2 months

The babies were 2 months on Sunday! I can't believe how the time has gone by so quickly. It makes me sad. I didn't realize I would have such a hard time with the twins growing up! I think because I know these are my last babies, I am having a harder time this time. I want them to stay babies longer!

We had a Dr. appt. on Monday, and the babies had to get their shots. :( They were little troopers though. Finley had such a sad cry as his cries usually are, and we expected Scout to have her pissed off loud as hell scream, but much to our surprise, it wasn't so bad!

Everything is looking good for both babies. Finley is now weighing 8 lbs. 12 oz. and Scout is an even 10 lbs. They seem like they are getting so big, even though I know some babies are BORN at these weights, and my babies are 2 months old.

Nights are still rough a lot of the time. I am so exhausted. They are up about every 2 hours to eat, sometimes 3. So by the time I feed, change, and get one back to sleep, then feed, change and get the other back to sleep, and then fall asleep myself, it is almost time to get up and do it again!!! I could feed them at the same time, but I don't know how well that would go with me half asleep to begin with! Last night they did AMAZINLY well though actually! They slept from 11:30 pm until 4:30 am. Then they were up at 7:30 am again to eat. Please, please babies, continue to do THAT! :)

Both babies have started to smile..FINALLY!!! We were a little worried actually. Our other 2 were smiling a lot at this age, but these two, not so much. Did we not have happy babies? :( But seriously, Monday night, (after the doctor appt. were we talked about our concern of them not smiling) they both started doing it! The big gummy grin when we'd talk to them. I love it! The other night Grammy and I were talking to Fin and he just started smiling and making all these cute faces, so we started laughing, and then his face just lit up and he smiled even bigger. Every time we lauged he would grin ear to ear! So cute! I got a little giggle out of him the other day too!

The babies are sleeping in their crib together now, and have been for about a week. No more carseat sleeping! Yay! Sometimes I can even put them in there crib not quite asleep yet, and they will fall asleep on their own, but much of the time we still have to rock them to sleep, especially Scout!

They love their swings. Any time I need to get something done, that's where they hang out. They are just now starting to like their tummy time. Usually when we put them on their tummy they just like to lay their head down and go to sleep! But now they will look around a lot more. They don't really like their butterfly mat on the floor yet. I don't think they like being flat on their backs. Even at night we have to put them in the little sleep positioners to go to sleep.

Their cries are much easier to tell apart now too. Up until they were about a month, we'd hear one of them cry from the bassinet and we'd guess which it was because the cries sounded very similar. Alot of the time we'd guess wrong. But now, we can definitly tell them apart. Finley still has a newborn sounding cry, and he puts his little pout out and sounds so sad, But Scout has more of a mad, I'm pissed cry, as I've mentioned before!

I've got some new photos to share!





















And of course I can't forget my favorite little 4 year old! Miss Kinzie has now decided she DOES like the camera! For so long she would NOT let me take a picture of her. But now that I am taking pictures of the babies, she will let me again! Yay!





Kinzie has been doing much better the past couple of weeks. We've gone out for mommy and Kinzie time a few times, and I've been able to spend more time playing with her, now that the babies are a little older. She just started Dance and Gymnastics, so that is good for her. She loves going to them! Tonight she is going to an ECFE event, Daddy and Me bowling. They get to go bowling and eat pizza, just the 2 of them. She is so excited.

We are trying to find something fun for Me and Malichi to do together, and Aaron and Malichi to do together too so he isn't feeling left out! He does pretty well though, being that he is in school all day. He comes home and has missed the babies, and wants to hold them. Well, either that or he wants to play lego star wars!!!!!

Well, I'm off to feed, and change some babies now!

typical.

The twins are 8 weeks today. Scout is weighing in at 9 lb. 8 oz. and Fin is 8 lb. 10 oz.

Finding Balance...

