A conversation with Quinn

Hey, how's it going?





So Quinn, let's see how those teeth are coming along.





You're very cute, you know.





Ok. C'mon, just a little peek. Please?





Ok ok, I'll stop trying to look at your teeth and you can go play.

On being a mom

There are days I wonder if my friendships will survive this time in my life - motherhood of young children.

In my "old life" I used to have an enormous social circle. I was with friends, talking to friends, IMing with friends all the time. And now, I have a hard time keeping in basic touch with so many of them, I feel horrible.

But right now, at this time in my life, my world is so consumed by being a mother that it is difficult for me to come up with topics that do not revolve around not sleeping, starting solids, cloth diapers vs disposable diapers, cry it out vs other methods of sleep training vs babies who just sleep on their own, breastfeeding, etc. And my single friends.... I'm sure they don't really care. Or if they do, they don't care for a whole evening's worth of these topics. And that's it, that's my world - nothing else is new with me. Nothing else interests me (other than an occasional book, or Twilight or something). My life is all about being a mom of little children. I'm too tired to be interesting or have thoughts of my own.

So, my single friends, I love you, I miss you, I hope you still care when I get through this stage. And to me, this explains why on a rare night that I went out without any of the kids I went and met a bunch of women I tweet with (Eric's response to my request to go out to go to a tweetup was "uhh.. why?") is because I spent the whole time talking about children who don't sleep, toilet training, cloth diapers, pregnancy, etc and I don't think anybody was secretly wishing we could talk about something else ;)

Dressing up as "Mommy when she was a baby"

There is an outfit from when I was a baby that I always knew I would, if I had a daughter, dress her up in and take photos to compare with the ones of me. We forgot until she was a little bit older than I was when she wore it (I was 2 months, she 6), and this isn't in the same pose as the photo that is my favourite baby picture, but I think I'm thinking you'll agree we have more than just the outfit in common ;)


It was hard trying to get Juliette to look serious for the photo to go along with the photos of me, because generally... she's all:

Snippets

- The babies will be 6 months old next week - on Friday the 13th. How can 6 months already have passed? Yet, I can hardly remember life without them.
- We are looking for a house. There is nothing I love or even much like in our price range. This sucks.
- We left Quinn in his room last night instead of Juliette. He was up every 2 hours. Today sucks.
- This weekend we start getting our house ready to sell - throwing out old paint cans, reshaking paint from when we first moved in, painting the front hall and one wall in the kitchen, and starting to pack are on the agenda. I bet little of that will get done. We are doomed.
- Teething continues. Quinn's teeth are coming out all funny with back teeth poking out. I fear this means his front teeth are all askew and causing teeth to come out out of order.
- Kiernan is 3 now, I should be taking him to the dentist I think. Also, doesn't sound fun.
- Kiernan is 3 now. Apparently that equals being a huge pain in the ass.
- Wow - this is depressing.
On a bright note:
- Tonight I'm going to my first tweetup and will have a beer. I am really looking forward to this. :)

I so sleepy

Good sleep for the twins is eluding us. And it is frustrating the hell out of me!

Overall, both of these guys are better sleepers than Kiernan was. Really they're much easier overall than Kiernan was, to the point that I still find they are less work together than Kiernan was alone. On most days anyways - the last little while has been more trying.

Our biggest issue is that despite all the "twins love to be together, they are so much calmer when they are together, they sleep better when they are near each other", we can't put them in the same room. If one cries, the other one wakes up. Every. time.

Some might think that's not so bad, then they're on the same schedule. Noooo... then the one who wakes more often wakes the one who is sleeping and we have two screaming babies to contend with at the same time.

So, we've split them up. But, to split them up, we have to have one in our room. Lately it's been Quinn since Juliette wakes up even more easily to our sounds. But now, on top of Quinn being in our room and me having to tip toe around in my own room to not wake him, he doesn't particularly like the playpen anymore so he's been sleeping in bed with us - something that isn't really comfortable for either Eric or I. Even if he is cute. :)



It frustrates me that both of the babies nap best in their own rooms in their cribs but that I can't put them down at the same time. It frustrates me that if I wanted to let the babies cry it back to sleep in the night I can't exactly do that with Quinn lying in bed with me! It frustrates me that I can't (won't) push them harder to fall asleep on their own right now because they are teething and as much as I believe in crying it out, I only feel it's ok if I firmly believe that the only reason they aren't sleeping is out of habit - not pain.

So most nights I am up 6-8 times with babies between 8pm and 7am. The Quinn times are less disruptive to my sleep since I just keep him with me and nurse him without fully waking up. We're house hunting now, for a 4 bedroom house in our price range (ha ha ha) which is a whole other story because I am unemployed so we're working with one income. Anyone have a nice 4 bedroom house in Orleans they'd like to sell me for cheap? zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The kid loves Halloween!

For Halloween this year Kiernan wore a suit that was Eric's when *he* was 3. I saw it and KNEW that Kiernan needed to wear it.

A lot of people had a hard time with what we told Kiernan he was going to be for Halloween "Daddy when he was three", wanting something a little more concrete as a name for his costume.

So we went with Lion Tamer, ring master, vaudevillian, gameshow host or used car salesman - we leave it up to you :)

Surprisingly nobody asked when we were trick or treating - although I heard him called little tux man and handsome a lot. And our neighbour asked Kiernan to come back and marry her when he was older, but he had to explain that when he was older (4) he was going to go to school so unfortunately he wouldn't be available ;)

We had 3 skeletons for the day, but Kiernan refused to pose in this shot much to my dismay ;) These two were pretty cute though.

and stayed awake in the stroller far longer than I expected watching all the kids and lights and so on.


Kiernan and Eric finally came home about 45 minutes after I gave in and came home with the twins, and only because he had to pee and Eric told him they'd been to ALL the houses in the neighbourhood.

The loot - 20 bags of chips and lots of full of dairy chocolate ;) Imagine the loot we'll have next year with 3 kids!!

Wordless Wednesday: Look what I found!

Sorry about the snotty nose. I think my cold is almost gone though!

Starting solids

In a desperate attempt for anything that will convince these babies they aren't hungry 3 times every night, along with a scoff from the pediatrician at having to wait until 6 months to start solids, we decided that at 5 months old these guys could try out some rice cereal.

Have you tried rice cereal before? It's not the tastiest thing I've ever had, but babies haven't had a lot of variety so they don't have much to go on. Guess what? They don't think it's all that great either ;) I think my favourite part of starting solids has to be the hilarious facial expressions that are all at once "ew, gross!" and "WTF!?" :)

Maybe they'll like apple sauce and sweet potato better.




This is my favourite photo of all - the expression is priceless!