2 month update, Merry Christmas, and Pictures of course!

I just looked at my blogger dashboard and realized that it has been nearly three weeks since my last post. THREE WEEKS! In baby time that is an eternity!! The girls have changed SO much in three weeks - it's crazy!

BUT, let me first start by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas! We have been so very blessed this year, and we are so very very thankful. Last year we were in a totally different place; in the thick of fertility treatments, just coming off of our second loss, and all I wanted for Christmas was two pink lines on a pee stick and one beautiful live baby to show for it. If only I had known what 2010 would bring to us. Si jokingly said today that last year I wished "too hard" at Christmas for a baby (is that possible?!?!?!), so this year in February when we were blessed with those two pink lines on a pregnancy test, we were actually blessed with two perfect precious little babies instead of one! And we couldn't be happier. Who'd have thought that this is what our life would look like in just one short year?!


Moving right along. . . the girls are 10.5 weeks old. We were in for our 2 month pediatrician visit (and shots - BOO) on December 16th and the girls are doing AMAZINGLY well. You would never in a million years know that they were early or that they had difficulty gaining weight in the beginning.
Here were their stats:
Baby Olivia - 11 lbs 10 oz, 21 3/4 inches - 70th percentile for weight, 25th percentile for height
Baby Brianna - 12 lbs 1 oz, 22 1/4 inches - 80th percentile for weight, 50th percentile for height

Both girls are doing GREAT overall. Brianna has acid reflux so we are having to do things a bit differently with her - add rice cereal to her bottles, and never lay her down flat/always keep her elevated so she spits up less- but otherwise everything is peachy keen. The pediatrician said that Brianna has the neck control of a 4 month old, which is fabulous, and Olivia has some great social skills and has already started smiling. Olivia has been trying to communicate with anyone and everyone that will listen since she was about a month old, so we kind of figured her social skills would be a bit more advanced than normal=). In the last week Brianna has also started trying to communicate with anyone and everyone who will listen, makes decent eye contact, and smiles. Neither baby smiles every time on command, but they are getting there. I love the smiles!!!
We are very quickly moving out of size 1 diapers and 0-3 month clothes. I hope they slow down some time soon! We already have 4 mega gigantic boxes of Pampers that we are going to have to take back to Babies R Us to exchange because they grew so fast that they won't fit anymore! Crazy! Bring on the size 2 diapers and 3 month/3-6 month clothes =).

Oh, and talk about the best Christmas ever! We had the Kult Christmas yesterday afternoon and the babies didn't sleep at all the entire afternoon or evening. To say they were cranky come about 6 PM would be an understatement. Crying and fussing for 3.5 hours straight. Si was getting incredibly frustrated and I swear his hair was graying in front of my eyes. BUT, the payoff for dealing with the crankiness was an AMAZING 9 hours of sleep last night. Yup, 9 HOURS. Olivia slept from 9:30 PM - 6:45 AM non-stop. Brianna slept for the same period of time, but got up once at 1 AM to eat. I actually woke up twice to pump, and both times it wasn't because there was a baby awake. It was fabulous!!! Hopefully it wasn't a one time occurrence! We will see=). We have been working on sleep training with the girls, and crying it out (CIO), but so far hadn't seen a ton of results. . . until last night anyway. I'm going back to work part time next week so getting the girls to sleep at night was on my to-do list for the last couple of weeks. I am happy to see that it MAY be paying off!

As always I will leave you with some pictures of the girlies - enjoy!!

Me and the girlies =)


Brianna styling the bow from one of her presents =)


Daddy and Olivia hanging out in the chair =)


Grandpa Ken with baby Brianna


Grandma Pat with baby Brianna =)


Cousin Seth with Baby Olivia =)


Uncle Ben with baby Brianna


Aunt Yim with Baby Brianna

And last but not least, Uncle Jon with baby Brianna. She obviously loves him - look at her looking up at him with those eyes!


