Helpers

We have friends come over from time to time to visit and help with the babies. A few weeks ago, our friend Ruth and her daughters Madison and Eleonor came over. They made us a steak dinner and helped hold babies. It was fun to see them! They took lots of pictures - here are just a few.







This afternoon Jason and I got to go out to a movie, thanks to the babysitting team of Leslie, Ginny, and Terri. They had fun with the babies, and we had fun getting out for a few hours. Thanks ladies!

Friday fun

Here's an assortment of photos and videos from the last couple of days. We're loving their cuteness!

Lucas modeling his "little jogger" outfit that my younger brother used to wear




Abby modeling her new set of ruffles




The breakfast club. I love babies in white onesies.


Post-breakfast bumbo council. All those in favor of taking the dog for a walk, say "aye!"


Abby's new favorite thing to do


Zoey doesn't have much hair but she still looks cute with this bow!


Abby likes the bow too. Guess we'd better get some more hairbows.


I dropped a burp cloth and bent down to get it. When I sat back up, this is what I saw.

Don't try this at home

This is what I walked in the house to see the other day. Pretty soon he's going to be tossing babies in the air. At least he was holding her over the couch. :)

4 Months Old

Time is still flying by! The babies have started to do so many fun things in the last month - smile, laugh (well, almost), play with toys, sit up in their bumbo seats, and sleep for longer periods of time. They are much more interactive with us and like to have "conversations" involving babbling and other various noises. We have developed a good bedtime routine involving baths (every other night), lullaby CDs, and soft animal loveys. We are still working on a daytime nap routine.

I was remembering that a month ago, I had the babies by myself in the evening and had a nightmarish time involving lots of screaming and a desperate voicemail message for Jason. What a difference a month makes! Tonight I also had the babies by myself, and successfully got them to bed and asleep by 7:30pm.


This picture really captures their personalities: Zoey being very alert, Abby being laid-back, and Lucas just enjoying hanging out with his sisters.


Our family at 4 months. Are we starting to look less tired yet?


We are excited to see what the next month brings!

Nursery art

Jason's aunt Crystal is a talented artist. She painted this trio of monkey pictures for our nursery. We finally had the chance to hang them up, and we are so happy with how they make the nursery look complete! Thanks Crystal!






and a couple of small prints we got at Target

Bumbos

The first meeting of the bumbo council will now come to order. First item on the agenda: bibs - just for mealtimes, or constant accessory?

Abigail

Finally Abby's turn for a post! I realized it's ironic that her post is last, because she is often the one left waiting while we take care of the fussy duo. Abby has always been the most laid-back of the 3. Well, except when she's not. She's either very relaxed and happy or very unhappy and inconsolable. She is starting to learn that the squeaky wheel gets the grease around here and has become a bit squeakier lately. She is happiest when being held and is strongly opposed to taking naps in her crib. She doesn't love cuddling with her siblings as much as they do, but she is growing to like it more compared with a couple of months ago.

As the oldest baby, Abby seems to develop new skills first. She was the first to find her thumb, the first to start cooing and babbling, and the first to sleep through the night. She rolled from tummy to back a long time ago and then decided that rolling was overrated, so she hasn't done it much since. She has an adorable smile too.



Everyone says she looks like Jason. Maybe it's the dark hair. Also, her eyes are no longer blue - they are hazel and I hope they will end up being a deep chocolate brown like her dad's.

I love to dress her up as a girly-girl in lots of pink. And then I like to take pictures of her cute self. This is my version of a cute Abby picture:


And this is Jason's version:

(yes, that is a skirt on her head. no, I didn't stop him from making her look ridiculous.)

Abby has always been the most healthy of the three, but she still has her own health concerns. She is prone to diaper rash, especially when I eat acidic foods (no more tomato sauce for me) and was the first to develop thrush. She has also become more gassy and burps like a 300 pound man. By the time she was 2 months old we noticed that she was developing a flat spot on her head - probably because she was our best sleeper. So we've been working on increasing her tummy time (which she hates) and her bumbo time (which she loves). Here's a video of her working on her neck strength in the bumbo. It's boring to watch for everyone except her parents, but it's the most recent video we have of her.







