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.

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.

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.

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:

Not much new has happened in the past week. The babies still eat, poop, and sleep and that’s about it. They’re awake a little more during the day and they’re sleeping OK at night (but they still wake up two or three times to eat). Oh, and Jack has perfected the art of peeing all over Shae, the wall, and himself (I’ve been able to dodge him but it’s close).

The babies are definitely growing too. The day we brought them home, their outfits were huge on them. Yesterday they wore the same outfits and barely fit into them. They don’t really look that much bigger, but it’s pretty easy to tell they’ve grown when Jack’s pants stop at his ankles and Ella’s dress is way too short (a problem I’m sure I’ll have to address again in several years).

I figured the kids had gotten a free ride for long enough so yesterday they spent the afternoon at work with me (Shae tagged along too). My co-workers had been asking about the babies for a while and I didn’t feel much like working on a Friday afternoon so I decided it was a good day to bring my babies in for show and tell. Of course they were a huge hit, and in a minor upset neither one of them pooped in my office. The highlight (at least to me) was that I had to get visitor badges for the babies. I’m sure that 5.5 week old babies are a serious threat.

In case anyone hasn’t been told, we’ll be having “Baby Shower North” next Saturday (11/22) up in Lockwood (starting at 11:00). We’ll be having a BBQ and (of course) the babies will be in attendance (Lunchbox too). If you’re in the area and want to see some babies and have some food, bring a dish and a chair. Oh, and we’re registered at Babies R Us and Target.

On Friday, the twins turned one month old. To celebrate, they ate, slept, and crapped. It was lots of fun. There really isn’t much else to report. Like Shae said in her post, they both have colds (Jack’s is worse) so they aren’t as happy as they could be but they’re still doing OK. The whole sucking snot out of their nose thing is gross. You’d think someone would have come up with a better method to clean out their nose by now, but I guess not.

I started back at work full time this week, so I’m a little tired. It’s a little harder to get plenty of sleep when I can’t stay in bed until 10 or 11. I’m still working from home Tuesday and Thursday, so Shae isn’t totally alone with the kids all week. Lunchbox likes Tuesdays and Thursdays because he gets to go to work with me.

If anyone is wondering the difference between boys and girls, here’s my take. Girls cry and fuss a lot and boys pee in their mouth. I’m sure there are other differences, but those are the ones that stand out.

There hasn’t been an update in awhile so I think it’s time to fill you in on the happenings in the Lorigan home. As I am typing this, I am holding a sick little boy. At only 4 weeks old, both Ella and Jack have come down with colds. Jack is much worse then Ella. They are both very congested and Jack has a cough. My babies are so sweet and kind that they decided to share their colds with me. I don’t know if they actually gave me a cold or if it was the lack of sleep, but a couple days after we noticed the twins were sick, I was sick.

As an adult when I get sick I tend to whine a lot and make sure everyone knows how bad I feel. Now imagine two sick babies. They really let us know how they feel. Unfortunately, they let us know when it is time for bed or right as we are falling asleep. I at least make sure people are fully awake and are giving me their full attention before I start my complaining. These kids have a lot to learn.

My days have definitely gotten harder. I wake up between 5 and 6, depending on when Ella decides she needs her food NOW. We spend about a half an hour feeding and changing them and then I put them back in their bassinets with the hope of getting a little more sleep. Some days this works really well and other days I can kiss my sleep goodbye. The rest of my day consists of feeding and changing them over and over again. It seems like I feed them until they can’t eat anymore, go to change them and by the time the new diaper is on, they are crying for more food. I can’t figure out where all this food is going. I mean they are so tiny. When I finally get them to fall asleep for a few hours I am usually too tired to get all the important stuff done.

Night time is when it gets fun. Usually we head to the bedroom around 10 or 11. We feed and change the munchkins and try to put them down to sleep. They usually fuss and cry until around 2 or 3 and then it is time to feed them again. During this feeding both Pat and I almost always fall asleep and drop the bottle. This kind of pisses them off. During the night I have been averaging 4 hours of solid sleep. Pat tends to get more because he does not wake up at every little sound. Lucky. Last night we were all so tired that we headed to bed at 8. I was hoping our bedtime game would end early. No such luck. Once again they fussed and cried until about 2. So no matter what time we go to bed, I am not going to get to sleep until after 2.

On the plus side, I get to watch a lot of great infomercials. My favorite is for the Jawhorse. It is a $200 sawhorse with a vice. Who would pay that much for a sawhorse? Oh, and I like the ExtenZe one too. I won’t go into much detail, but I will say it is a product for men and endorsed by Ron Jeremy. Anyways, to make a long story short, My day is extremely busy for not doing anything.

Today was the big day. The day Shae and I have been (somewhat) dreading for about two weeks. That’s right, today was the day Jack got circumcised. We were hoping to get this taken care of while we were in the hospital, but the doctor wanted to wait until Jack was over 6 lbs before giving him the snip.

The appointment was today, so at 11:30 Shae and I were sitting in the lobby of the doctor’s office waiting to head back to the little exam room. As we were waiting, another set of new parents commented on the twins and made the “wow…I can’t even imagine two” comment (we get that a lot). They were there for their first exam with their 6-day-old baby. I’ve only had kids for 3 weeks and I was already thinking, “I remember those days.” Well, that and “Please don’t wake up babies. Please don’t wake up.”

Eventually they called Jack’s name and we went on back to our exam room. We stripped down Jackson, got him weighed (6 lbs, 11 oz) and then did some more waiting until the doctor showed. up. Without going into too much detail, they threw some disinfectant on his “region”, gave him a painkiller shot (Lidocaine), and then trimmed his junk. Shae and I didn’t really watch, but we did glance over from time to time to see how things were going. The highlight was when the doctor was putting on the little ring thing after the snipping and we heard, “That doesn’t fit. We better get a bigger one. Yeah, that’s better.” Just saying.

After a bit of crying, Jack is doing OK. He still isn’t very happy whenever we change his diaper, but he’s going to be fine. However, tonight during bath time we discovered a serious consequence of Jack’s junk-cut: his range has drastically increased. Before diaper changes were exciting, but the most damage he normally did was to pee all over his outfit (to the extent where yesterday Shae took away his clothing privileges and left him in a diaper the rest of the day because she got sick and tired of changing his outfit every time she changed a diaper), but tonight as he was sitting in the bathtub on the dining room table he let loose and managed to fire a shot that landed just short of our couch (about 10 feet away). A little squirt hit right next to Lunchbox and startled him. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that things are about to get a lot wetter around the house.

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.

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.