Kissing Siblings

Well it's been a while since our last update so here it goes. As usual, I'm too lazy and tired to write up a coherent post so it's time for another list.

• Thursday, Shae and the babies are heading up to King City/Lockwood to help prep for Shae's dad's retirement party. I'll be flying up next Thursday, so that means for a week it's just going to be me and Mr. Box down here. I'm sure I'll miss Shae and the munchkins, but it's going to be nice to have some quiet and relaxation around here. I'm not even sure what I'll do with all that extra sleep.
  
  
• The babies are doing great but have taken a step backwards in a few areas, most importantly in their sleeping habits. For a while, things were pretty good. We put them down around 7 or 8 and Jack slept through the night and Ella woke up once (at most) to eat. Let's just say that's not the case anymore. Both babies are up at least once, and usually twice every night. Several nights recently Shae has spent half the night sitting in our glider in the baby room.
  
  
• They also seem to have forgotten how to drink out of their faster speed nipples. We moved them from the slow nipples to the "variable" nipples because they were taking so long to eat (and because the variable speed nipples don't spill if the babies fall asleep with them in their mouths). They did just fine with the new nipples for about a week, and then apparently forgot how to drink out of them and just started making a mess. We had to go back to the slow nipples for a while and now we're back to trying to get them on the faster ones again. We'll see how it goes.
  
  
• This is a little awkward, and I'm not sure I would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but Jack and Ella french kissed this morning. They were laying next to Shae in our bed facing each other and all of a sudden they were kissing. Seriously, Jack's tongue went into his sister's mouth. Gross. If you don't think I'm telling this story to every single date either one of them brings home you obviously don't know me very well.
  
  
• Ella is doing great, and is growing up pretty fast. She has so many expressions and loves to smile. Unfortunately, she keeps losing her hair. Between her cradle cap and Jack pulling her hair out she's getting pretty thin up top. Looking back at her newborn photos it's hard to believe how much hair she had then.
  
  
• Ella may not look as much like a mini-Pat like her brother does, but there can't be any doubt about whose daughter she is. The other day she was laying on the couch laughing at her own farts. Fart, laugh. Fart, laugh. Yup, that's my daughter.
  
  
• Jack is doing great too. His reflux is getting much better, and he doesn't puke after every meal anymore. It's nice to be able to feed him and not have half of it come right back up all over us. We still have to be careful not to feed him too much, but it's way better than a week or two ago.
  
  
• Both Jack and Ella have started to get into an oral phase. After not having much interest in pacifiers, a couple of days ago Jack became obsessed with them. Now whenever he gets fussy we just shove a pacifier in his mouth and he's happy as can be. On one hand, we really don't want a baby who's addicted to pacifiers, but on the other it is really convenient to just shove a pacifier in his mouth and shut him up. Ella kind of likes pacifiers too, but she is happy with her thumb, my hand, Shae's neck, or pretty much anything else she can find. The other day she almost left a hickey on Shae's arm.
  
  
• The babies really love Lunchbox, especially our baby girl. She stares at him and smiles, and loves it when he gives her kisses. It's hilarious to watch, and Lunchbox enjoys it too.
  
  
• You can already kind of see which kid is going to doing to do certain things first. Ella is going to roll over, crawl, and walk WAY before Jack. She's already about to roll over, and I wouldn't be surprised if she starts flipping onto her stomach while she's up North. I think Jack's going to talk first, but Shae disagrees. Ella makes a lot of noise, but Jack seems to already be trying to talk. He just lays there and babbles to us all day.

That's about it for now. If you haven't checked out our gallery lately, take a look because we add pictures all the time. I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures from Shae's trip North. Also, Shae has been playing around with some images lately, and her pics blog has some cool new images.

Update

I figured it was time for a baby update.

At just over three months old, Ella already has a HUGE personality. Most mornings she will wake up with a huge smile and a cute little laugh. Now I say most mornings. On the other mornings she wakes up screaming her head off. I guess you could say she is a typical woman. She is also doing the squealing thing. She will lay there for hours just squealing. We had a sales person come to the door the other day and she asked me if I had a baby because she could hear her all the way across the street. Ella is also doing a lot of kicking. I have a feeling she will be crawling before we know it. She has yet to roll over, but she tries. I haven't had her on her stomach as much as I should so I think that is partly my fault. Our little girl also loves to "talk" now. She thinks she is having a conversation with us, but I still have no idea what she is saying. Her favorite person to talk to is Lunchbox. When she sees him in the morning, she gets so excited. Now for the not so good stuff. The evenings can be rough for her. She will get in a crying cycle. I think she gets a little gas bubble, then starts crying and makes it worse. It will get to the point where no amount of comforting will help her and she won't eat. The only thing I have found that helps is Gripe Water. Give her a little bit of that and it calms her right down. The other not so good thing with Ella is that she is losing her beautiful hair. She has bald spots on the back of her head and some on the top. The ones on the back are from sleeping and the ones on the top are from her cradle cap. Yup, she has cradle cap. It is this gross scaly stuff on top of her head. I guess the dry skin does not fall off and just builds up. It can sometimes make babies hair fall out. Our poor little girl is turning into an old man. I guess that is it on Ella. She is a happy beautiful girl.

Jack is just awesome. He wakes up with a big smile and a cute little laugh/grunt thing. He vary rarely cries. If he does cry, we know there is something wrong. Usually he is hungry or trying to poop. I keep telling him that if it makes him cry then it probably isn't ready to come out yet. He doesn't seem to believe me. Jack is also HUGE. He has to be at least 2 pounds heavier then Ella. He looks like he is turning into a little bruiser. Jack went through a phase where he lost all his hair on te top of his head but it has all grown back now. Jack is also not rolling over yet and hates to be on his tummy. He has reflux so it really bothers him to lay that way. Just like Ella he is kicking up a storm. Jack tries to talk, but isn't as good at it as his sister. In a couple more weeks I have a feeling the two of them will be having full conversations with each other. Now for the not so good stuff. Like I said before, Jack has reflux. If you are not familiar with it, then that is a good thing. Basically a muscle that keeps his food down is not developed enough and he throws up a lot. We can't just feed him. We have to try and burp him after every ounce of food he eats. It can be a pain. We have had to stock up on burp rags to clean up all his puke. He also projectile pukes. We now have a nice big stain on our couch and he has been able to hit his sister in her bassinet from his. He can really get some distance.