So that's Abby - our happy, laid-back, good sleeper who will always be Baby A and probably won't let her siblings forget that she is the oldest. :)

Oops - couldn't resist this video of Abby and Zoey talking to each other in the bumbo seats.

More Lucas

Sorry, I know it's Abby's turn for a post, but I took these videos of Lucas the other day and had to share them immediately. He is so smiley and happy! I could spend hours just trading smiles with him. He was smiling so big yesterday that I discovered he has a dimple in each cheek.



I've never seen a baby laugh in their sleep like this!

Growth

Oh my gosh I just had to share this. When going through outgrown clothes to put away, I came across the tiny preemie hat that Zoey used to wear all the time. It was the only one that fit her. Comparing that hat to the one she was wearing yesterday is truly amazing. She may be our tiniest baby, but she is still growing like crazy!





Just a few days old and wearing the hat


Just yesterday, at 3.5 months old

Zoey

Zoey's turn for her own blog post! Zoey is our little peanut who started out at just 3 pounds 15 ounces. We are so curious about whether she will always be petite, or whether she will catch up on the growth curve someday. Being small doesn't hold her back though. She is always wiggling and trying to scooch around in her crib or on the floor during tummy time. That's why so many of the pictures we take of her end up blurry - she can't stay still long enough.



We melt when she looks up at us with those big blue eyes. Zoey has many wise, thoughtful expressions, and we often wonder what she's thinking.


Zoey loves her soft white lamb lovey, and now she's added her thumb to the mix. She is the one who sleeps in the shortest intervals at night, probably because she has the tiniest tummy. It's driving us nuts since the other two are pretty reliably sleeping at least 8 hours a night, and Zoey still sleeps in 3-4 hour chunks. I would only have to get up once a night if she could sleep longer. She had a rough sleep week when we transitioned her from her car seat to the crib, when she woke even more frequently. We tried a couple of nights of tummy sleeping, which is much more comfortable for her, but it made us too nervous at her age (even though she can lift and turn her head). So she's on her back, and does much better when tightly swaddled. Otherwise her startle reflex makes her flail around and wake up too often.



Modeling her cute hat and showing off her bumbo skills. She is really developing good head control.


Finally found her thumb!


Zoey has lots of cute clothes of her own, like this dress, but she also has lots of hand-me-downs from Abby since she is so much smaller. She can still wear some newborn sizes and is slowly transitioning to 0-3. She's still in size 1 diapers, while the others are in size 2. We never have to worry about buying too many of the big diapers, because we know Zoey can use them someday.

It's a good thing Zoey has so many clothes, because she has to change outfits several times a day due to her amazing ability to spit up. The Zantac has helped her reflux pain, but it does nothing to curb the spit up. We know it's been a good day when she wears the same outfit all day!


Zoey loves to "talk" and make noises. She develops new sounds all the time. We've learned that when she says "hey" it means she needs to burp/spit up. So far her other sounds just seem to be for fun. It's fun to have conversations with her - we're guessing that she might be the first to talk for real.

Lucas

I want to try to write posts about each baby so you can get to know them as individuals, not just as part of a set.

Lucas is such a happy boy. His reflux pain is much better with the Zantac, so his happiness can come through more often now. He loves smiling at his image in the mirror above the changing table, and is very smiley and happy in the mornings. He loves splashing in the bathtub, looking at toys (especially a striped zebra on the playmat and a whale on the swing), and playing in his bouncy seat.



He is the heaviest of the 3 - our bathroom scale estimate is around 14 pounds. Definitely can't lift him one-handed anymore! He is working on holding his head up more steadily, and on finding his thumb. He enjoys sitting in the bumbo seat and watching the ceiling fan.



He clearly loves to eat - a man after my own heart. He really seems to enjoy his food in a way that's more than just to satisfy his hunger. He is my best nurser and would probably be happy to be exclusively breastfed if I were available to do that all the time.



He is also a pretty good sleeper, although the thrush episode led to some regression. It doesn't take too much effort to get him to fall asleep, and he usually sleeps at least 8 hours. He transitioned from sleeping in his carseat to sleeping on his back in the crib pretty well.




