Life Of The Lorigans

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.

So, little Jackson has diaper rash. Know what that means? It’s Butt Paste time! I’m way too excited to pop open the tube of Butt Paste.

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 8×10. 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.

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.

Time for an update from mommy. There are things people seem to leave out while describing what it’s like to enter the adventure of parenthood. We learned at our classes that babies will be changed on average 8 times a day. What they don’t tell you is that each changing can take up to 4 diapers. I always figured you take off the diaper, wipe things clean and then put on a new one. Nope. I was wrong. It’s more like take off the diaper, wipe things clean, try and put on a new diaper only to have the baby pee or poop all over the place ruining the new diaper and their outfit. So then you have to start the process all over again and then once the new diaper is on they decide to poop all over it again. Start the process over and go through another couple diapers before things are finally nice and clean. On this same subject, people don’t tell you about the projectile pooping. Our little girl managed to spray the wall 3 feet from the changing table. Our precious baby boy decided to spray my arm, but at least he missed his diaper. Our diaper genie seems to get filled up way too fast.

Another thing people tell you is that babies need to be fed. Well yeah, everyone knows that. But why does it have to take an hour to feed them. You have to get the bottle filled, heat it up and start feeding them. Jack does OK with the whole eating thing even though it takes a while. Ella on the other hand seems to forget how to eat. she will suck on the bottle for about 10 minutes and then I will check it it only to find out she had not sucked out a single drop. It can take her an hour to eat 2 ounces of food. Do you know what that does to my TV watching time?

Night and day. I know newborns keep parents up at night, but I think ours have their nights and days all mixed up. during the day all they do is sleep. We have to force them awake just to eat and even then they never fully wake up. Right before we go to bed they seem to know what time it is because they decide to wake up needing attention. Do you know how hard it is to get them back to sleep after having slept all day long. Very.

I guess other then that things are going well. I am recovering pretty fast so I can actually get up when my babies need me. I am sure Pat will be givin his perspective on things soon.