Both babies are still not consistently sleeping through the night. They take turns and it is really annoying. I think they have both slept through the night twice since they have been in their own room. I know they are both capable of it, they just don't want me to get any sleep at night. I guess that is it for a baby update. They will have a 4 month check up at the beginning of February so I will have more then.

The Babies' First Christmas

Well, the babies made it through their first Christmas with flying colors (and Shae and I somehow survived too). It's been kind of crazy around here lately with grandparents, Christmas, the New Year, trips to the zoo (more on that in another post), and other stuff (more on that in another post too), but I finally have a few minutes to try and recap Jackson and Ella's first Christmas. We posted some pics from Christmas over in our gallery.

Monday (the 22nd) my Mom and Shae's parents got into town. I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff I should say about how great it is to get together with our families for the holidays and all that, but really I was just happy we had three new people to hand the munchkins off to. So with all these people to watch the babies you know what happened the first morning everyone was here? Shae and her dad went Xmas shopping and the grandmas went shopping and I ended up alone with both babies for half the day. How does that happen?

Tuesday night as we were preparing for bed Shae just blurted out "I think the babies are going to sleep through the night tonight." The fact that Ella had slept through the night about three times ever and Jack hadn't even really come close didn't seem to change her feeling. After I pointed these facts out to her and mocked her for thinking there was any chance we would get a full night's sleep we turned off the lights and drifted off. Sure enough, both babies slept through until Lunchbox woke us up at 6 the next morning.

Fresh off a full night's rest it was time for Christmas Eve. After a pretty laid back day we headed over to John and Leah's (Grace's aunt) for their Christmas Eve party. The babies were a big hit (and I found even more people to pawn them off on), and I got to meet a few more members of Shae's family. After the party, it was home to get everything ready for Santa and get Jack and Ella to bed. Everything went pretty smoothly, and although the twins didn't both sleep through the night (they haven't repeated that trick yet) they were pretty good.

Jack must have known it was Christmas morning because he started the day off with a nice present for me: a nice morning dump. Jack must be a big fan of Christmas (or he felt really good after his poop and puke) because he busted out his first real smile for us. He'd given us little grins before, but on Christmas morning he let loose with a great big smile and kept smiling at us for about 10 minutes. Ella has been smiling for a while so she wasn't very impressed, but the rest of us were very excited.

After Jack was done smiling, it was time for the really good stuff: opening presents. Instead of recapping everyone's presents I'll just say that everyone got lots of good stuff (especially me). Thanks everyone. The babies got lots of goodies, but since they got so much stuff at their showers Shae and I got to reap the benefits. I think this will probably be the last year we get much for ourselves, but it was a great Christmas.

That's about it for the recap. I'm sure I forgot to mention tons of stuff, but the babies are crying and need some attention. It's a week late, but Merry Christmas everyone!

Choppin' Wood

Last year was our first year in our house, so of course Shae and I decided we needed to get a real Christmas tree. A fake tree was good enough for our little apartment the year before, but we couldn't have a plastic tree our first year in our house. So the first weekend in December, the plastic tree stayed up in the attic and Shae and I went out to find the perfect tree for our first Christmas.

Of course nothing is ever as easy as it should be, and getting our tree was no exception. The weather decided not to cooperate with us, and it was raining as we drove around looking for our tree. We found a Home Depot that had some trees, but after fighting the rain for about 45 minutes and not finding the right tree (too dry, too small, too expensive, or just too crappy) we decided to look elsewhere. Shae had done some searching online and found a couple of tree lots so we decided to try and find them (the Garmin Nuvi we got for Christmas last year would have been useful). We couldn't find the lot we were looking for, but we found a few other lots and checked them out. Unfortunately, all of the trees were really expensive and not very nice. We were just about to give up and go back to Home Depot when we saw a sign for the lot we had been looking for. We took the next exit, took a few lucky turns, and finally found the lot.

We checked out the pre-cut trees and there were quite a few nice ones, but they were still pretty expensive and we hadn't found "the one" so we decide to check the cut-your-own lot and see what we found. It was a good decision. We grabbed a saw and checked out the trees. There were good trees everywhere, and eventually we found the one we wanted. I climbed down in the mud and went to work on the tree, and after about 30 seconds we had our tree chopped down. They shook out the needles and netted the tree for us, and we loaded the tree into our car and headed home. We were drenched and tired, but we had our tree.

This year, things weren't much easier. We knew where we were going, but of course we had two little extra degrees of difficulty. We tried to go out Friday night after work, but even though the lot is open until 9p.m., apparently the cut-your-own lot closed at dark. So Saturday we headed back over to the lot, only now it was raining (well, drizzling). I guess we just go Christmas tree shopping in the rain; that's how we roll. We strapped on our Baby Bjorns and started searching the lot for the babies' first tree. It took a bit of searching, but eventually we found our tree. Ella and I grabbed the saw and cut down our tree. After I carried the tree from the back of the lot all the way up to the front we had the tree shaken and netted, and then it was time to carry it out to the car and strap it to the roof.

Somehow we got home without the tree flying off the roof of the car, got it inside, and got it all setup in our stand. We popped in Elf, and after a light catastrophe (or, more accurately, a light patastrophe) and a trip by Shae to Target for a new strand of lights we got to work getting the tree all decorated. Of course the babies gave us some help. Our tree looks great and we are very happy with it. Now it's time to get some presents around it.

Here are some more pics of our trip to the farm and of our tree.

A Day With The Babies

I decided to write this blog in response to the number one question I get asked: Is it hard?

I have no idea how to answer this question, so I will tell you what a typical day is like and you can decide.

