Monthly photos

Five months


Five month family photo


Four months


Four month family photo


Three months

Three month family photo

Two months

Two month family photo with Grandpa George

One month

One month family photo

Lucas and Zoey

Zoey and Lucas just love cuddling together. Zoey can be so restless sometimes, but as soon as you snuggle her up to Lucas she relaxes and is able to go to sleep. It is the sweetest thing to watch. Too bad it wouldn't be safe to let them cuddle together in the crib all night.





When we put Zoey next to Lucas in the crib, she immediately looked happy and linked her arm with his. He was more interested in the mobile, but it was still sweet.

Sleep and other updates

It's been a better week. Abby is really getting the hang of falling asleep on her own - we put her down drowsy and she just sucks her thumb, holds on to her hair, watches her musical crib soother, and conks out. It's great! Now that her thrush and diaper rash are starting to improve, her sleep is improving as well. She has gone from 6 hours at a time to 8 hours, and 11 hours last night! Lucas has had several nights of 10-11 hour stretches. Zoey is still only making it 3-6 hours at a time. It will be so amazing when at least 2 of them are sleeping 10-12 hours consistently!

In other news, I sort of started back to work on July 1. I only went in for a couple of hours, just to do a "practice run" to see how long it takes to get ready and get there, and to see how GrandMary survives on her own. Next week I'll go in for a few hours a day. My plan is to work 20 hours a week. It's hard to leave the babies, but I know they're in good hands, and at least it's not full-time work.

Wednesday was overalls day. Unfortunately we didn't have any overalls that were small enough to fit Zoey.



Mojo enjoys cuddling while Lucas is nursing. I didn't really imagine the twin nursing pillow being used for a baby and a cat.


Enjoying their new fluffy bath towels




Cuddling

Finding thumbs

Look who found her thumb! Anyone who has helped to take care of Abby has experienced the severity of her pacifier addiction - replacing the pacifier a million times at bedtime is not my favorite activity. We are sooo happy that she is getting the hang of thumb-sucking and is using it to soothe herself to sleep!

On top of everything else...

Poor Abby. She has thrush (yeast infection in the mouth). This is not good news for any of us. Abby has to get drops in her mouth 4 times a day for 2 weeks. I have to sanitize all nipples, pacifiers, and anything else that comes in contact with her mouth. And then I have to hope that Lucas and Zoey don't get it. They already have to take Zantac twice a day and gas drops after every meal. We don't need to add more drops to their lives. And let's not talk about the fact that I don't give any of them their vitamin D drops nearly as often as I should.

Oh - plus Abby has a painful diaper rash, caused by acidic poo. So basically she's been miserable - hurts to eat, hurts to have a dirty diaper. She hasn't napped and needs to be held more than usual. At least she went right to sleep at bedtime.

It's always something.

Smiling babies

Challenging week

Whew. This was a long week. It started out with Jason having to go out of town for work Sunday evening through late Monday night. My mom was also still out of town, so I was on my own during that time, as well as Tuesday during the day. Thankfully one of our friends came over to help a little Monday morning and evening (thanks Jennifer and daughter Brooke!) so I could eat breakfast and dinner. Taking care of all 3 alone all day actually is do-able, as long as the goals are kept simple: feed babies, change babies, try to get babies to sleep, try to eat something, maybe even try to shower. I accomplished these things and even managed a shower during a nap time. Still, it was pretty tiring. The most challenging part is being able to pump on schedule if all the babies are awake.

Then we had that one good evening with virtually no fussiness, when Jason and I got to eat dinner in peace. We thought we were over the witching hour hump, but we were wrong.

It went downhill again on Thursday, when we lost power at 5pm due to a storm and didn't get it back until 7:30am Friday. I had to pump in the car at 9pm using the car adapter I bought for the pump after the last time the power went out. I felt like the mom in the Toyota Sienna commercial who likes hanging out in her car - I had A/C, my People magazine, and the radio. I almost didn't come back inside! I then nursed anyone who woke up in the middle of the night b/c I certainly wasn't going out to the car to pump at 2am. The babies were restless all night, and I slept in the glider in the nursery for a few hours b/c I was worried about their room being stuffy, and Zoey would only sleep on her tummy b/c she was so fussy, and they were waking up every couple of hours to nurse (they don't get as full from nursing as they do from bottles. I don't know why.)

Things sort of got back to normal during the day on Friday, but then Jason went to play in an evening soccer game, which left me to do bottles and bedtime on my own. Because I hadn't been able to pump enough the day before, I hadn't been able to keep up with their milk needs all day. So I sat down to pump at a time when no one was supposed to be hungry, which immediately cued them to start screaming. So I had to quickly fix bottles of formula and then try to feed 3 screaming babies at once while the bottles were leaking. I called and left a message on Jason's voicemail that consisted entirely of screaming babies.

The only good part about that evening was that when I finally got them to bed, they fell asleep almost immediately b/c they had worn themselves out from fussing.

Then Saturday they hardly napped all day and were pretty fussy. They must have been upset about the US losing to Ghana in the World Cup match. Dinner hour was again full of fussiness. Abby was screaming so much that Jason took her on a walk to calm her down. I thought the other two were sleeping, so I sat down to pump, and they immediately woke up. So I called Jason again with the sound of screaming babies. We eventually got them fed and asleep over a 2 hour period. By then it was after 8pm and pointless for us to make dinner. We just snacked, I finally pumped, and then went to bed.

On the plus side, Lucas has slept for 10 hour stretches 2 nights in a row! Now if he could just encourage Abby to do the same.

We are hoping today is better, and are determined to get them to take good long naps in their cribs.

Whew. I am off to a yoga class so that I can remember how to breathe. Will post some cute pictures later.