breaking out of his cage

This is how I found Max today when I went in to check on him during the morning nap. He has fallen asleep in his crib sitting up a couple times in the last couple of weeks.

Thankfully, the babies usually are good sleepers. They know that the crib is for sleeping, and as soon as I put them in beds, they wiggle around until they find a comfy spot and then fall asleep. Lately, Max has been testing out his abilities and is now pulling himself up in his crib. I think it is the thrill of his new mobility. Not only is he crawling, but he is also holding on to walls and roaming through the house. His favorite spot seems to be under the kitchen table, probably due to the abundance of Cherrios that can be found there.

I took the babies to the doctor's office today. They have had runny noses and coughs for a couple weeks now. During the past week, their coughs have gotten worse. Last night, Max had a high fever. The doctor said they both have ear infections. Hopefully, they will start feeling better soon.

great new dinner recipe

Happy April Fools Day!

kahlil gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.” And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

From Chapter 4 of The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

cousins

We had a great visit last week from Max and Maya's cousins from Tennessee. Lonnie's sister Lisa and three of her four kids were able to come down during their Spring Break to spend a couple of days with us. The babies were bit leery about the visitors when they first arrived. I wish we would have gotten a photo of their faces when Lisa and her kids came in to see the kids during bath time. Thankfully they quickly warmed up to them and were trilled to have so many adoring fans at their beck and call.

Ammon, Mason, Maya and Zaley snuggling on the hammock.


I think Lonnie and his nephews kind of look alike in this photo.

Zaley pushing Maya on the swing.

Max really enjoyed sitting with his cousins while they played x-box games.

cousin adventures

While the cousins were in town we took them to Brazos Bend State Park. Spring is a great time to visit the alligators and they were out in full force. We saw more than 30 alligators.

A couple of small alligators sitting on logs.

While Lisa and I were walking with the babies back to the car we saw this very large alligator (probably around 7 feet) with a smaller alligator in it's mouth! We asked a ranger about it and she was even more surprised than we were. She said they were probably in a territorial dispute and it looks like the bigger alligator had won. Mason and Ammon couldn't miss out on the excitetment so they ran all the way back to see it.

We also saw several bright pink Roseate Spoonbills.

welcome spring

no one should guilt you into breastfeeding, there is already enough guilt associated with motherhood as it is. But if you do want to breastfeed and are having a hard time getting started here are a couple thing that helped me......

1. Talk to a lactation consultant. She may not be able to slove the problem but she will be able to elimnate possible problems and give you some solutions for getting started.
2. I pumped all the time, usually 4-6 hours a day.
3. I used nipple shields for a while. They helped the babies to latch on, but they made it harder for the babies to get as much milk. As soon as the babies did a better job of latching on I stopped using them.
4. I feed the babies on schedule, when they were wide awake, after taking a nap. If I waited until the babies were tired or extreamly hungry then they would not even try to breastfeed.
5. When I was worn out I gave myself a free pass to not even try to make the babies breastfeed. At night I just bottle feed the babies and them pumped. When I was stressed did the same.
6. Even after the babies were finally breastfeeding I kept them on one bottle a day, right before they went to sleep at night. This ensured that the babies got a full meal before they went to sleep and it helped the babies maintain the ability to bottle feed.
7. 
   

if maya were a french man....

she might look something like this:

crying over spilled milk

A couple of weeks ago while I was taking frozen baby food out of the freezer to get lunch ready for the little ones, I spotted the grocery bag filled with frozen breast milk down at the bottom of the freezer. I took the bag out and looked at the dates on the bags of breastmilk...they were all almost 6 months old. I decided it was finally time to use it or lose it, so I defrosted a bag and used it in the babies food throughout the day. In the evening when we were getting the babies ready for bed and I was making their "top-off" bottles that they get every night before bed, I tried to pour what was left from the frozen storage bag into the bottles, and it poured all over the counter top. I probably only lost a couple ounces of milk, and I quickly cleaned up the mess and continued to put the babies to bed.

If this had happened more than 6 months or so ago, I probably would have cried for at least an hour. I worked so hard for each drop of milk I gave my babies, and I never seemed to have enough. Breastmilk was gold. My life revolved around trying unsuccessfully to get the babies to breastfeed (at least 10-15 minutes each), giving them bottles (at least 30 minutes), and then pumping milk (at least 30 minutes), starting the process again every three hours. I kept a chart of how long I pumped and how much I was producing. This was cross referenced against the amount the babies were eating and how many wet diapers they had in a day. Although I pumped all I could (sometimes more than 5 hours a day), I never had quite enough. During those first couple of weeks, my friend Heather, who's baby was just two weeks older than Max and Maya, brought over some of her extra milk for us. I was grateful for every drop, but I still had to supplement with formula. Of course, I was making food for two babies while recovering from major surgery, but I still felt horrible about not being able to make enough milk for the babies. I also felt guilty, rejected, and depressed that I was not able to breastfeed.

Breastfeeding did not come as naturally as I thought it would. It was a long hard process to finally get to a stage where we all were comfortable with it. I know many women decide against breastfeeding for various reasons, many of which I understand much better now than before I first started trying to breastfeed. Still, I am personally glad I continued to fight for it.

Thankfully after more than three months of pumping and trying unsuccessfully to get the babies to breastfeed, they finally gave in to my pleadings and started to occasionally latch on for direct feedings. For a couple weeks, I still doubted their ability and worried that at the next feeding I would need to bottle feed them pumped milk again. So after every breastfeeding session, I would dutifully return to the breast pump to try and produce some milk, just in case they needed it the next time. This was the first time I ever had excess milk, and I actually started building up some freezer storage. I stored up about 60 oz of precious breastmilk.

By four months old, I decided to stop pumping all together. The babies had to get their food directly from the source. We stopped all bottles except for one at the end of the day, just before bed time. Thankfully, they went along with the program. Maybe they were finally strong enough to breastfeed. Maybe, like Emily said, I finally forced them to breastfeed, or maybe they just gave in to my constant pleading. Whatever the reason, they finally became breastfeeding babies. They are now ten months old and breastfeeding pros. I love the time I spend feeding and snuggling with each of my babies. We will probably keep going for a while after all that work to get them going...I am not in a rush to have it be over.

Last week, I took the last of that frozen breastmilk (about 40 ounces) out of the freezer and gave it to a friend of a friend who was struggling to produce enough milk for her baby. It was nice to be able to share it with someone who understands how hard I worked for it. It amazes me to think that something I had fought so hard for when the babies were small now comes so easily.

increased security measures

Since Max has started reveling in his increased mobility we decided it was time to implement some increased security measures. Our entire second floor opens up to the entry way at the top of the stairs and the banisters had me worried. The babies are still pretty small and I didn't want them to get any ideas about squeezing through the rails so I used my moby wrap.

The top of our stairs required even more creativity. The stairs are wider than most of the gates we found and the banisters aren't parallel.