I guess my morning begins around 3:30am. This is about the time when my sleep is interrupted by what sounds like a howler monkey. Most of the times its just Jack telling me to get up and make him a bottle NOW! Sometime it really is a howler monkey. This tends to wake Ella up and she comes to the realization that she too would like to be fed. I have a system where I can feed them both. Did you know that there are 4 episodes of Fresh Prince starting at 3am. There have been morning where I have actually watched all 4 episodes. If I don't turn on the TV, I tend to fall back asleep with two babies in the bed. After they eat they are pretty easy to get back to sleep. At around 6 I like to see what happens first. Does Pat's alarm go off, do the babies wake up, or does Lunchbox want to eat? The babies usually win. I guess this is the point where I tell you that they are pretty close to being on the same eating schedule so this makes it much easier. Most of the times they get fed about a half hour before Pat gets up so I get up and make two bottles, lay the babies next to me and Pat and stick some bottles in their mouths. Keep in mind I just watched a couple episode of Fresh Prince so I am pretty tired. Before we start, I change both babies. If I do it during the earlier feeding, they don't go back to sleep. Anyways, this feeding is pretty interesting, for one, I tend to fall asleep and drop the bottles, When this happens, they let me know. Very loudly. They also feel the need to be wide awake and then putting them down again becomes a chore. I can usually get them back to sleep until about 9 and then we get up for the day. This is where the fun part begins.

I guess you could say this is where the hard part comes in. I have to divide my time between the two babies. I always feel bad when I am playing with one and ignoring the other. While we are in the living room, I used to just lay them on one of the couch cushions, but now that they are very squirmy, I am afraid they will throw themselves off the couch. We don't want that. So, they hang out in their car seats, bouncers, or the floor. The rest of the day we have tummy time, feedings changing, snuggling, reading them stories, talking to them, taking pictures of them, and just trying to have fun.

If we decide to leave the house for the day, I have to give myself an extra hour to get ready. If we leave the house and the babies have not been fed, they will tell you about it in the middle of the store. It seems to be OK if we are in Babies R' Us, but nowhere else. They are kind of past that point where they sleep through the stroller rides. Now they just sit there wide awake. Besides being fed, they need to be changed, I need to make sure the diaper bag is packed, make sure the stroller is in the car, and then carry everything out to the car. The one good thing about all this crap I have to carry around is that it really makes me think twice about those quick Starbucks trips. I can't just run in and get a latte anymore. Now if I stop, I have to get the stroller out and set it up, snap Jack's seat in, roll around to the other side of the car and snap Ella's seat in, grab the diaper bad and hook it onto the stroller and hope there is someone around who can get the door for me. After I make my stop, I have to get the babies back in the car, take off the diaper bag, break down the stroller, put it in the back of my car and then we can finally take off. I swear a 5 minute trip to Starbucks now takes 30, but sometimes, you really, really, really need an eggnog latte.

Going to a store becomes a chore. Most normal parents have these nice little strollers. Do you know what does not fit in those little strollers? Two babies. We have two strollers. The one I take with me to the stores I like to call the limo. It is very long because both car seats snap into it. The limo is very hard to steer and maneuver around all the store displays. Since I have to use both hands and all my mommy strength to push this monster stroller around, I don't have any hands to carry things with. This past week I finally found somewhat of a solution. I got a Mommy Hook. It is a HUGE carabiner that hooks to the stroller handle. I can hook a tote bag to it and put things into the bag. I get weird looks but at least I can carry more then a few tiny items. This works most of the times, but grocery shopping is still way to hard. I just wait for Pat to get home and then go.

Back on the home front, I try and feed the babies at or just before 5pm. I like having them fed and changed when Pat gets home. The last things he needs after a long day at work is to come home and fight with a screaming baby. If I can have them fed and changed, then we can spend the next hour or so just playing and loving them. This is my favorite time. We each get to hold a baby and I don't feel guilty for leaving one in their seat. The rest of the evening is pretty mellow, we play and talk with the babies, I try and make dinner (sometimes we have to eat in shifts). We try to head to the bedroom around 10:30 or 11. We get all snuggled into bed with the babies for a feeding. Jack is pretty easy to get to sleep so Pat puts him down and drifts off. Ella is a different story! After she eats, she is just wide awake. I have to rock her for awhile before she finally gets drowsy. I put her down around 11:30 and they are both up an hour later for food. Before I know it, it is 3am again and my day starts over.

So I really don't know if my day is hard or just time consuming.

Growing Babies

Today was Jack and Ella's two month checkup. We don't have an easy/accurate way to weigh them so we had kind of been looking forward to the appointment so we could find out exactly how much they have grown in the past couple of months. The Cliff's Notes version: everything is fine. For those with a little more time, here's the recap.

We got to the doctor's office right on time and proceeded to wait for our turn to head to one of the exam rooms. I think they decided that because we had twins we should wait twice as long, but eventually we got the call. As the nurse guided us to the exam room we realized that we were heading to the same room where Jack got his junk snipped. I was hoping this visit wouldn't be quite as bad for him, but then again it would be kind of hard to be much worse.

After another round of waiting, a nurse finally came in and took the babies' measurements. Ella weighed 11 lbs. and was 23" tall. I guess this puts her right about average for weight and above average for height. Apparently my little girl is a tall one. I don't think she gets her height from her mother. At the rate Ella's going, she should pass Shae up somewhere around 3 years old.

Once the nurse was all done with Ella it was Jack's turn. Jack weighed in at a solid 11. lbs 6 oz. and was 22.5" tall. I guess he made up for being 7 oz. lighter at birth. Of course Jack cheated a little bit by eating over 10 ounces of formula before the appointment, but he was still the winner of the weigh-off. Even though Jack was 6 ounces heavier, he is a little below average because boys are usually a little bigger. All I know is he has almost doubled in size in the past two months so he's doing just fine.

The nurse left and the doctor eventually came in and took a look at the twins. Now we are very happy with the babies' doctor, but there was a kind of odd exchange today. He came in and looked at the babies for a second, pointed to Ella and said "That's the girl, right? I'm not sure what it is, but something in their faces helps you tell boys and girls apart." You know what else helps? The girl is wrapped up in a pink blanket and the boy is wrapped up in a blue one. That might be a clue too. After taking a look at the babies and their measurements he told us everything was fine and went over the vaccinations the Jack and Ella would be getting.

