelmed with work that I’m not able to find anything approaching that elusive work/life balance nor able to enjoy or do either well. I’m actually quite happy not to be a stay-at-home mom, so regret about that is not among my many emotions, but that’s not to say I don’t miss the babies. This morning Julian was being so cute that he made me late — significantly late — for work. It’s easier to leave when they’re crying. (Well, easier to leave them. Harder to leave poor Matt.)

Anyway, the first few days felt quite surreal, but I’m sure I’ll develop new routines and patterns and will get comfortable with my new working mom identity. At that point perhaps I will no longer spend approximately 40 percent of my day gazing adoringly at the pictures of Julian and Eloise that I have thumb-tacked to my bulletin board.

Hey, for the first time since mid-October, weekends actually mean something again. TGIF, I guess!

Day 167

Big Day: Live Blog

Well, here we go.

Click here to read the rest »

Day 166

Open House

We’ll see whether I actually have time to post anything tomorrow, but I thought it might still be fun to let people follow along on my first full solo day, and to get a chance to see our baby data tracking in action.

For the next 24 hours, I’m turning on public access to some of the data we track daily using Trixie Tracker. If you’re interested to see how much and when Julian and Eloise eat, sleep, and poop, just pop on in!

(From today, for example, you can see that Julian napped for crap, while Eloise was a perfect angel.)

Solo

Yesterday was Rachel’s first day back at work since the twins were born. I’m sure she’ll have a lot to say about that on her own, but it also means a bit of a change for me. We’re incredibly lucky that the twins’ wonderful grandmother is going to be on the scene Tuesdays and Wednesdays for a while, so that means that I had a considerable amount of help yesterday.

Today, it’s just me (at least until 1:00 when the indispensable Abigail, our babysitter/helper, arrives). Wish me luck!

(Tomorrow I’ve got them on my own from 8-5… I’m thinking the only possible thing I can do, in this day and age, is to live-blog it.)

UPDATE

The day was a smashing success! Julian was a little more difficult than usual, but Eloise had, no question, the best day of her young life. (One day, she’ll graduate from college, and I’ll say, “Well, young lady, this is certainly exciting, but it’s no Day 166.”) She was smiley and playful and happy, and she let Abigail feed, hold, and play with her, and she didn’t really even fuss once. It was kind of eerie. Of course, now I’m exhausted. Here’s hoping tomorrow goes as well.

Day 165