I am finding it hard to balance my life right now. There isn't enough time in the day. I have so many things I want to do, and there are so many things I've let go of because I just can't do it all. There's bills to be paid, tons of paperwork to to through, the house needs a good cleaning, thank yous to be sent and phone calls to be made. I want to keep up on the baby books, the first year calendar, taking lots of photos, and keeping up on organizing them, scrapping photos of my babies and kiddos, and journaling and blogging. And even more importantly spending precious time with Kinzie and Malichi and really focusing on them whenever the twins are napping. And I also need a little time for me, which is mostly used for sleeping.

It's really hard.

And on such little sleep, it's even harder. Last night I was only able to sleep from 2 am until 5 am. Not enough sleep to function on when it's night after night like that! They did sleep a 5 hour stretch at the same time a few nights ago, and that was wonderful.

Most of my time is spent nursing. I finish feeding S & F, and go start to do one of the many things on my to do list, and before I know it one of the babies is ready to eat again(usually Scout...she is the bottomless pit...a little milk hog she is).

I am trying to focus on the stuff that is really important right now...spending time with the older kids, and spending time with each baby when the other is napping, or playing with them together when they are both awake and NOT eating. And in any time I might have left...scrapbooking, photographing and documenting our lives right now.

The cleaning can wait, the organizing can wait, the paperwork can wait, the phone calls can wait...people understand. The bills can't though....so I better not put those off! If you know me at all, you know that's totally not me. I like to be organized and on top of things and have a clean house.

If it was humanly possible to get all of the things done I want to, I would. But it's not. So I need to let go a little.

Thank goodness Grammy will be back again tomorrow to help for the week. She's a lifesaver!

Both babies are now napping so I am going to try to catch a little nap as well!

Our little rockstars....

I wrote the following blog post last week, but never got around to publishing it....

1-8-09

Kinzie broke my heart tonight.

She has been acting out a lot lately, and we know it is because she is trying to get attention from me and Aaron and she is feeling left out. So I’ve been asking her often how she is feeling, and she gets choked up, and tries not to cry, as she tells us nothing is wrong. For some reason she doesn’t want to tell us she feels sad, or upset. I’ve really been trying to talk to her telling her that when I am sad I talk to someone and that is what helps me feel better.

Tonight she was acting out a lot and talking back, so Aaron I and were in her room with her talking about it, and Aaron asked her “Are you feeling left out”. And she replied “Yes. Because you never play with me anymore, mommy”, as she looked at me trying so hard to hold back her tears. I just started bawling. And as soon as I did, she started crying too and she clung to me, giving me a big hug. I know that she has been feeling left out. She is used to having me all to herself all day long. I try to spend as much time with her as I can, but it is hard when the twins are nursing every 1 to 2 hours most of the time, and I am lacking sleep so badly. She asked me “can Daddy take care of the babies, and you play with me”? Now that I am getting at least a little milk pumping I will be able to do that more with her, so Aaron can feed the babies.

She seems so fragile right now, so right now I am trying to give her as much positive attention as I can. Her and I are going to go out one night next week and getting our nails painted, and maybe we’ll go out for ice cream too! She is sooo excited about it. It will be good for her and I to have some “girl time”.

As I mentioned before the babies are nursing every 1 to 2 hours, especially at night. All I really do is nurse these days. They were acting like they weren’t satisfied after nursing a lot of the time, and then they’d be hungry again in an hour or sometimes less. It was really taking a toll on me at night. There have been nights that I am in tears trying to get them to nurse enough at each feeding to satisfy them, but I just don’t know if I am producing enough. I know they say your milk will keep up with what they need to eat, but maybe it makes a difference that I am nursing 2? So the last few night we supplemented them with formula so they would take a little more and sleep a little longer. I got 3 consecutive hours of sleep which was wonderful! The next day I called the lactation nurse and now I am renting a scale to see how much they are taking in each feeding. They were only taking an ounce to 2 ounces at each feeding, but a lot of times it was only 1 ounce. So I am supposed to pump after I feed them each time to stimulate more milk production. It seems to be helping. We have supplemented with formula a couple of times, which makes me a little sad because I wanted them to be only on breastmilk. But I also need to get some sleep! I almost cried the first time I had to give them formula!!! Do you think I might still be a little emotional since having the babies!? Now that I am producing a little more, and have some expressed milk as well, I should be able to go back to just breastmilk soon.