After our longest wait yet, a nurse finally came in with a handful of needles. This was the hard part. Each of the babies got three shots and an oral vaccination. They were not happy to get their shots. It was not fun to watch them get jabbed. Poor little Jack, last time he went to the doctor he got snipped and this time he got jabbed. He's not even old enough for a lollipop yet so he doesn't even have that going for him.

Two Months

Today makes it two months since the little ones got pulled into the world and I figured it was time for another baby update. The babies don't give me a lot of time to sit down and type, so I'm going with yet another lazy-list.

• I know everyone always talks about how fast the babies change, but you don't really realize exactly how fast until you hang out with the little guys every day. They change literally overnight. (And I mean in the real form of the word "literally", not in the "my head literally exploded" way that really means the exact opposite. It really annoys me when people use "literally" and mean "figuratively".) Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Ella woke up one morning smiling like crazy when the night before she hadn't even cracked a smile once. It's pretty cool to watch their entire personalities develop and change from day-to-day.
  
  
• Speaking of smiling, they're doing a lot of that lately. Ella smiles like crazy (when she isn't crying of course), and Jack has been doing more lately too. They're a lot more fun to interact with now. Instead of just watching them sleep, now we can actually tickle Ella's chin and watch her smile. They're almost like little people.
  
  
• Babies fart all the time, and it's really loud. You know what else it is? Hilarious. I don't care how old I get, farts are always funny. I laugh almost every time one of the twins rips a really loud fart when we're sitting out on the couch. Every so often Shae and I look at each other accusingly because it's hard to believe these little babies can make those noises.
  
  
• Ella popped out a minute earlier, and she seems to be trying to maintain her status as the oldest. She's still bigger (just a little), smiled first (by about a week), and she's starting to laugh/squeal first. I'm sure Jack will catch up. Besides, he peed in his mouth first and I don't think Ella's going to catch him on that one.
  
  
• The babies are in the middle of another growth spurt and are eating like crazy. They eat all night and all day. The other night they actually ate from the time we went to bed until we got up to feed LB at 6am. I hope they get threw this spurt pretty quick because Costco only carries so much formula.

That's about it for now. The babies go in for their two month checkup on Wednesday so we should have an update on their weights, health etc. after that. We're all doing fine, although Shae and I could definitely use a little more rest.

Road Trip

I'm not sure how, but we survived our first road trip with the babies. Shae, the babies, Lunchbox, and I all piled into the little Mazda Tribute and headed North to King City/Lockwood for "Baby Shower North" and Thanksgiving. Eight days, 800 miles, and 8,000 diapers later we finally got back home. The trip was a lot of fun, but travel is definitely a lot more work than it used to be.

If you just want to look at pictures of our trip, here you go.

Northward Bound
The first few years I lived in San Diego, trips up to King City were pretty easy. I took off after work on Thursday night, made at most one stop (at Starbucks if they were still open and it was early enough), and generally arrived about six hours after I left. I could usually make the return trip in about 5.5 hours (less LA traffic and no stops) which wasn't too bad. Then Shae moved down and slowed me down. She had to stop for coffee and food each way, and she usually drove part of the trip (a little slower than I drove). The trip was now about 6-6.5 hours. Once Lunchbox started tagging along, the trips took even longer. Now we had to drive the Tribute instead of the TL so we had to stop for gas in addition to the food and coffee stops, and we also had to give LB time to do his business. Now we were up to about 6.5-7 hours each way, or a full hour more than it took me without the extra baggage.

This trip, however, was a different story. For starters, there was no way I was going to try to drive home Thursday night after working all day. I'm not that crazy, so Friday morning we woke up and got to work getting loaded up and on the road. I should have known what kind of day I was in for when it took us from 6-10 just to get the car loaded up. Let's just say that 2 adults, 2 babies, 1 dog, 2 suitcases, a "Pack N Play", 2 diaper bags, dog food, a laptop bag, a camera bag, and all sorts of miscellaneous other stuff is a Tribute load. There wasn't any room for the monster stroller so it got strapped to the roof rack. Luckily we had a plan for the return trip, as you'll see in an awesome photo below.

Anyway, after 4 hours of packing/feeding/changing we finally got on the road around 10:30. Three feeding stops and 8 hours later we finally got into King City. Not only do we have to stop more often with the babies, but it takes forever to feed them at each stop. I never thought I'd long for the days when the trip took "only" 7 hours, but by the time we finally made it I was spent.

After we eventually got to King City and got all of our crap out of (and off of) the car we got to relax for a couple of minutes before it was time for the babies to meet some grandparents. My dad and Dorothy drove down to get some extra baby time before the shower and got to see the twins for the first time Friday night. Jack was so excited he pooped. So to recap, we had 5 people (my mom, myself, Shae, my dad, and Dorothy), 2 babies, 2 dogs, and a cat all staying under the same roof. Fun times.

Baby Shower North
After getting some rest Friday night (or as much as two hungry babies who slept all day would let us), Saturday we headed out to Lockwood for "Baby Shower North". The last baby shower I had to survive involved a house full of ladies playing baby games while I tried to hide out in the office with LB. This shower involved BBQ, beer, bows (and arrows), and of course LB. The babies made an appearance too.

The 3 B's were great, but my favorite part of the day was all the people who wanted to hold/feed/change the babies. After almost 7 weeks with the babies we were more than happy to let everyone else take care of the babies all day while we enjoyed some time off.

The other highlight: the gifts. Holy Crap! We got tons of stuff. Clothes, books, toys, diapers, and all kinds of other goodies. Quite a haul for the babies. Thanks to everyone for the presents; I'm sure the babies love them.

Escaping From The Babies
Shae and I haven't been able to go to the movies for quite a while. For the last month or two of her pregnancy Shae didn't want to do anything that involved leaving the house, much less anything that didn't involve bathroom breaks every 20 minutes or so. Obviously, it's not any easier to get to the movies now (or maybe not so obviously based on the number of people who think it's OK to take babies to movies...but that's not us).Well , Sunday we were able to exploit my mom's love of her grandchildren to pawn them off on her and get out of the house long enough to catch a movie. Shae loves teen movies and vampires so "we" decided to go see a vampire love story aimed at 13-year-old girls: Twilight. It doesn't matter what the movie was, it was just nice to get out of the house and throw down some popcorn.

