So long, 7:00 bedtime.

Charlie started climbing out of his crib when he was 17 months old. He didn't just climb out once and then not do it again, like a lot of kids do. Once he figured out he could escape there was no keeping him in. So we promptly took the bottom out of his crib and put his mattress flat on the ground to buy us a few more inches and a little more time. That worked for a couple of months until he figured out that he could tip his entire crib over and use the slats as monkey-bars. By the time he had that down, Caroline had finally gotten brave enough to climb out of her crib on a consistent basis. They were about 20 months old at this point. So we heeded the advice of some friends with much older twins and turned their cribs upside down on top of them like cages. At naptime and bedtime we would lift one side of the crib up off the ground, they would get on hands and knees and climb right in. It wasn't a perfect solution but it at least kept the madness contained to their cages. That lasted until just before they turned 2.

One day we had the brilliant idea to try out toddler beds. Sheer genius, I tell you (insert eye roll here). The first night we were completely shocked that they actually stayed in their beds. I thought it was going to be perfect and wonderful and way better than cages. I couldn't have been more wrong! It didn't take long for them to start getting out of bed. And pull every single article of clothing out of their drawers. And try on every single sock and every single shoe. And try fit six bowties around their waist at a time. Every time I entered their room, there was no floor to be seen.

But at least the mess was contained. Their room only. I could live with that. And then they figured out how to open doors. The dreaded day of days. I woke up at 4:30 AM with a tiny little finger (not mine) stuck up my nose. Good thing I had doorknob covers in stock and ready to pull out when needed. It took Charlie less that a day to figure out how to break them off the doorknobs (on Caroline's bidding, probably. I always say she is the brains and he is the muscle). For over a week they woke up between 4:30 and 5:30 AM. If there is one good thing about that, though, it is that it made me really appreciate their standard 7:30 AM wakeup time, which I used to think was far too early for little humans to be up and roaming around.

We passed the super early wake-up phase, thank heavens. And now we are stuck in the "never going to sleep" era. Oh how I miss those days of putting them down at 7:00 and knowing they would be asleep before long. I used to really look forward to bedtime. And now I dread it. Dread with a capital D. Caroline wants the light on so she can read. Charlie hates the light on but wants the door open with the hall light on. Caroline doesn't like the door open and keeps getting up to shut it. Charlie wants his bear to sit up next to him in bed but his bear keeps falling over, because it's stuffed and stuffed bears don't sit up very well. And when stuffed bears don't sit up very well, that's cause for many many tears in our house. Caroline demands that every single book in sight be on her bed. But then she can't lay down because the books are taking up the entire surface area of her bed. And heaven forbid you take the books out of the room. She NEEDS her books. If there is even a single book on top of the dresser, you'd better believe she will be found standing in one of the drawers trying to climb onto the top of the dresser to get it down and safely into her bed with the other books. Charlie has at least eight blue blankies. And try as I might to hide all but one or two of them in the dresser, he goes to bed with a couple of them and cries and cries that he needs "mo' blankies." He would steal Caroline's in a heart beat if she'd let him.

You get the gist. Lots of tears and bedtime. And when there aren't tears, there are giggles. I love giggles. But giggles are now an indication that somebody is out of bed and running around the room with a bare bum and yelling "nakey nakey!". How do you even get mad about that? Especially when accompanying the bare bum are a pair of blue dinosaur rain boots and the cutest little head of white hair you've ever seen?

Long story short, our 7:00 bedtime has turned into 7:00 bedtime that doesn't actually end until 9:30. I'm not too hopeful that it will get better anytime soon!

We Worked Hard for This!

When Charlie and Caroline were 8 weeks old, they started sleeping 8 hours at night (together - at the same time - without eating). And it was wonderful! Within the following month they moved up to sleeping between 10-12 hours/night, and since then they have been fairly consistent at sleeping 12 hours. Occasionally some teething, sickness, and other sleep disruptions occur, but generally speaking, my children are fantastic sleepers. Hallelujia! 

I often get people who ask about their sleep habits (especially when they were younger) and when I tell them how well they sleep, I get comments like, "You are so lucky to have such good babies!" and "Wow, count yourselves lucky!". And I do. We have been extremely blessed to have such wonderful children and fantastic little sleepers.

