how time flies...

Has it really been a week since I last posted?  Wow.  The time really has flown by.  Last week, I only had baby 1 until friday.  It was a pretty easy week.  She was on a great napping schedule, I had two-three hours at a time where she would sleep, allowing me to do things around the apartment.  Friday came and baby 2 had forgotten how to sleep.  Sigh...it is certainly a challenge getting them both to sleep and not wake the other one up.  Mostly, I figure they will just learn to sleep through a lot of noise.  They will have to.  They do ok, there are just the occasional hiccups. 

Today, baby 1 came in having slept only 6 hrs in the last 36.  Not cool.  She took her morning two hour nap for me as usual and would've slept longer, but I had to wake her for a feeding.  This afternoon however, she slept 45 minutes and was then awakened by baby 2's fussiness.  She was obviously still tired, but I tried for 45 more minutes to put her back to sleep but to no avail. She was up.  So our afternoon two hour nap turned into a mini 45 minute cat nap.  Boo.
If baby 1 wasn't sleeping well, do you really think she was going to take her bottle well?  Ahh, you catch on quick!  I had to resort to using the medicine dropper which I have not had to do since the very first week.  It was an hour long tedious process of getting her to take it all, but she ate about 3 1/2 oz.  Hard to tell with spilling some, and her spitting some out, but oh well.

Baby 2, after playing on the floor, was looking sleepy, rubbing his eyes (so cute!) so I swaddled him up and laid him in his bed.  Baby 1 began to look sleepy too.  Swaddled her up and did the same.  I am working on getting them to put themselves to sleep.  So, I lay them down while sleepy, but still awake.  If they cry, I check on them every two minutes and reassure them that I am still there, but do not pick them up.  Baby 2 is pretty good at it.  Baby 1 is decent, but she still takes a few checks.  This afternoon I decided to let her go longer than 2 minutes...at 3 minutes and thirty seconds, she had stopped crying. Sigh...it's been 20 minutes of peaceful silence, although it really feels much longer.  Here's hoping for a good 2 hour nap to replace the earlier one.  Do you know, that at 3-4 months of age, they are only supposed to be awake for 1-2 hrs at a time and then sleep about 16 hrs a day??  Crazy.  Anyway, I do my best to keep within those time constraints.  I know they need that sleep to rest and grow and develop.

Two babies is certainly more challenging than one and they are so unpredictable sometimes.  I'm hoping I continue to get better at it and that they do too :-)  The stress and frustration I experience when I can't get them to stop crying is so minor compared to what I experienced at my previous jobs.  This still beats working for someone else, any day.

In brighter news, last friday I had the babies make their first craft!  Foot print snowmen!  Love them.

easy breezy daze

Well, today has been completely uneventful...so far.  Baby 1 is my only one for most of the week until friday.  She took a great nap this morning.  Then, mom came to nurse her.  She then showed me her new tricks of scooting around in a cirlce on a blanket on the floor.  She is changing so fast!  After that we danced to some good ol' 80s music: Let's Hear it For the Boy & Footloose.  She really liked my dancing to footloose! Lol.  I read that dancing with and for babies their age is a way to play with them.  After that, she was sleepy again (they sleep 16-18 hrs a day!!) so she went back to sleep.  When she wakes up, we will attempt the bottle once more (fingers crossed...)

Here is my nursery project complete.  The Winnie the Pooh wall decals.  You can see the remnants of the adhesive that I attempted to remove...and then the greasy residue of goo gone that I also tried to remove.  Sigh...sometimes, things just don't work out the way we want them to and for now, it has to be good enough.

It's a work in progress.  As I get babies 3 & 4, the room will have to change a bit.  I'm also looking for a decent changing table and found this great idea for displaying books on pinterest.  Waiting to have $$$.

6 & 7 Daze...Learn that my best is my best

I recently took the myers briggs personality test.  It was very enlightening and pretty spot on.  I came out as an ENFJ, "The Giver."  It makes sense why I enjoy structure and organizing, serving and teaching others.  Those are some of the positives.  One of the negatives is being really hard on myself.  The last couple of days, the pressure of doing a "great" (ie "perfect" in my mind) job has gotten to me a bit. 

I have made a few mistakes or perceived mistakes.  I mean, these aren't my children.  They belong to someone else who knows them very well.  Most parents are pretty particular about their children, and I know I would be too.  Keeping them on a set schedule of feeding and sleeping has proved to be a little bit of a challenge. 