Backtracking a little….we had a wonderful Christmas. We didn’t want to travel with the babies this year so we asked everyone to celebrate with us at our home. It was so nice to stay home with the babies. Christmas Eve we stayed in and made a nice dinner, opened gifts and made cookies for Santa as we usually do. We had a relaxing, laid back day.

And out of all the presents we got….these are our favorites!



Then on Christmas day we got up and opened up Santa gifts. Malichi’s favorite gift was his Magic Show set and Kinzie got her washing machine that she wanted. Way back in October she saw it in a magazine and she said, “Mommy, I want that washing machine so I can do my own laundry and you don’t have to anymore!” Isn’t that sweet. It goes perfectly in her little “house” she has set up downstairs. She was so funny when she opened her presents, she would get all excited and say “it’s just what I always wanted!” And Malichi has been practicing his magic tricks and has done a few Magic Shows for us.

After we finished all of that we headed to Owatonna for Tiffany and Eric’s wedding. They were originally planning to get married in July, but Eric found out he will be deployed to Iraq the beginning of February, so they wanted to move it up. He was back in MN for a few days over Christmas, so the decided to do it then. They had only about a week to put the wedding together. It was small, but beautiful. I can’t believe my baby sister is a married woman now!



The day after Christmas we had all of my family over to celebrate Christmas. My mom went a little crazy with the gifts…she brought over 90 or something like that!



Everyone spent the night and we celebrated with my Aunts and Uncles and cousins on my mom’s side the next day.

New Years Eve and New Years Day we had Aaron’s family here to celebrate Christmas. We all got matching jammies. Cute aren’t we!?



Well Christmas came and went, and now it is already January. The babies are already 6weeks old, and they are growing and changing. Scout weight 8 lbs. 6 oz. and Finley weighs 7 lbs. 7 oz. I can’t believe how well they are gaining weight! They have grown out of their preemie diapers that were even a little big on them when we brought them home from the hospital. I will have to pack away all those tiny preemie clothes now that they have outgrown them as well. They are too big now to put them in the bassinet together, they each sleep in their own now, although we have been letting them sleep in their carseats sometimes because they sleep the best in there!



Finley is still our little sleeper. He is always napping. Scout is awake a lot more, and when she is awake, she always has this surprised look on her face, with her eyes open really really wide and she gets this little wrinkle between her eyes. Aaron does a pretty funny impression of it! Finley is always raising his eyebrows, making wrinkles in his forhead, and pursing his lips like he is going to give you a kiss. He loves to lift his head and look around. He has such a strong neck just like Malichi did at this age. Scout is pretty stingy with her smiles, but we get more out of her than we do Finley. She does like to copy us sticking our tongue out at her though which is pretty cute. Finley is so serious all the time. And when he cries, his little lip comes out and he has the cutest little pout. He mostly fusses, and doesn’t cry too hard, and his little cry is so cute. Scout, she doesn’t even fuss a little first when she’s upset, she just goes right to letting out this loud wail right away. Then she stops, waits a couple seconds and lets out another one. She definitely lets you know when she’s mad! She’s got a little temper on her!

Scout loves to eat. She eats just like Kinzie did as a baby! She’ll eat so fast she starts to choke! And when she is searching for me to eat she looks so cute, she opens her eyes soo wide, and opens her mouth wide, and she gets that little wrinkle in between her eyes. Poor little Finley always has to eat last because she is so demanding! Sometimes I feed them at the same time, but it is really hard to do that on my own. I feel like a cow being milked when them at the same time! Finley is still having a hard time latching on sometimes. A lot of times he eats for a little bit and then he pulls off and then gets frustrated and frantically looks for more. Nursing 2 babies is definitely a big commitment, but It is so worth it to me.

