You know… I have five children.

My youngest:

Speaking of him, I have recently discovered the very sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.  It happens when Thomas starts to sneeze but then doesn’t.  It is the sweetest cooing sound.  It would be wonderful to get it on video, but I just don’t think that is likely.  :)

This child is so happy to look at books all the time.  Yay!!

I did a (very small) photo shoot this morning of the boys because they were all wearing sock monkey PJs. 

Thomas is in focus in this one, but you can see Michael smiling in the background.

Thomas:

Joined by the big brother.  He was soooooo happy to be taking pictures with the babies.

Sooooooo adorable!  (Thomas looks very sad in the pic, but he was only slightly sad.)

And he couldn’t have been happier when he got to hold both the brothers!

The sisters couldn’t hold out one more minute – they had to be in the picture too!

I love this one!

Had to get a shot of the bootie!!

I laid the boys down on a blanket to wiggle around this afternoon.

Look how strong Thomas is!

They’re so cute!

We are adjusting to life with twin babies around here!  The days (and nights!) are not so hard all the time – yay!  I think we’re past the first adjustment phase.  We’re not quite to the “new normal” yet, since pretty much all we do is stay at home all the time, and that’s about all I can handle.  There are patterns for sure emerging in their schedules, and Matt and I routinely sleep alright.  Though we can definitely be heard being mean and growly to each other in the middle of the night. 

The babies will be 7 weeks tomorrow.  They’re not quite fun yet, but they’re super cute and snuggly.  We’re all looking forward to when they’ll really look at us and smile, then giggle and begin to truly interact. 

I have noticed their cries changing.  In addition to the “I’m a baby and I’m crying” cry, Thomas has a very sad pitiful cry, complete with a pouty face.  It’s a heartbreaker, for sure!  Michael has an “I’m mad and I’m going to scream with my red face and I might even hold my breath like my big brother” cry that really means business!  I think they’re trying different tactics to be the one who gets tended to first. 

Diapers and Bread and Shopping

My sweet Thomas, sleeping all swaddled up.

A peek through the bars…

Yesterday the boys were six weeks old.  Instead of taking lovely pictures of them, I took the opportunity to photograph my six week post-partum self.  I dressed in the same clothes I wore in my last preggo post and had my mom snap a picture of me.  It was chilly in no sleeves and bare feet!  (yay!!)

I also baked bread for the first time in forever yesterday.  It feels so good to be getting reacquainted with my kitchen!

Soooooooooo good!

Back on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all that, I didn’t do any shopping.  I really didn’t have moments to sit at my computer and shop.  But I did do some shopping this week, just randomly.  I bought a few things online at Children’s Place for Joanna, a few things on Amazon, some diapers, Christmas cards… I could be in trouble.  :)  Anyway, one thing I picked up was a set of lens adapter thingies that let you get close-up and actually focus without a macro lens.  I’ve only played five seconds with them so far, but I think I like ‘em!

This is Joanna’s eye.

Also, updating my personal needs… I actually made a hair cut appointment for later this week.  I bought a pair of jeans (and fit into an old pair I already had!), and found a pair of close-toed black shoes to use while waiting on my feet to (maybe?) shrink back down to their pre-preggo size.  Feels good to be able to get dressed in not sweats.  I’m still working on the bra situation, but that’s the hardest thing.

I will leave you with a picture of most (but not all!) of our diaper stash, all folded and ready to go!

This and That

I found this little treasure on the little camera.  That camera lives in my purse for emergency photographic needs but I kind of hate it so I don’t download it much.

Anyway, it’s a selfie of Michael and me when he was about a week and a half old.  Sooooo tiny!!  We were at the lab…again.  :)

This is from the last enchilada night, which was actually a taco night, courtesy of Uncle John who was in town for Thanksgiving.  Yum!  Aunt Gail was holding both the boys for me – yay!

Over the weekend I took a trip to Target ALL BY MYSELF.  It was kind of amazing.  :)  I don’t mind bringing the big kids, but I figured I would probably pick up a thing or two for Christmas so I wanted to be alone.  Matt was so good to keep all the children at home!