But when I respond with the usual, "Yes, we sure are," a part of me also wants to tell them that it's not all luck. Actually I am more of the opinion that it has very little to do with luck at all. I've mentioned before how difficult the first 5-6 weeks with newborn twins were. Partly it was just really hard getting things figured out - learning how to breastfeed two tiny infants, trying to discipher their different cries, and all the other things that come with being a first-time parent. But also I think it was extra hard because we (Forrest and I) made it that way. We were determined to do the hard things then, in the early weeks, so that we could have peace and quiet later on. By that I mean that instead of enjoying the ease and convenience of only feeding one baby when they woke in the night, we chose to wake the other baby too and deal with the commotion of trying to tandem feed in the pitch black at 2 AM, 4 AM, and so on.. I also mean that we sleep trained the littles when they were only 5 weeks old. (Side note: I get that there are arguments for and against cry-it-out. It's not for everyone, and that's fine. I'm only sharing what worked for us.) It took about 3 days of letting them cry in their cribs for what sometimes seemed like hours (in reality it was probably 45 minutes at the very most) until they learned the valuable skill of putting themselves to sleep. And since then, except for the rare circumstances when we are away from anywhere with a crib/pack'n'play, I have never had to rock a baby to sleep. 

Not that I didn't ever want to. The few times that one of the babes has fallen asleep in my arms are times that I treasure and remember with a smile (a sad one, because they are getting so big!). But the minute Forrest went back to work I knew it was impractical for me to rock each of my babies to sleep for naps ALONE. Sleep training was so worth it for us.

And now that the littles are not so little anymore, it is so wonderful (for me and for them) to have the predictability of our routine. I sometimes get easily overwhelmed when it's first thing in the morning and the house is already a mess with breakfast dishes and toys spread everywhere. It's a lifesaver for me to know that regardless of what happens during those couple of hours, at 10 AM the munchkins will be snoozing away and I can deal with the dishes and the toys then. 

Charlie and Caroline thrive on their routine. Caroline a little more-so than Charlie, now-a-days. When I say the word "naptime" she actually runs into the room, grabs her blankie and her panda/dolly/bear (whatever is her favorite at the moment) and tries to climb into her crib. I'm not kidding. Charlie usually makes a break for it in the other direction. Their little personalities crack me up! 

Anyway, my point is, parents have a lot of control over what kind of sleepers their littles ones turn out to be. Not complete control, but a good amount of it. So find something that works for you! Happy sleeping everyone :)

Travelling with Two

Last week we ventured out on our first vacation as a family of four. Forrest and I, Charlie and Caroline, and my sister and her little girl all loaded into our van and made the 10 hour drive (which really look us like 13-14 hours with stoppage time) down to Southern California, where the twins were born. We stayed for almost a week and we had a blast! I was really nervous about travelling with the babes, and with good reason. I think most nine and three-quarter month old babies don't love spending an entire day in their car seats. But they handled it like champs!

The things I most worried about were food/meal times, sleeping, time in car seats and sun exposure. Especially with Charlie being so fair and light sensitive, the sun exposure worried me a lot since I knew we'd be outside most of the time. But we made it all work, and this is how:

Squeezable baby food pouches are the best things ever. I'm not exaggerating. At all. I have some refillable pouches that I use around home to fill with my own homemade purees. They are great, but have the down side of requiring refrigeration. The store bought ones don't. So for the month before the trip I shopped as many sales as I could to get as many of those little life-saving pouches as possible. Charlie and Caroline each eat about 3 of them per meal. So that's 9 pouches each per day, or 18 total. Every day. That's a lot of little food pouches. The cheapest I've found them is 88 cents each. Not too bad, but still cheaper to make my own. Before we left Forrest and I had a puree party and we made a whole bunch of baby food, stuffed all the pouches that I own (which is 13) and froze them. So I took those in a cooler for the ride down, then had all the pouches that I bought for the rest of the meals. It worked great!

For meal times, I have two bumbo's. One that I bought used, and one that I borrowed from my sister. We don't use them much around the house, but when we are at Grandma's house or anywhere else away from home, they are great. I loaded them both up at took them on our trip with us and they worked perfectly in place of their high-chairs. Food and meal times problems = solved.

The sleeping situation could not have been better. We stayed with our very best friends in California and they were so awesome to give up their kids' bedrooms so we all had beds to sleep in. They even put their sweet little 3-year old in a pack-n-play so that Caroline could sleep in her crib. Then we took our pack-n-play and set it up in the bedroom by the crib and that's where Charlie slept. They did great in there! It couldn't have been any more perfect. I was a little worried about them not napping etc. but I just had to prepare myself in advance to know that we were on vacation, and that it was ok if they didn't stay on schedule. And they didn't. They napped in our arms multiple times out of sheer exhaustion (which NEVER happens). But it was fun! They were really really good despite being thrown for a bit of a loop. Sleeping difficulties = not so bad after all.