That’s all I’ve got for now! I am really going to try to blog more often, it’s my way of documenting our lives right now!

4 weeks.

I can't believe my babies are already 4 weeks old. It makes me a little sad. It's going by too fast. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was hugely pregnant and waiting impatiently for my babies to be here. And now they are and the weeks are flying by.

I've got lots of new photos to share:





































Aaron and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on the 8th. Last August I lost the diamond to my wedding ring so I haven't been able to wear it. We had a nice dinner at home, and after dinner, Aaron had Kinzie come into the room and give me a little white box with a beautiful ring inside. It is a white gold ring with 10 diamonds. It's beautiful. I had some suspicions that he was getting me a ring, so it wasn't a huge surprise, but it was wonderful. Between that and the personalized baby blankets that he bought me, he's done pretty darn good this year with thoughtful, sentimental gifts!!! Good job, love! :)

Kinzie and Malichi are home for Christmas break. It's so nice having Malichi home during the day; he and Kinzie are entertaining each other, and it's nice for Kinzie to have someone to play with during the day (in between the fighting of course). Yesterday and today were my first days home alone with all 4 kids. Things got a little stressful at times, but overall I think I handled it pretty well!! But we also didn't have to leave the house at all either day. The true test will be when I am home alone with all 4 and we are back to our normal schedules! It still seems so crazy to think I am a mother of 4 now! But I love it.

I can't believe tomorrow is already Christmas Eve! The house is all decorated, the shopping is done, the presents are under the tree. I am all ready for Christmas. I am so looking forward to spending the day with Aaron and the kids tomorrow; baking cookies for Santa, opening gifts with the kids, making a nice dinner together, and listening to Christmas music all day! :)

Christmas day we'll be getting up early I'm sure, to see what Santa has brought! Then we'll be off to Tiffany's wedding. Her and Eric decided last week that they would move the wedding date up to Christmas day, from the original July 4th date, because Eric will be going to Iraq. It will be a small wedding, but wonderful I am sure. They will be having a big reception when he returns from Iraq. I can't believe my little sister will be married in a few days!

Then we'll be back home for the rest of Christmas day for some more family time. We got the best Christmas gifts this year...don't you think?



Well it's time for me to feed 2 little babes. I've been given the ok to feed on demand, and not every 2 hours at night! YAY! Gonna get me some sleep tonight!

Merry Merry Christmas!!!!!!

Meet Finley Maxwell and Scout Amelia!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008 we welcomed Finley Maxwell, and Scout Amelia into this world!

Finley was born at 12:44 pm and Scout was born at 1:22 pm.

Finley was our little peanut; 5 lb. 8 oz. and
Scout was a little bigger than her brother; 6 lb. 3 oz.
Both babies were 18 inches.
Both are healthy and precious and wonderful!

I can't believe they are FINALLY here! Things went really well, there were a few minor complications, but I was able to deliver both babies naturally and with no epidural or pain medication!

Here they are in their first hours of life:





Malichi and Kinzie are doing just amazing with them. They were both excited when they came in to meet the babies; eager to hold their new baby brother and sister. They got to open their gifts "from the babies", and they gave the babies the gifts they bought and wrapped for them. It was so sweet. They were so excited to show the babies what they picked out for them all on their own! And they didn't have to fight since they both had one to hold! We were SO impressed with them!

Proud Brother:


Proud Sister:


Our first photo as a family of SIX!!!!


And proud Papa and Mama:





We took our babies home on Thanksgiving Day. Both of our little turkeys are doing wonderful! :)

















Finley and Scout are already a week old and our first week with them was absolutely wonderful!!

It's been a long while....

I obviously haven't updated my blog in quite a long time, and posts may continue to be few and far between after these twins are born!!!!! But I promise, I will try to update more often!

life has been just crazy....
lots of morning sickness for the first 17 wks. :(
busy summer. vacation. zoo trips. birthday parties. beach days. fun stuff.
preparing for twins.
finishing our basement.
finding out the twins are BOY and GIRL!
aaron going back to his old job.
rearranging the WHOLE house.
kinzie's "a big 4 year old".
malichi turns 7!
kinzie starting preschool and LOVING it.
malichi starting FIRST grade!!
lots of ultrasounds and Dr. appointments.
school activities.
halloween events.
christmas shopping almost DONE! Yay!

and just lots more preparing for the twins!!!