The main reason for my trip was to pick up two more stocking hangers and possibly new stockings for all.  Matt and I were using stockings from our childhood, and the big kids had cheapo stockings I picked up years ago that I never really liked much.  And we actually had a couple of extra stockings (I never throw anything out you know) so the boys would have had stockings this year, but I really wanted to cohese (I made that word up) everything and find some that I liked better.  The major impetus for this being the stocking that had Santa Claus on it.  I have a real problem with ALL OF THE Santa at Christmas.  I just didn’t want to display him front and center on the mantle.  {A little St. Nick here and there is fine, but ALL OF THE Santa EVERYWHERE bugs me.}

So that was an extremely long rambling paragraph to say I found some stockings I like… SEVEN of them to be exact.

Last night was Advent Workshop at church.  This is a super fun event, but not so much if you have two newborns, so we would have skipped it altogether if the girls hadn’t been singing.  The boys feeding schedule for the day worked out that I was able to take Joanna and Natalie up to the church to sing and leave Matt at home with the boys.  After they sang, we grabbed our bags of crafts and headed home.  Advent Workshop is CRAZY!!

It appears that Natalie was nervous!  You can see she’d been crying here.  I was so proud of her though because she still wanted to sing, and she knew the songs.  Go Natalie!

Joanna looks so tough – ha!

They both did so great singing about the birth of our Savior!!

This morning the boys were dressed in matching gowns, so I had to try and take a few pics.  There just wasn’t enough like coming in the window though, so I didn’t love what I got.  Taking pictures of babies is hard!  I like this one though, with my books all blurry in the background.

The boys will be six weeks old tomorrow, and it seems kind of milestoney.  I will have my six week postpartum check up later this week, and I can’t wait to show off the boys to my doc and my nurse.  They’re soooo cute!  Anyway, I was looking back at my last pregnancy post, and I decided want to put on the same outfit and take a six week picture to compare.  We’ll see if I manage to get it done.

I do feel like I’m beginning to settle into my new normal.  Life isn’t so hard all the time these days.  The boys regularly have pretty good nights where Matt and I can get actual hours of sleep in a row.  They’re sleeping in a crib in their bedroom, and it’s working out so well.  They end up in the swings pretty often too, but I’m not stressing that since I’m happy they aren’t having to sleep in my arms.  :)  I still am so tired in the evenings and just want to crawl into bed after my big kids go down, but I feel pretty rested and able to function like a momma most of the time.  The boys often nap well in their room (most of the time in their swings), leaving me able to do school with Joanna, fix meals, and even blog!  I feel kind of human.  I sure didn’t for a looooooooong time.  I even vacuumed yesterday.  And y’all, it’s been MONTHS since I vacuumed.  (Don’t be alarmed though; other people have been!)

Family Pictures!

When the boys were two weeks and two days old, we had professional family pictures made!

I used a few pics in our Christmas card (which should be coming soon!), so I didn’t include those here.  Though of course they’re very similar to these.

I loooooooove how they turned out!

A few months ago I saw that Lindsay Moore of Fabulous Occasions was doing mini sessions in November, so I signed us up!  I knew I would have teeny babies (and a crazy post-partum body), but I also knew if I didn’t schedule a session, we’d never get around to getting good holiday pictures of our family this year.

I’m so glad we did this!

Lindsay takes the kids’ school pictures up at the church twice a year, and I always love love them.  It was so nice to have her snap our whole family!

The boys did really well, thankfully!

Cutest babies in the universe?  I think so!

I posted this one on Facebook the other day, and I’ve gotten SEVENTY-TWO likes!  I never get seventy-two likes for anything.  :)

Look at James’ eyes in this one – he is so funny!

Look at that big sister with her wings around all the babes.

And finally she got to hold both the babies.  I’m sure Michael was not actually as uncomfortable as he looks.  Ha!

Natalie…

James…

And Joanna…

I love Lindsay’s work!!!