Turkey Day:
After a few days in KC and Lockwood, it was Thanksgiving day. As has become our tradition, we spent turkey day at the Fosters'. My mom, my dad, and Dorothy joined Shae, myself, the babies, and Shae's parents out in Lockwood for Thanksgiving. We also had plenty of dogs: Lunchbox, Ty (Shae's parents' dog), Kuge, and Bertha & Brandy (my dad and Dorothy's boxers). Quite a crew.

Every year we try to get a picture of the Thanksgiving crew (including the dogs) after dinner. Last year we ate late and by the time we got around to trying to take the picture it was getting dark. Mr. Box (seven-months-old at the time) didn't help matters by running all over the place throwing up dust and getting Kuge and Ty all riled up. Here's what we ended up with. This year we decided it might be best to take the picture before dinner while there was still plenty of light. Lunchbox may be a year older, but he still wasn't very cooperative at picture time. We finally got him to stop playing in the dirt long enough to get our picture, so it was time for some turkey.

As always, the food was great. We stuffed ourselves full of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and everything else. The babies skipped the turkey and had some formula. They didn't get any pie either, but everyone else got plenty.

After dinner, it was time for our annual Thanksgiving evening walk. This is where the giant stroller really came in handy. It may be huge, heavy, and a pain to strap to the roof, but it sure is nice when you need to do some off-road walking after dinner. The thing took everything we threw at it: dirt, rocks, big piles of sticks, etc., and the babies just napped through the whole thing.

That's about it for the babies' first Thanksgiving. It was a good time, and they were very well behaved. They even watched a few episodes of the Thanksgiving weekend "Cool Tools" marathon on DIY (the Do-It-Yourself network) with Grandpa Foster. I think Jack wants a new wheelbarrow for Christmas and Ella wants a new screwdriver.

Cruising In Style

Saturday we loaded up the car to head back home, but of course there was a twist. We could barely fit all of our stuff in the car for the trip North, there was no way we were going to fit our gifts in the car for the trip home without a little help. That's right, it was time to strap the top carrier to the roof of the Mazda. As a kid, I always hated cruising in the back seat of my dad's station wagon with the dogs in the back and the top carrier strapped to the roof. So of course there I was with two kids in the backseat, Lunchbox in the back, and the top carrier looking super cool on the roof. Good thing my dad had an extra one to help us out.

I thought the trip up was long, but the trip home was even worse. Apparently everyone else thought it was a good idea to head home on Saturday to beat the rush too. The babies fall asleep instantly as soon as the car is moving, but they don't do so well in stop-and-go traffic. So there we were stuck in LA traffic with both babies screaming for two hours. That was fun. Nine hours and two eardrums after we left Lockwood we eventually made it home, got the car unloaded and finally relaxed for a few minutes before bed. The baby shower and Thanksgiving were great, but it's always nice to be home.

Six Weeks

Today makes it six weeks since the little Lorigans got pulled out of Shae and stole our sleep and free time. Not a lot is new, so I figured it was time for another list.

• The first couple of days we had the twins I thought the black tar meconium poop was really gross, but at least they only went once or twice a day. Then they got through the tar-poop phase and started destroying 5-8 diapers a day and spraying poop all over the walls. I missed the meconium days and longed for the days of 1-2 dumps a day (*2 of course). Now the babies have moved on again and are back to 1-2 a day but let's just say the size and smell makes me nostaligic for the 8-a-day period. I can't wait until they start exploding out of their diapers. Babies are fun!
  
  
• These little things eat constantly. I seriously don't know where it all goes. Jack isn't that big; I have no idea where he hides the 1.5-2 lbs of milk/formula he eats a day. His poops are huge, but not that huge.
  
  
• We'll be heading up to King City on Friday. a 380 mile drive with two starving babies and a restless dog. This is going to be super awesome!
  
  
• If you haven't checked our image gallery lately, there's some new pics of Jack.
  
  
• A while back I wrote about the local strip club's efforts to attract business. Well they've repainted again (this time it's gray and pink), they still have the balloons, and now they've added a new attention grabber. Today when I got off the freeway I was greeted by a guy enthusiastically spinning a "Little Darlings" sandwich board sign. I guess they're hoping the same guy who sees one of those signs and decides he needs a sandwich or a condo will make a detour on the way home from work. I was also wondering if the sign guy can take his payment in lap dances.
  
  
• Shae has been playing with image editing software lately and updated her "Daily Photo" blog again (still not anywhere near daily, but at least it's updated). They're kind of cool, so if you have a few minutes take a look. Here's a sample:

Clusterfeed

A long time ago (like 2 weeks), the lactation consultant at the hospital told us to expect a growth spurt from the babies when they were about 10 days old. She warned us that they would be hungry all the time and not to worry, just keep feeding them. At about 10 days, we noticed they both had started eating a lot more and thought they had hit the growth spurt. We were wrong. At about 2.5 weeks (or a couple of days ago) Ella hit the "real" growth spurt and last night Jack did the same.

This is ridiculous. Pretty much every second they're awake both of them are crying for food (well, Ella cries, Jake squeaks for a while before giving up and letting us know he's serious). We feed them, they're quiet for about 10 minutes and then it starts up again. I feel sorry for Shae's boobs, and I'm starting to worry about the motor in our pump. There was a span of about five hours this afternoon where both of them were wide awake and hungry. Then they slept for about four hours and then woke up screaming for food again. According to Shae's Internet research this whole eat for hours, sleep for hours thing is called "Cluster feeding". All I know is it's super fun.

Of course, this giant increase in the babies' appetites comes with a bonus: a matching jump in their diaper usage. I thought these little things were crapping a lot before, but this is crazy. On Friday we bought a new 92-pack of diapers. In under 36 hours they went through about 50 of them. Holy crap! Seriously...that's a crapload of poop. Costco doesn't carry newborn diapers, and it seems like they don't make the jumbo packs of them (or at least they don't have them at Costco or Babies "R" Us). I guess the logic is that people don't stock up on them because the babies grow out of them so fast. Obviously they need to talk to more twin parents.

