Smiles

Now that both of my kids are smiling, life is so much better. Things are still hard (not that I'm not ALWAYS grateful to have them). My mother's helper/babysittier has become more and more unreliable until this week she was a no-show, but my in-laws are coming from Italy on Sunday! For two weeks!! Yay!

The babies are doing great. At just over 11 weeks, Tadpole is 12 pounds 2 ounces, and Turtle is 12 pounds 14 ounces. Turtle has started "talking" to us (when he's not screaming), and Tadpole still smiles up a storm constantly. It's wonderful. They're also sleeping at night, sometimes for stretches of 3-4 hours. REALLY wonderful. (Knock on wood). Not that they're on the same sleeping schedule. Or napping schedule. Or any kind of schedule, but we just go with it and hope that it'll settle into something schedule-like sometime soon.

The best thing we've done is hire a night nurse to come a couple times a week. It is saving our sanity. Since we're still in the middle of a huge remodel that is WAY behind schedule and dealing with two cranky babies while a lot of other stuff is going on in ours lives, getting regular sleep makes all the difference in the world.

Speaking of which - the night nurse is here and Mama and Papi are off to bed. Cheers!

2 months

Time really does fly when you have babies. Everyone always told me it goes so fast! Actually, time doesn't seem to go any faster at all. I think what really happens is that the babies grow so quickly, they don't spend very long at each stage.

At two months, Tadpole is 10 pounds 15 ounces (up from 6 pounds 3 ounces at birth), and Turtle is 12 pounds 2 ounces (up from 6 pounds 13 ounces at birth, although that is an estimate since he was screaming and flailing on the scale).

Life is hard with twins. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They keep me busy morning to night, and we still haven't figured very much out. We haven't figured out sleep/nap schedules or routines at all. I tried getting them to sleep early last night since I was a single mom for the evening, and they were up early this morning and didn't sleep well. Of course, there are always other complications, such as the fact that they had their 2-month shots yesterday, so who knows?

They are sweet babies. It's true that babies develop at their own rates, you can see it very well with fraternal twins. Tadpole started smiling three weeks ago and has been smiling up a storm ever since, charming everyone around. Turtle started smiling much more recently and is still very shy about it. He prefers to frown, pout, or scream. Not nearly as charming!

We gave up breastfeeding and pumping. It was very sad for me, and I'd like to write more about it, but I don't have time at the moment. Factors included lack of time, lack of sleep, and digestive issues. Like I said, twins are hard.

Speaking of twins being hard - one thing I want to write more about it how awesome I think it will be for them in a year or so, but how it kind of sucks for them right now. I can't pick them up every time they cry, because I can't handle two babies at once, especially now that they are bigger. The calmer, sweeter twin tends to get a lot less attention. It's hard on everyone, including mama and papi (pronounced Poppy).

I want to write about dealing with parents and in-laws, bilingualism, sleeping, babywearing, trying out cloth diapers (hopefully I'll start that today or tomorrow!), meeting other mothers, dealing with the public when you have twins and tons more.

I've learned a lot about guilt, about judging, about learning. This is such an amazing, difficult journey. But now there's at least one baby crying and it's time to get papi up, so I've got to go. Ciao!