The car seat issue is just difficult. My kids usually do pretty well in the car, but I think anyone would get sick of being strapped in a car seat for that long. We tried to break up the trip by stopping for meals, bathroom breaks, gas etc. and getting everyone out of the car to stretch every time. It was perfect for my 4 year old niece to run around. And it was good for the twins to get out of their seats, but a little hard since they just wanted to crawl around and there wasn't much space to do that. On the way back we stopped at a park and let them crawl around on the grass and that was perfect. It took a little longer for us to get to our destination, but getting the kids out of the car every few hours was absolutely essential. Time in car seats = not fun, but doable.

From the time the twins were newborn, I knew taking Charlie out in the sun would be a bit of a challenge. But I also knew that we couldn't never go outside because it was hard. He needs to experience the outdoors just as much as Caroline or any other person does, and I didn't want him to grow up in a bubble just because of his condition. So we just have to prepare a little bit more. Any time we go out, he wears a hat and his sun glasses. And sunscreen. I bought him a cute little one-piece swimming suit/rash guard that covers most of his legs, arms, chest and neck. And we have a pop-up sun shade that I take with us on our outdoor adventures. He hasn't had a sunburn yet, and his eyes seem to do ok with the hat and glasses combo. So being on vacation it wasn't much different, we were just outisde more often. We did go to the beach a few times. I bought an inflatable pool for the littles and we set it on the sand, the kids filled it with buckets of ocean water and we let it set in the sun to warm up a bit before putting the babes in it. They LOVED it! It was perfect for them to get to play in the water but not have to be down by the waves (which they were fascinated by but did not want to touch). The pool made for a great time at the beach and the sun exposure = conquered.

We had a lot of really fun adventures on our first family vacation. We visited the Aquarium of the Pacific, which the kids were thrilled about. Charlie loved the fishies, Caroline loved the stairs and chasing her cousin, and Hallie loved just about everything. We did a little bit of hiking, went whale watching and saw tons of dolphins, and ate frozen bananas on Balboa Peninsula. We visited with family on Sunday and played some fun games, saw friends we haven't seen in 8 months, and had a good time catching up with everyone. Oh yeah, and Ashley, Forrest and I did a triathlon! I almost forgot. It was really fun and we all did pretty well. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and we were sad to leave. Hooray for surviving our first road trip with twins! Now to prepare for our trip to Michigan this fall... :/

          (Excuse us for all looking a little worn down - this was right after the triathlon!)

The Schedule

When I was pregnant, I got a lot of advice on how to raise my kids. Some of it really was helpful, some not so much. Most people told me just to trust my instincts and do what felt right, which is what I would tell a new mom. I had decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to read any books on baby sleep etc. However, I had a few friends recommend Baby Wise and I was given the book to read. So I read it. And it made a lot of sense.

By nature I'm not the most structured, rule-following person. But I do like to have a plan, even if I don't strictly stick to it. I liked reading the book because I felt like it gave me a plan - something to shoot for. It wasn't always perfect, and still isn't, but by now I feel like we have a good routine down.

When the twins were newborn, I did not stick to a schedule. I was big on the routine - we always did things in the same order. Wake, eat, play, sleep. They didn't eat at the same times every day, but it was always 2-3 hours apart. Around 6 weeks I started being a little more consistent. I still didn't feed them at the same times every day, but we developed a consistent nighttime routine that seemed to help them sleep longer at night. We started doing baths at bed time, then getting them in bed at the same time every night. 

Up until that point, I had fed the babies at the same time even in the night. If one woke up to eat, I woke the other up too. But by 6 weeks, I wanted them to start sleeping longer. I let them sleep as long as they would sleep, and in the night I fed them seperately. For a few weeks, it meant that I woke up twice as often during the night, but it helped them not get into the habit of eating if they didn't need it. Then for the first morning feeding (which still wasn't at the same time everyday), I made sure to wake them up and feed them at the same time. The days when I didn't do that were some hard hard days. Those were the days when I would wake up, feed one baby, then play for about an hour and put them down for a nap. Right then, the other baby would wake, play for about an hour, then go down for a nap. Then if I was lucky, I'd have about 30 minutes of them both sleeping before the first baby would wake up again. And that would go on all day. Sometimes those days were fun because I'd get to spend more time playing individually with my kids. But generally, they were just exhausting. For that reason, it was super important to me to keep them on the same schedule! In my opinion, there's no other way.