In other fun, we took a little family field trip yesterday. Shae and I, Lunchbox, and the twins all piled into the car and headed over to the dog park to get LB some exercise. Shae sat outside at a picnic table and fed the babies (seriously, they are eating constantly) while I took Mr. Box into the park to have some fun. I'm sure everyone will be happy to hear that he didn't hump any of the other dogs and got nice and dirty.

Oh, Jack's diaper rash is gone. I guess Butt Paste is more than just a funny name. That's about it to report right now. I just heard Ella go through diaper 51 so I guess I better go change her.

Daddy and his Babies

Yup, more photos today. This time I wanted to get some pictures of Pat with the munchkins. The full album can be seen here. The ones below are a few of my favorites.

Babies in Blankets

Today our babies had their first professional photo shoot. I actually found a photographer on Craigslist who does awesome newborn photos and she was looking for twins for her portfolio. There was no sitting fee and we get a free 8x10. In anticipation for this shoot I figured I should get the babies used to the camera so I broke out my good camera and started doing some photos. Grandma Allen knitted some wonderful blankets for the babies that I used for the backdrop. Both Jack and Ella were a little too awake when I did this, but I still got some pretty good shots. I will try again when they are both sleepy so I can get them both in the same picture. Here are a few of my favorites. The rest can be seen here.

One Week Home

Yesterday marked one full week since we brought the babies home from the hospital. It's been an eventful week, but we're finally getting into some sort of routine. My mom and Shae's parents were here through Thursday, so the last couple of days we've been trying to figure out how to do everything on our own. We're actually getting quite a bit more sleep than I thought we would, even if our kids have their day and night confused (as Shae detailed in her post). The first few nights were rough, but the last few we've been able to sleep most of the night (with the obvious breaks for feeding and changing). We had their first doctor's appointment (well, first one outside of the hospital) and they are both doing great.

I think the most interesting part of the week is how different our kids are. I've never been a fan of babies, especially newborns. They just seem to eat, sleep, and crap. Everyone told me that I'd feel differently about my own kids (and I do), but I still figured it would take a while before we'd get a feel for their different personalities. Boy was I wrong.

Just looking at the twins it's obvious they're very different. Ella is covered in her dark hair and darker complexion, while Jack has about as much hair as I do (and his skin color is about the same too). However, it's their personalities that are completely opposite.

Jackson is the sweetest little thing. He lays next to us on the couch (or in his bouncer, bassinet, crib, car seat, whatever) and makes the cutest little squeaks. The few hours a day he's awake and alert he has some great little expressions and faces, including one that looks like Zoolander's "Blue Steel". Of course, I never have a camera handy when he's making his faces so all the pics we have of him are when he's asleep. With the exception of the first night home when he didn't have enough blankets Jack has yet to let out more than a one or two second cry, just enough to let us know he needs a little attention. Then it's back to laying there and looking cute.

Then there's Ella. I love my daughter, but she is not quite as quiet as my little boy. She is quite the crier. If she's unhappy she lets everyone know about it. She's a little colicky and it seems to hit her worst as soon as we go to bed. We feel so bad for her because we can tell she's in pain and her stomach hurts. We've been using some anti-gas drops that seem to help quite a bit, but she still has her bouts and there isn't much we can do except try our best to help her feel a little better. On the bright side, when she sleeps she's really cute and has some funny little snores.

That's about it for now. It's time for bed so I'm looking forward to the next round of Ella's crying. Tomorrow is football day, so I better go get some rest. I'm sure tomorrow will hold more fun with diapers and bottles.

Mr. Box's Babies

One of the things we were kind of worried about while Shae was pregnant was how Lunchbox would handle the babies. We know labs are great with kids and he has always loved being around kids, but we were still a little anxious about how he would handle having his world rocked. Until last week, LB was pretty much the center of our world. He was our little puppy and didn't have any competition for our attention. Obviously that's not the case anymore.

It turns out we didn't need to worry about Lunchbox. He was a little hesitant about the babies at first, but within a few minutes he got over that and moved on to being a protective older brother. It's really funny/sweet to watch. The other day a door slammed and startled the Box. He jumped up and immediately ran over to the couch (where the babies were sleeping) to make sure Jack and Ella were OK. Whenever one of the babies (Ella) has one of their (her) screaming fits Lunchbox goes to check things out. At night, he camps out in front of their bassinet to make sure no one hurts his babies. Well, he starts out there; eventually he heads over to his bed. He might have babies to watch, but that doesn't mean he has to sleep on the floor. Lunchbox may not be an only child anymore, but he's still our spoiled little puppy.

Also, we uploaded some more pics of the kids so check the gallery.

Jaundiced Jack

Well, apparently Jackson's bilirubin levels (thank you Google) were too high on his jaundice test so he had to go camp out in a blue tanning booth for a while. They tested him a 4 a.m. yesterday, and then re-tested him around 11 and his levels were still a little high so they took him upstairs to the pediatric hospital around 4 p.m.. I know this is pretty common (both Shae and I cooked under the lights for a while when we were babies), but it still isn't fun to have him in a different part of the hospital and it's still kind of sad to look over at his empty little bassinet.

I spent most of last night feeding/changing Ella, then heading upstairs to feed Jack. He's definitely got a nice little setup upstairs, and he's pretty cute in his eye covers. He looks like he's just lying in a tanning booth (except for the fact that it's blue). The nice part about the whole thing is that they take a plate of food to his room each meal so I get some of the awesome hospital food that Shae has been enjoying for the past few days.

It's about 10:30 on Friday morning right now, and Shae and Ella both have discharge papers (for whatever that's worth), so they should be able to leave soon. I've already packed up all the extra diapers, wipes, burp rags, blankets, etc. (they're lucky I left the towels) so we're just waiting for the OK and then we'll be gone. By "be gone" I mean that we'll head upstairs and camp out in Jack's room for a bit. The doctor is supposedly stopping by sometime around noon to take another look at Jackson (he checked in on him earlier this morning) and hopefully he can be discharged shortly after.

So we should be heading home sometime this afternoon, and then the fun begins. There will be some more pictures uploaded once I get home.