I’m so happy we did this and have these treasures to hang on the wall.  Now I just need to get them printed, which of course means stalking my favorite sites for coupon codes.  :)  And figuring out which pictures have to get kicked off the wall to make room for these.  :)

On Friday I hunted around to figure out where I was going to have photo Christmas cards printed.  I eventually settled on cardstore.com, because they will ship the cards to your recipients for just the cost of postage.  Heck, yes!  They also had a coupon code that made their cards pretty reasonable.  I could have found a cheaper spot to print, but then I would have had to address and stamp all the cards.  I just don’t think that’s a good task for this year.  I have no idea what the quality will be like so it’s a bit of an experiment, but I do like the way the card looked online.  I think they should arrive later this week!

Bullet Points

• The beautiful thing about bullet points is that I can write a whole post and not have to worry about transitions between paragraphs.  Because there are no paragraphs; there are only bullet points.
• I think we’re getting close to social smiles from the boys.  They look at me sometimes and I think they might do it!  Joanna is so ready; she asks me when they are going to social smile.
• I started the last couple of days putting the boys to bed in their crib, together, awake, and letting them fuss a little to get to sleep.  So far, it’s working well.  Thomas for sure needed to be able to soothe himself to sleep.  He was very hard to soothe in my arms.  They don’t seem to bother each other, and they keep each other company.  The pic below is from yesterday afternoon.  Last night was their first night to sleep in there, and they did so well.  I certainly slept better without them close to me.  :)  I hear every little noise them make when they’re in our room, even when they don’t need me.  With our door and their door open, I can hear just fine when they cry and need to eat. (And then I can wake up Matt to go get them for me.)  :)

• These days I find myself having enough energy to get the basics done, but not much left over.  Sleep is getting better and better all the time, but I am still dragging for sure!  I will go to the ObGyn for my 6 week postpartum check next week, and I’m going to ask her to order blood work to check my thyroid and iron levels.  If they’re wonky, that will be pretty easy to fix I think!  I know I also should incorporate some physical activity into my life and make sure I’m bulking on good foods.  So that’s the plan.  :)
• Joanna and I are keeping up with school.  It’s nothing super fantastic, but she’s staying on top of the basics and hopefully getting a little enrichment here and there.  Even though I’m not worried about it, I am curious as to how she compares academically to the “typical” first grader or where the state of Texas says a first grader should be.  I’m soooo not basing our homeschool plan on that, but it does cross my mind.  I may look in to having her tested at the end of our school year (just out of curiosity!)  Right now she’s outside looking at the sky and feeling the front come in.  I love that we can spend more time outside when it’s beautiful.  Math will be here in the summer when it’s nine million degrees outside!
• I haven’t been taking many pictures lately.  I still love taking them of course, but it just seems like an ordeal to try (especially of the boys).  It’s so dim inside this time of year, and I find myself struggling with having enough light to take pictures how I like to.  And I notice that I never like taking pictures when the house is messy.  And it is always messy, that’s for sure.  It is evidence of some sweet kiddos full of imagination though, so I can’t really complain.  :)
• I swaddle to boys to sleep, and it really helps them.  I never used the swaddle blankets much with my older three, but these boys would have trouble sleeping unswaddled.  They really flail around, and with them in the same bed, would likely hit their brother in addition to their self.  (I think that sentence was extremely poor grammar, but I can’t bring myself to care enough to fix it.)
• I am so thankful God has surrounded us with amazing people to help us during this crazy transition to a family of FIVE!  So many wonderful people have brought food of all yummy kinds.  Others have helped with any number of my kiddos is so many ways.  And I know we have been covered in prayer from so many.  It is such a blessing to us, even if I don’t reach out and thank each one of you individually.
• I bought a little live tree in a pot at the grocery store last weekend, and it added a little festive to the living room.  Then my step-father sent over a poinsettia and live wreath, so my mantle looks so much more Christmas-y!  I’m planning to get up in the attic this weekend and find a few things to bring down.  I’m definitely not going all out to decorate, but I’d like to have our Little People nativity, the stockings, and maybe something else I come across.  I hope to replace all our stockings with sweet coordinating ones eventually, but we will likely use what we have this year.  I’m not much in shopping mode lately.  :)  And I’m picky.
• The next couple of things are probably oversharing, but I find it unlikely anyone is still reading anyway.
• I have noticed that Thomas and Michael’s poop are different consistencies.  Thomas’ is much drier and more on the yellow-green side.  Michael’s is very wet and more yellow-brown.  I know that’s gross, but I find it interesting and I want to record it here!
• I am so looking forward to being able to attend to some personal needs.  Nothing that personal, but I really need a haircut and some clothes/shoes that fit.  These kinds of personal tasks are logistically very difficult though, so I continue to put them off.  In a magical world, I would love for someone to come to my house and cut my hair.  It is so wild and crazy.  I kind of want to wait before I buy any shoes to see if my own shoes will ever fit again, but I know I would enjoy the season oh so much more with a pair of closed toe black shoes and some tall brown boots.  Just sayin.’  :)  Also… jeans!  I want some jeans!!  That’s all; rant over now.  Except that I also really need some bras that fit.  Talk about logistically difficult.  End overshare.
• And here I am bragging on the boys’ sleeping, and somebody won’t.  Ha!  I was done writing anyway.