I think someone swapped the babies on me today, because Baby 1 slept for two and half hours this morning while Baby 2 slept for 30 and 20 minutes at a time.  Totally reversed.  Baby 2 didn't want  his bottle and was fussy.
*BIG NEWS*
Baby 1, after seeing the speech pathologist yesterday, took her bottle like she had been doing it since birth!!  She was fantastic.  I took some tips from the speech pathologist, like giving her my latex gloved finger to suck on first, sitting her up in my lap with her head against my upper arm (kind of forward facing) and slipped the bottle in after she had been sucking on my finger.  Done! 3 ounces in 3 minutes.  Amazing!  I warmed up one more ounce for her and she might've even eaten more.  Due to her fuller belly, she has been very content and happy while awake, and sleeps much more soundly and for longer periods of time.

Baby 2 had maybe slept an hour and half total (all in 10, 20 and 30 minute increments) by 3:15.  Finally, when he woke up after 20 minutes of sleep, I didn't pick him up but let him lay there.  He wasn't crying and still yawned.  10 minutes later, he was back asleep until his mom came at around 5:15.  The only problem was *mistake alert* he should've had another bottle at 4 pm.  Oops.  But that is also what happened this morning.  He had finally fallen good and asleep at 10 and I had to wake him at 10:30 so he could take his bottle on schedule.  Frustrating.  Not sure what to do about that, because his eating and sleeping schedules seem to be intersecting more than they should.

Taking care of these babies is such a huge responsibility.  I enjoy it and I know I'm doing a great job.  I just have to learn to let myself make mistakes now and then.  I mean, I've really only been at this for two weeks...not even!  Whew...it's all a process.  All in all, this was a great day.

Sticky daze

After a weekend of  being in the car (from KY to WVA to NC to WVA to OH to KY) I was suprisingly well rested today. 
Only had Baby 1.  She barely slept at all today and barely ate.  I finally put her in the swing, which kept her asleep for about an hour and a half.  Otherwise she would wake up after 20-30 minutes.  She did well with the bottle, but just didn't seem very hungry.  She has been a fickle baby.  Oh well.
All in all, the work day went by very quickly.

This evening, beat a game of Sudoku in 37 minutes (I don't know if that's very good, it was my first time playing on my new app), chatted with a bestie, went to the grocery with the hubby and then stopped by my parents' house.  Mom made chili for dinner...yummm.  Food tastes the best when you don't have to make it yourself.

I wanted to have pictures here of the nursery project I am working on, but it is not going so well.  My advice to anyone: never put foam adhesive squares on your wall.  Big mess.  Now, the ones with the hooks and the pull tabs are perfect.  These were for a bulletin board and they left a big mess.  I tried GooGone and LOC kitchen cleaner.  It just wouldn't budge.  So then, in my genius, I took a flat head screwdriver to it and scraped it off...along with the paint!  Oops.  I am attempting to create a nice clean surface for my classic pooh wall decals from ebay.  Alas, I scrubbed and scrubbed and now it is yucky.  To top off the evening I slid on the kitchen floor in my socks and landed hard on my right hip and wrist.  I felt like saying, "I've fallen and I can't get up!"  Instead I just laid there for a minute while Matt rubbed my back attempting to console me and I'm sure choked back laughter.  If I'd seen it happen to someone else I would've laughed.  Sigh...I think it's time to quit for the night.  Going to watch House, MD episodes before bed. Nighty night.

5 daze...i'm in a daze...

Oh gee.  Sleep is so important.  Woke up exhausted for going to bed so late last night.  I really can't do that anymore.

My ebay curtains are a disaster.  I got them to block out the light/heat from the sun.  They are brown and a little ugly, but I thought they would serve the purpose.  I need a stronger, ie more expensive curtain rod, because the cheapo one I got won't hold them up.  I have a 75" wide window so that is awkward for the curtains as well.  I got enough to cover the window, but they are just so heavy.  Oh well.

Baby 1 and I practiced with her bottle.  She screamed and cried and hated it.  I did my best to calm her down, got frustrated and then put her down and walked away.  A few minutes later she was asleep...*sigh of relief*.

Baby 2 peed on me for the third day in a row.  Had to do a load of laundry because all my pants were now dirty, lol.  He is a great sleeper and eater, so no troubles there.  They have both been peacefully asleep since 11...it's now 11:37.  Sweet!  They are doing pretty good at staying on a similar schedule.

It's really not been that bad today.  I just don't have as much patience.  And, my weekend is taken up by traveling...boo.  Oh well, so it goes.  Hoping for an easy going afternoon!

4 daze and counting...

This may be a short post, since it's late and I have become like an old lady when it comes to bedtime.  I dunno, I should maybe give myself more credit than that.  I'm up at 6:30 AM, hit an afternoon slump, drink an XS energy drink and make it through.  Thursdays are our long days, because we have a weekly business meeting to attend, so I also popped an all natural, Nutrilite energy supplement called "rhodiola."  That has majorly kicked in so I am pretty wide awake at ten minutes til tomorrow.  It pays to represent a vitamin company that markets such great energy products...both literally and figuratively :-)

In short, it was a regular day.  Baby 1 is still working on taking a bottle, and today I had success feeding her with a little medicine dropper.  It's cute, but a little tedious.  I'm just glad I can feed her.