I hope you all had a wonderfully blessed Christmas!!!

8 Weeks Old Already!!

Yup, you read right! Our little princesses are 8 weeks old! They are growing SO fast now. Two weeks ago they had just outgrown their newborn diapers and outfits and now they are fitting just perfectly into their 0-3 month and 3 month clothes (how baby clothes are sized is incredibly confusing to me - why is there no standard sizing?!). Anyway, we are chugging right along, growing and changing like crazy every day=).

Sleep is still a bit of a struggle, but I suspect with twins that it will be for some time yet. Some nights we get great sleep (meaning 4-5 hours of uninterrupted sleep), and other nights we get a total of 4 hours of sleep or so, but it's all chopped up between feedings. Last night the girls did great and both went for about 5 hours solid. I woke up wondering if the girls were still okay or if they had stopped breathing overnight or something. It was immediate panic! They were both perfectly fine of course! Does every mom do that? Freak out when their babies actually sleep for a decent amount of time? I almost didn't know what to do with myself!

Our two month pediatrician visit is scheduled for next Thursday so the girls will get their shots and we will see how much they weigh and how tall they are. I'm not looking forward to the shots, but Si will be at the appointment with me so I won't have to suffer alone as I hear the girls scream bloody murder while being poked and prodded. I am looking forward to seeing how big the girls are now, and how they compare to other "average" babies. At our first pediatrician visit the girls were in the 2nd percentile and 4th percentile for weight. That was comparing them to full term newborns of course, but still, we are hoping that they have caught up some. I'm hoping they are in the 20-30th percentile for height and weight now. . .I can hope, right?

So what else is going on? Well, Si took a new job which he is very excited about, he starts on December 20th. It's a longer drive for him and he won't be able to come home over the lunch hour anymore, but it's a pretty decent pay increase so the positives outweigh the negatives at this point. Plus, we have hired a nanny to stay at home with the girls while we work. I talked to my boss on Monday and confirmed with him that 4-10 hour days would be fine for me to work instead of 5-8 hour days. So, I will be working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I will be home with the girls on Wednesday, and of course over the weekend. Si will still be working 5 days a week at his new job, but that's okay. He'll get an extra hour or so each day in the morning with the girlies (they are early risers!).

Oh, and the crappy news of the day - I'm STILL bleeding 8 weeks post C-section. My OB did an ultrasound, and it seems that I have "retained some tissue" from the babies and need to have a D&C. BOO. That's scheduled for Friday. Oh well, I will be happy to not bleed for a while before my actual cycles start back up! I am breastfeeding, so I hope I won't get my actual cycles back for a while, but I hear it depends on the person. I probably won't be one of the lucky ones that doesn't have a period for 6 months while breastfeeding. . .I'm just not that lucky!

We got some super cute Christmas outfits from Gramz H. yesterday, so of course we had to try them on today and I had to take pictures of the girlies styling and profiling in them. They are adorable! Nice outfit picking Gramz!! See pictues below. How stinkin cute are they?!





This picture cracks me up! Olivia is our chatty Kathy baby, and in this picture it's like Brianna is trying to cork her! This is my time to shine sister! LOL!!


We also got some surprise outfits in the mail today from one of my partners in crime in Boston, so you can bet the girls will be showing off those outfits too very soon! Thanks for the outfits Allison! The girls love them!!

And here are a couple other random pictures from the last week or two. The girls have been trying to hold their heads up without support for a couple of weeks now so we decided to stick them in their Bumbo chairs and see how they would do in them. Well, not horribly, but not great either! They have the "lean" that indicates to me that they need a bit more head control before they can hang out in the Bumbos for any significant amount of time.

Here we are just a leaning!


Here we are hanging out together in the pack and play =)


Here we are hanging out on our boppies. . .and Brianna is attempting to pet Jameson. He's doing very well with them if I may say so myself =)


Okay, so that's all for now. Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season!!