Michael and Thomas are One Month Old!

The boys were officially one month old on Friday!  To be honest, in most ways it feels like “It’s only been a month?”  Ha!  Though I still get surprised sometimes at the thought of having twin babies!  (Not to mention FIVE children!)

I didn’t quite manage pictures of both boys on Friday, so we went outside to snap a few one month pics on Saturday.  I was having to swat mosquitos away from them again though!

So serious!

Brothers!

I love this one:

I’m going to try and list a few things about the boys as they come to me.  I know I won’t even touch on everything.  :)

• Thomas is still bigger than Michael, but I don’t know how much either weighs or how long they are.  He’s just heftier.  They’ve both filled out and look more like babies than newborns, in my opinion.  They’re not as easy to hold in one arm/hand anymore.  :)
• They can both still wear newborn sized clothing, though I think there are a few things they’ve grown out of, especially when they’re wearing their bulky cloth diapers.
• Speaking of diapers, we used disposable for about three weeks in there, when I really needed to eliminate any extra processes in my life, like diaper laundry.  For that matter, we also used a lot of paper plates.  We started back up with cloth diapers this past weekend and are so far doing just fine.  For the record though, two one month old babies go through A LOT of diapers!  Size-wise they can probably still wear newborn disposables, but I find size one fits extremely well.  We do still have some sposies for going out and when other people help with the babes.
• Three nights ago we had an amazing night where the boys had a 6 hour stretch, 3 hour stretch, and 4 hour stretch, sleeping pretty well in their bed in between.  The next night sucked though, with frequent wakings and lots of needing to be held.  Then last night was pretty okay again.  So it’s still a crapshoot.  :)
• They typically eat every 3 hours during the day and sometimes slightly less frequently at night.  I will wake whoever is still sleeping so that they eat at the same time.
• I nurse them on the couch using a big pregnancy body pillow wrapped around me like an inner tube.  It works very well.  I can also use little blankets tucked under and around them to give me a free hand while nursing… thus all the Facebook stalking and posting – I can use my iPod.
• Thomas loves to be held while the holder is standing up (hello Joanna as a baby!!).  I don’t know how he can tell, but he can.  Right now I have him in the sling, but I’m sitting in a chair, and it’s making him grouchy!
• They both still have goopy eyes.  I don’t know whether it’s a blocked duck thing or an infection thing.  I kind of gave up on the drops.
• I’ve been working on this for two days now.  I’m hoping to finish soon and get it published before they’re two months old!
• The boys are very different from each other, as are all my children.  Michael and Thomas are no more related to each other than Joanna and Natalie; they just happened to be born at the same time!