Now that they are a little older, we are on a bit more of a schedule. A flexible one, but still a schedule. So here is the way we do things now:

7 AM (give or take a little) - wake, nurse, get dressed and eat breakfast

9-11 AM - nap

11 AM - nurse and lunch

1-3 PM - nap

4 PM - nurse

4-6 PM - usually spent in their swings in the kitchen while I cook, do laundry, make baby food, clean...whatever :) they generally take a 15-30 minute cat nap during this time

6 PM - dinner

7 PM - bath, nurse, in bed by 7:30 

Occasionally Charlie will wake up for a 3 AM feeding (especially when he's teething) but for the most part they sleep about 12 hours/night straight. I do realize that I am extremely blessed and that not all babies do this! But also, we worked really hard in the beginning to get our kids to sleep. We started sleep training when they were 6 weeks old. It was really hard to let them cry it out (reasonably), but so worth it. My theory was that I can't physically rock two babies to sleep at the same time, so I needed to be able to put them down for naps and have them fall asleep on their own. It was hard in the beginning, but it didn't take long for them to get used to it. And now they rarely cry when going down for a nap. Hooray for good sleeping babies!

I loved the flexibility of our routine when they were little. But I do have to say that I LOVE the predictability of our schedule now. It is so much easier to plan my day and know when I can go grocery shopping, go on a walk, or do whatever I need to do. And seriously, twins on the same schedule = best thing ever. Twins on opposite schedules = misery and exhaustion. Wake the sleeping baby. It is so worth it!

The First 5 Weeks

The first 5 weeks of Charlie and Caroline's lives were some of the hardest of mine. They were also some of the most rewarding/exhuasting/joyful/stressful/exciting/terrifying... you name it, I probably felt that emotion. 

In the hospital, I tried tandem feeding but it was just so hard. So the first week that we were home, I was feeding them one at a time. And when it took them sometimes up to an hour to get a full feeding, that meant that more than half of my day was spent feeding babies. Absolutely exhausting! And when they need to eat every 2-3 hours, it often seemed like I would finish feeding one, then the other, just to find that the first was hungry again. Things improved significantly (feeding-wise) after that first week, when I figured out how to properly feed them at the same time. Then we encountered a new problem. 

By this point, they were both on different eating schedules, especially at night. In the daytime they did fine, but oh how I dreaded the nights. Getting them on the same schedule was so important to me (because of how much feeding time it saved), so that meant that when one baby woke up to eat, night or day, I woke the other baby to eat too.

I remember delaying going to bed as long as possible because I didn't want to face another night. It seemed like staying awake and not even trying to sleep was just easier. I remember laying in bed trying to sleep after finishing up a feeding, running on 45 minutes of sleep and being so tired that I couldn't allow myself to relax enough to sleep. I remember being so excited when I'd look at the clock and see 3 or 4 AM because it meant that it was almost daytime, and the relief I felt at making it through another night. I remember watcing Wreck it Ralph, DuckTales and Tail Spin all night long, and listening to Forrest play Monster Run on the iPad. We found that it was easier just to stay awake all night and try and nap during the day.

I have been extrememly blessed to have a wonderful husband who was so helpful duing those times. We were so fortunate that his work allowed him 6 weeks off after the birth so I didn't have to endure the difficult times alone. We were also lucky to have my fantastic mom come and spend the first two weeks with us. I am 100% confident I would not have kept my sanity through those times without Forrest and my mom.

In addition to the sleeping/eating difficulties, we were also in the midst of a big move. When Charlie and Caroline were 5 weeks old, we moved from our little 1-bedroom apartment in SoCal to a 2-bed in Salt Lake City. So having newborn twins in our tiny aparment that we were in the midst of pulling apart for the move - ya that was stressful.

Getting settled in our new home in Utah was the start of my sanity returning. We were able to set up their cribs, move them into their own room, and start getting settled. Finally at 6 weeks, the kids started sleeping and so did we. By 8 weeks they were sleeping through the night, Forrest was back at work, and we started adjusting to our new normal. 

Thinking back on those first 5 weeks, it seriously makes me terrified to think of having more children. But as hard as they were, it was all worth it! I am so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends, and such beautiful children. Despite the difficulty of it, we survived! Hooray :)