In this video he is showing off his skills in the rainforest bouncer. We have it set so that he has to hit the dangling toys in order for the sounds and lights to work. He really seems to understand what he needs to do! Such a smart boy.

Abby loves hair

Abby has really been loving to hold lots of things in her tight little fists lately, especially hair...her own, or anyone else's she can reach. I took this video this morning, shortly after she finished grabbing Lucas' hair while tandem nursing.



Zoey really enjoyed it since she loves cuddling with people. It was a win-win situation - hair for Abby, and cuddling for Zoey.

4th of July weekend

This post is a bit out of order, but we just realized that we never told everyone about our busy weekend over the 4th of July. The babies had a very full social calendar. First, on Thursday night our friends Mike and Jill drove up from Roanoke on their way to New Jersey. They kindly brought us dinner from our favorite Thai place and helped to hold and feed babies. It was great to see them, since every time we had tried to see them over the winter there was a snowstorm.

Then Friday morning my parents and I took the babies into my office to meet a few colleagues. The babies did great for awhile, and Abby was particularly social. But then Lucas melted down, and I learned that nothing clears a room faster than threatening to breastfeed.

On Friday night our friend Becky came to meet the babies for the first time. She brought some adorable outfits for the babies, as well as dinner. (Notice a theme here? The price of admission to see the babies is dinner for the grown-ups)

Here is Becky holding Abby:


And here is Abby modeling one of the new outfits:


On Saturday our friends Matt and Meg drove down from the D.C. area on their way to Virginia Beach. They brought their 4 year old daughter and 11 month old son. We hadn't seen them since last May, when we were in Mexico together to attend a wedding. This year's get-together was a bit different - more babies, less beer. We had a successful outing to the Downtown Mall for lunch(an outdoor pedestrian mall with lots of shops and restaurants). The babies pretty much slept and ate the whole time and were pretty easy to handle.

On Sunday morning we "slept in". I put that in quotes because, although we piled all the babies in bed with us so we could try to sleep longer, I'm not sure any of us actually slept. It was a fun family moment to have everyone cuddling together though. Not sure what we'll do when the kids are bigger - we should have gotten a king size bed instead of a queen! Here's a picture of what a Sunday morning looks like after a late night of partying with babies:


Kind of different than our Sunday morning "hangovers" from 10 years ago!

Then Sunday afternoon we went over to my mom's apartment so I could hang out at her pool and Jason could take a bike ride. It was a very nice day.

We haven't taken the babies out since then. Maybe that's why they were so fussy all day today - maybe they're getting a little cabin fever.

our week in review

Well, it's been a busy week. It started out great, with my mom and I getting massages at a local spa courtesy of Jason. He wanted to get us a little gift before I went back to work, and it was much appreciated. I think I need a daily professional massage!

Then I had the babies on my own in the mornings, and my mom had them in the afternoons while I went to work. Some days went well...and some didn't. We're going to have to keep experimenting with the schedule. We will have a mother's helper here when we can, but pre-teen girls have very busy schedules these days!

In many ways it was nice to be back at work - it was like re-discovering a piece of my identity that I had put aside for 6+ months. Being a therapist again after a 7 month break was just like riding a bike - I fell back into it without too much trouble. At least so far.

I definitely missed the babies a lot though. I have a great digital picture frame for my office that cycles through as many pictures as I can load onto it. The only problem with it is when I stare at pictures of the babies for several hours, it makes me miss them even more and I have to leave work early!

In challenging news, the babies all have thrush now. That's 4 doses of medicine a day for all 3 babies for at least 2 weeks. Plus sterilizing all nipples, pacifiers, burp cloths, etc. Plus their extra crankiness and sleep problems due to mouth pain. Abby has still slept the best (13 hours one night!), but Zoey and Lucas have been troublemakers. Hopefully they'll sleep longer once they're feeling better.

Here are some pictures from the week...

Jason thinks it's funny to take pictures of the babies wearing his sunglasses




Abby enjoying some relaxation time by herself in the recliner


Sweet morning cuddle


Watching the mobile above Zoey's crib while waiting in line for diaper/outfit changes


Zoey isn't sure how she feels about having Lucas' heavy head on her