Here's a pic of my little boy in his blue tanning booth:

Day 2

Well, the babies are 36 hours old and seem to be doing just fine. A few "highlights" from the past day and a half.

• It didn't take long for Jackson to pee on both Shae and me. He got me yesterday the second time I changed him and got Shae this evening the first time she took his diaper off. Glad we got that out of the way.
  
  
• The lactation consultant stopped by today. This was another time I wasn't booted out of the room but wished I had been. It was pretty awkward watching the consultant analyze and comment on my wife's nipples. Awk. Ward.
  
  
• Last night around 3am our nurse took the babies to the nursery to do some tests on them. Our nurse recently informed us that she's going to need to take them in a little bit to get tested for jaundice. She told us that we're free to go with the babies and watch if we want. Now I love my babies, but if someone wants to take them away for an hour or so I'm not going to waste the opportunity to grab some sleep. Somehow they sleep all day but manage to wake up the second I climb into "bed" (a chair/bed monstrosity that I think is causing me long-term back problems. it's awesome).
  
  
• Shae is doing much better today (that could have something to do with the large amounts of percocet and ibuprofen she's on). She's not nauseous anymore and is moving around OK. They pulled out her catheter, IV, compression cuffs, etc so she's no longer tethered to the bed. Now she can get up and move over to my chair/bed thing. Super.
  
  
• Everyone that comes in asks if Shae has farted and seems to be really excited that she had a little toot earlier. I'm not sure they'd be so excited if they had ever been around her after banana smoothies.

That's about it for now. Shae's parents and my mom get into town tomorrow so the babies get to meet some grandparents. We will probably be heading home Friday morning so that will be nice. Hopefully we'll have some more updates and pictures soon.

Baby Day

So, today was the day we finally got to meet Jackson and Ella. The twins were born at 7:52 am (Ella) and 7:53 am (Jackson), both 19 inches. Ella weighed in at 6lbs, 6.4oz and Jackson was 5lbs 14.8oz. So far everything is great and Shae is doing OK although she's still feeling the after effects of the anesthesia. I have uploaded some pictures of the babies and more will be uploaded as we take them. (For whatever reason, the hospital's WiFi access doesn't allow me to go access the site where I store my photos so I have to go home to upload any new ones which means they won't be updated as much as I would like). If that's not enough for you, here's a little recap of the day.

4:15 a.m.
Alarm goes off. Lunchbox decides that since the alarm has gone off it's time for his breakfast even though it's almost two hours early. When we don't feed him he's really disappointed. If only he knew what he was in for.

5:30 a.m.
Somehow we arrive at the hospital on time. When I hand in the paperwork for our monthly parking pass to the attendant, she recognizes Shae's name and wishes her good luck with the twins (I had already dropped Shae off at the hospital entrance). I think it's safe to say Shae has been coming here a lot.

After parking and hiking back up to the entrance, we check in with the guard. When we inform him that Shae's here for her C-Section he tells her to head over to the admittance desk. When I try to follow her, I'm told I have to sign in and get a visitor's badge. After Shae fills out all of her paperwork, they take her back to a birthing room to prep her for surgery. This time when I try to follow I'm told to have a seat in one of the lobby chairs and that a nurse will come to get me in about 15 minutes. I'm starting to think this day isn't all about me.

6:00 a.m.
After about 20 minutes of sitting in the lobby, the lady at the admittance desk yells over to me that I can head in to Shae's birthing room and I head in. While I was staring at the fire sprinklers in the lobby Shae had changed into a gown and started her prep. I guess they kept me in the lobby so I didn't see Shae change. Based on the reason we're here, I think it's a safe assumption that I've seen her naked. Anyway, the nurse hands me a bag with an awesome paper jump suit, booties, a hair net, and a mask. I feel like a surgeon with all my gear.

What they should have done while I was in the lobby was put in Shae's IV. Apparently she has really small veins and it was not fun watching the nurses try to put in her IV. They got it in eventually, but that was a few minutes I would have rather been watching the guard try to stay awake. After the IV was in, Shae's doctor came by to check in and then the anesthesiologist popped in to tell her about all the fun stuff he was going to give her.

7:30 a.m.
It's finally time for the surgery, so Shae heads off to the OR and I get sent to a new room. At least this one had magazines, even if they are several months old (Sports Illustrated thinks Michael Phelps has a pretty good chance to win 8 gold medals...we'll see). The 15 minutes I'm supposed to wait turns into more like 30 (I later found out that they were having trouble giving Shae her anesthesia and it took longer than normal), but eventually a nurse comes in and leads me to the OR.

7:52 a.m.
About a minute after I walk into the room, Ella comes out followed closely by Jackson. I'm officially a dad. After the nurses do some cleanup on the babies, I get to go take a look at them and take a few pictures. My favorite is the one where Ella is flipping Jackson off (I'd provide a link, but since I can't get to the site right now, you'll just have to go to the gallery and look at all of the pictures).

After another minute or two, the nurses brought the twins over to Shae so she could see them. After about 30 seconds (just enough time for the anesthesiologist to take a couple of pics), the babies and I were whisked out of the OR and into the NICU (I carried Ella).

8:00 a.m.
The next 2.5 hours were pretty weird. I hung around the NICU for a little bit, but I was pretty much just in the way and I could only stand there and watch them do tests for so long before I decided to go make phone calls. After one of the nurses tracked down Shae's purse (which had my phone) I made my calls. Once that was done, it was back to watching the babies get poked for a while, but after a few minutes of that I decided I should go find our stuff. I found our bags at the nurses' station and they told me where Shae's recovery room was going to be so I grabbed everything and took it downstairs to our new room.

So now I have all of our stuff in our new room downstairs, but the babies are still upstairs in the NICU and I don't know where Shae is or when she'll be brought down. I made a few trips back and forth to the NICU, but I was still in the way and now all of our stuff was sitting in an empty room downstairs so I didn't really want to leave it unattended too long. So basically, I spent a couple of hours alternating between sitting in an empty room downstairs and trying to stay out of nurses' ways upstairs. Fun.

10:30 a.m.
Finally, Shae got wheeled into the room. Of course, the first thing the nurses did when they brought her in was boot me out of the room so they could move her to the bed. At this point, I'm almost positve this day is not about me. Oh well, at least I'll see my babies soon.