Honestly, it's not difficult work, but it is taxing.  Does that make sense?  Like, changing a diaper is not difficult to do.  Feeding a baby a bottle is not (supposed to be) difficult. Rocking a baby to sleep is not hard. Playing with a baby and talking to them is fun!  It's just that it is constant, all day long, with minimal breaks or time for yourself.  There are little tasks like the cleaning along the way, or preparing bottles, the mental activity of figuring out why the baby might be crying and dealing with the stress of listening to the babies' cries.  I still enjoy it, love it even.  It is so much easier in some ways than other jobs I've had.  The decrease in my stress level is A-mazing.  But I guess at the end of the day, it's still work.  But perhaps it wouldn't be as rewarding if it weren't. 

Tomorrow completes my first full week!  Next week, I will have one baby on monday, two tuesday and wednesday (all day now) and one baby on thursday.  Taking friday off to head out of town on business.  Hoping I will win the ebay auction on a rocking chair glider for the nursery!  Saturday ends the auction, will drive to Ohio on Sunday to pick it up.  It will all be worth the incredible deal that I am getting on it and the relief to my back and the privacy for nursing mothers that it will provide.

Getting sleepy...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

3 daze of babies, i.e. learning new things

So I did it.  I made it through a full day, from 8 AM until 5:15 PM. Whew.
Baby 1 stayed the entire day and baby 2 stayed just until 1. 

I learned many new things today:
1) Babies' secret "cry code" is not quite as easy to decipher as I once thought.  Sometimes, you go through the checklist and there are still tears.  I have a feeling that will get better.

2) Babies can smell their moms from 20 feet away.  Crazy!  They're like little bloodhounds!  Just kidding...

3) Both my kiddos are breastfed and just do the bottle part time.  One does pretty well, the other is really struggling.  We did make progress today!  By the afternoon feeding, she was doing much better.

4) Mommy's milk is much different than formula as far as going bad.  It actually lasts longer and can be kept at room temp for several hours and even reheated!  Cool beans.  Don't wanna waste that stuff!

5) This is my favorite!  I learned how to successfully swaddle a baby, thanks to this awesome demonstration on youtube:

This brings me to number 6) The internet is very helpful in answering my various, random questions that come up throughout the day.  Thank you, internet.

7) The babies like my husband Matt better than they like me :-P

8) Babies can sense your frustration and it affects them.  If you're frustrated, put them down and remove yourself to calm down.

Overall, a great day and not at all boring.  They are pretty much calling the shots right now as far as a routine, but we will all adjust.  This morning we listened to baby einsteins: baby mozart, beethoven, van gogh...all kinds.  It was great! 

Baby 1 is just a little older and is able to focus on things in front of her.  So this afternoon we read a book and she got very excited.  Which made her difficult to keep from sliding off my lap, due to her kicking and waving her arms around.  Precious.

Daze 1 & 2

So here lies my new blog, which will hopefully last longer than a couple of half hearted attempts at blogging. I recently quit a full time job in childcare to work for myself. I was motivated by various reasons, but one reason in particular was just to have more flexibility. I am working on finding out the "label" that goes along with my personality type, but I do know I like to be in charge ;-).

In my previous childcare jobs, I mostly worked with preschoolers - I absolutely love them! They are so funny, affectionate, precocious, etc. I miss them dearly. But it was time for the chaos in my life to slow down. I needed more peace, in my mind and my heart. You know it's time to leave ajob when it is affecting your life in a negative way. I have not dealt well with stress in the past - at least not in large quantities. I am certain that my threshold has increased, but I'd rather not push myself to my limit on a regular basis. I guarantee my husband would also rather I didn't.

So, I decided to start my own in home childcare service. I want to start small, so I have two infants enrolled now, with a third starting in Febraury. Infants are very different. They don't talk back, they sleep a lot more and they are generally pretty helpless. It is a relief to have a break from the tantrums and the fits, though I'm sure I can handle them should they rear their ugly heads in my future. When these babies cry, it is for a reason. A reason that makes sense. There is something comforting in that.

My husband and I plan to have kids in the future. But for now, I will use my super sweet nurturing skills to care for other babies. I enjoy providing a safe haven and an enriching environment to growing, tiny people.

The last two days, I have only spent about four-five hours with each infant...and one at a time. Tomorrow begins what the rest of this month will be like: both babies at the same time. Ok, I retract that last statement partially. One infant will only be here half days this week and not at all on friday. But it's a good way to ease into the change.

Here we go!