We have the nursery all painted and set up. I will post pictures soon of that!

We've got all of those "2nds" bought that we'll need.

We've got the names picked out for our sweet babies!

Now we are just awaiting there arrival!

Kinzie decided way back in July that the babies names would be Lisa and Bam Bam. Those names stuck for a couple of weeks and then she changed there names to Lisa and Max, and then she was dead set that is what the names would be. When I would say how about this name or that name, she would get VERY upset and say "NO. Their names are Max and Lisa. DON'T change the names". We'd be out and about and she would talk to random people and say "My mommy is having 2 babies. A boy and a girl. And there names are going to be Lisa and Max!"

So we decided we better decide on their names early so she could get adjusted to the "real" names. Aaron suggested we use Kinzie's names as middle names. I didn't want to go with Lisa because I don't feel like it "flows" with the names we like, but was considering Max if we went with Maxwell. We decided a while ago that we liked Finley for a boy. And then for a girl, we were back and forth between Stella and Scout. I wanted Scout and Aaron wanted Stella. So he'd come home from work and say "how are Finley and Stella today?" and I would reply "oh Finley and Scout are doing good". I really started to get nervous though that we needed to think of a 3rd girl name that we both liked since we couldn't agree!

Well, on my birthday Aaron came home with the most wonderful gift for me. It was a blue baby blanket with the name Finley embroidered on it, and a pink baby blanket with Scout embroidered on it! I cried when I opened the gift! I was so impressed! I asked him if he did like the name Scout and he said yes. He said at first he didn't but then it grew on him! It was such a thoughtful gift, and I was so happy to be able to call our babies by their names!!!!

Soon we will be welcoming Finley Maxwell and Scout Amelia into this world!

I will be 35 weeks along on monday, and once I hit the 36 week mark, I am in the "safe zone" to have the babies!!!! Wooohooo! And if I haven't had the babies by 38 weeks, I will be induced on Dec. 1st! So that's only 1 to 3 weeks from monday!!!

Both babies are growing well and doing well. At my last ultrasound on Oct. 21st, Finley was 4 lbs. and Scout was 3 lbs. 8 oz.!!! I was so surprised they were as big as they are!

I am sooo ready to have these babies. Besides the fact that I can't wait to meet them, I am just feeling miserable. I am measuring 44 weeks! (if this were a singleton pregnancy)! No wonder I feel so damn uncomfortable all the time!
Sleep is NOT coming easy and hasn't been for a while. I get only a few hours a night of sleep. I can't WAIT to sleep on my stomach again!!!!!! My hips aren't handling all of this very well either and I have had some racing heart issues as well that I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks ago. :( BUT I shouldn't complain too much...LUCKILY I have not been put on bedrest yet! That is a definite plus! I just have to keep reminding myself that it is almost over, and the end result is MORE than worth the pain!

Kinzie and Malichi are so excited for me to have the babies. Malichi says he can't wait to teach them how to play Lego Starwars! And Kinzie says she is going to be my helper and change all the diapers, even the poopie ones. We'll see how long that lasts!!!!

Kinzie asks me almost daily, "are the babies going to come out today?" Such a long time for her to wait!!!! She loves talking to them and every morning she says "Good Morning Finley and Scout!" She looks at my belly and asks "mommy, here did your belly button go?"!

Malichi asks me if my belly button will go back together after they open it up to take the babies out! :) I haven't yet gone into any details on how the babies are really born! He isn't ready for that yet.

They are going to be such good siblings to these babies!

Here is what I am looking like these days......





And probably our last photo as a family of 4...




Oh and one last photo to share. Aaron and were Juno and Paulie Bleeker for Halloween this year! How perfect is that!?