1:00 p.m.
The babies finally get wheeled into our room. Five hours after Shae had the babies she finally got to hold them and get a good look at them. It may just be the fact that they're my kids, but I have to say the twins are pretty damn cute. I usually think babies are pretty funny looking, but mine are just cute.


The rest of the day was pretty much just hanging out in the room taking care of the twins. Shae was really naseous from the anesthesia and couldn't even sit up very well. I somehow ended up taking care of all the diapers and using a dropper to feed the babies formula. I snuck away for a little bit to get some non-hospital food and play with Lunchbox. In the afternoon/evening we got vists from Erica, Chris, Sharon, and Katheryn and phone calls, texts, etc from just about everyone. Eventually things quieted down and we even found a few minutes to get some sleep between baby feeding and changing.

That's about it for now. Hopefully I'll have time to post some updates in the next day or two, but I think the babies are going to keep me busy.

Baby Math

Over the past few weeks Shae and I have attended a couple of baby-related classes (which I've already written about), and they've thrown out a few facts and figures. I thought I'd do the math on some of these and share.

• According to our Baby Care Basics class, newborn babies go through about 10-12 diapers a day. Since these kids are mine it's probably safe to assume they're going to be closer to 12 a day. So, with two kids that means these little things are going to use 24 diapers a day. You know how many that is a week? 168! A month (we'll use 30 days)? 720! What the hell?!?! 720 diapers a month? Crap. Literally.
  
  
• Towards the end of the Childbirth Prep class we were informed that babies should be fed 8-12 times a day. Because it makes math easier, we'll feed our kids 10 times a day. Each. So 20 times a day a baby is going to be latched onto wifey's boob(s). Wow.
  
  
• Also at the Childbirth Prep class we learned that the average baby sleeps 13 - 17 hours a day. I'm all for more sleeping so this isn't one of the scary facts. I'm assuming my kids are going to sleep 17 hours a day because it makes me feel better.
  
  
• Something doesn't add up here. If babies sleep 17 hours a day, how the hell can they eat 10 times a day and still have time to mess up 12 diapers? Even assuming they multi-task and take care of the diapers while sleeping and eating they still seem to have a pretty busy day. No wonder kids these days are over scheduled, they're overbooked the day they pop out.
  

We haven't posted a picture of pregnant Shae lately, so we took another one yesterday. I think she's gotten a little bigger since last time we posted a pic. Let's just say Shae + (2 babies * ~32 weeks) =

As you can see in the second pic, Shae's shirt (thanks Mom!) has two very true messages. There are twins in Shae's belly, and her twins are moving south.

Finally, it seems like everyone nests differently. Some clean, some get the baby room ready, and some make new mirrors for the master bathroom. You can guess where Shae falls.

More Pics Of The Kids

Shae and I had yet another ultrasound yesterday. You can find the pics over in the twins gallery. Ella was very cooperative this time and we actually got couple of semi-3D views of her face. Jackson on the other hand, not so much. He spent the entire appointment hiding from the camera and the pics of him are what I would expect an ultrasound of Picasso's kid to look like. His face is kind of visible if you look hard enough, but his images from the last ultrasound are much better. About the only thing we got a good look at was Jack's junk (I like that one enough I'm going to use it again). Even then I got his leg and his dangler confused. I don't know if that says more about my boy's package or how difficult it was to get a good look at him yesterday. Obviously, I'm going with Option A.

In other baby news, for the past couple of weeks whenever I get home from work Ella starts kicking at the sound of my voice. At first I thought it was just random timing due to Shae moving around when I got home, but then I realized she actually moves around at the sound of my voice. It was such a special moment. Then we were eating dinner with some friends, one of whom was a guy, and she started jumping around at the sound of his voice. So in the span of about 10 seconds I went from feeling so special that my daughter knew my voice to the realization that my daughter just loves boys. All boys. Great. Just shoot me now.

"I must be hungry, my boobs are growling." --Shizzle
(For anyone not aware, the babies kind of push everything out of their way as they grow. Shae's stomach has migrated north and now resides somewhere around her knockers.)

Baby Shower (South)

One day after dealing with changing a doll's diaper I had to deal with something really scary: Shae's baby shower (South). I somehow managed to get roped into attending the shower. The excuse used by Shae was that I needed to be around to take care of the dog. I think she just wanted to make me deal with 20 baby-crazy women.

The day started off bright and early with Erica (the shower hostess) and me making a 7am trip down to Vons to get some balloons. Of course the balloon counter was closed, so we got the 15-year-old working the customer service desk to help us out. I'm not sure he had ever worked the balloon counter before, but after about 30 minutes we finally got our balloons inflated. About this time it occurred to us that maybe my car wasn't the one to take to pick up balloons. Too late to do anything now so Erica and I got to deal with balloons smacking us in the back of the head on the drive back home. This day is off to a great start.

After we got back home we took care of a few final setup things (put up some banners, put the soda on ice, etc) and got ready for the "fun". At around 10:00 the guests started showing up (right on time). At around 10:01 I popped open my first beer, put the dog on his leash, and set up camp in the office. Since most of the shower attendees were seeing our house for the first time I ended up giving a few tours of the house. So far my attempts to hide from the women are not working out so well.

Somehow the ladies ended up hanging out in the living room instead of out on the patio. This wouldn't have been an issue except that the food was in the dining room and it was impossible for me to sneak out and grab food without being seen by the party goers. Luckily I had Lunchbox with me so if I needed to run back to the office and hide out I could just "accidentally" drop his leash (oops!). After about 10 seconds of my well-trained dog sniffing everyone's crotch they were all thankful to have me escort him out of the room. Good boy Lunchbox!

Anyway, the shower seemed like a lot of fun for the ladies. Lots of games, some good food, and at the end lots of good gifts. There are some photos over here.

To anyone not in the San Diego area, there will be a co-ed shower up in Lockwood shortly after the twins are born. We were trying to schedule it in August, but couldn't find a date that worked for everyone. It's looking like October sometime, but we'll have more info closer to the date. BBQ, babies, and beer, or something like that.