Half-Year Check-In

I set these goals for myself at the beginning of the year. Here's how I'm doing.

Fitness: I am scheduled to run my post-baby 10K on Thursday, right on schedule. I also have already logged a long run of 7 miles, putting me well on my way to meeting my second fitness goal of running a longer race in the fall.

Nutrition: I am continuing our whole-foods quest. We haven't bought a loaf of bread (except during vacation) since Christmas - I make all of it. Next I will try hamburger/hot dog buns. I've pretty much given up baking mixes (including pancake, cornbread, brownie, cookie and cake mixes). I'm checking food labels for artificial colors (though I still buy some, I would like to continue cutting them out this year). Pre-made foods like hot dogs, chicken nuggets, boxed macaroni and cheese, and pasta sauces, are now an occasional (porobably 1-2 times a month) cooking reprieve, instead of using them for "easy" meals weekly. I haven't returned to freezer cooking yet, though. Unless you count the cakes I pre-made and froze for the boys' birthday, because I had buttermilk that needed to be used up. (Yes, buttermilk for cake. It's awesome.)

Motherhood: I am still nursing. Still no formula. And at this point, I'd say we're in the clear. I've donated about 1500 ounces through private donation locally, in addition to several thousand ounces to the milk bank. I have several hundred ounces still in the freezer. Making one-on-one time for each of the kids each day, probably has been the bigger challenge. But I am trying. And I am usually succeeding. It helps that Carter now enjoys working out with me while the other three nap. ;-) I run on the treadmill while he uses the stationary bike and (five-pound) free weights.

Me: The baby weight is taking baby steps. Part of that challenge has been nursing. I mean, I'm nursing 16 ounces every four hours. That's a pound of milk. Plus the exercise challenges of carrying that milk. So I've lost two pounds. But now that I'm running 20-25 miles a week again, hopefully I can shake the other seven pounds in the next six months.

You Might Be a Mother If ...

... you used to be a copywriter, but now there are type-o's in your blog posts.

(This one comes to us courtesy of my funny, funny husband. Don't worry. He was laughing as he said it. And I know it. I catch some of them before I post. But the ones that slip through, I usually catch when I'm re-reading the post on my phone, and I can't edit the post from my phone. Sometimes I go back and correct the error when I get to a computer later, but often I just forget.)

Ellyson and Her Aunt Alecia, Two Years Old

I know I've said it before, but, seriously ....

How much does Ellyson look like my sister?



Aunt Alecia (left) at two years old

Ellyson at two years old

Eleven Months

Grant and Graham are a month away from their first birthday! Ahhh! Thankfully, I've already made some of the cakes/cupcakes, and am storing them in the freezer.

Here's a brief update on where they are in life.

Size: A recent growth spurt has them both tipping the scales at about 19 pounds (per my bathroom scale). I thought this was a huge weight gain - and it is - but it only moved them from the 4% (Grant)and 2% (Graham), up to the 6% on weight. Oh well. They're just little guys. And they are still being measured unadjusted, against full-term singleton babies. Some people hear that and say that "isn't fair" (to G&G). But I don't think it's unfair ... I don't think we should treat them any differently just because there are two of them. I don't think of them as a set - they're two individual babies who happened to share some tummy time. Maybe with identical twins, the parents are more apt to have the "they are a set" mentality?? We just have to keep it in mind when tracking growth and development. Anyway ... they busted right through their 9M wardrobe, and are now both wearing 12M clothes. We have a bunch of 18M summer clothes from Carter, and some of them actually fit okay also. Shoes are size 3. Diapers are mostly cloth, but size 3 disposables for nighttime.

Crocodile tears and baby blue eyes

Sleep: 7:30pm-7:30am, with two, 1.5-hour naps

Mobility: Two expert crawlers. Graham is still taunting us with his will-he-walk-or-won't-he disposition. He hangs on to stable and unstable household items, toying with the idea of letting go. Sometimes he does, but (to our knowledge) hasn't taken a step without holding on. The running joke around here, is that Graham has probably been walking already, but just has no interest in showing us. He is so ridiculously independent. Grant, on the other hand, is still mostly Army crawling (sometimes picking his belly off the floor, but darn he's fast, using one arm and his two big toes!). He's cruising around everything, too, but seems to be taking his time mastering each developmental step before attempting the next.

Trying to scale the stairs (see the baby gate? it only took five years of parenthood to install it!)

Vocabulary: Graham says brother, dada and mama. Grant says brother and dada. I also have heard them both say a variation of "Carter." Both boys also seem to have developed their own names for Ellyson.

Saying hello

They both wave hello; try to sing; dance and jump in their cribs; wrestle Carter; and climb all over piles of pillows and toys. Grant also started blowing kisses today. In other words, there is lots of fun to be had around here these days. (And I mean that in all sincerity.)

Food/nutrition: Nursing 3-4 times per day. We are toying with combining their two daytime nursings into one (which drops them from four times a day, to three times a day) ... but it often results in some fussy, clingy babies after their naps. They drink lots of water from their sippy cups, and they eat three meals (plus a snack or two) per day, with us. No purees for almost a month now. All table foods. The only spoon-fed food is yogurt, a couple times a week. Aside from that, they self-feed everything: chicken, cooked carrots, chopped avocado, corn on the cob, pancakes, even lasagna ... are just a few of their favorites.

Grant is cutting tooth #5. Graham has six, as of this morning.


Teeth!

Wordless Wednesday

Try-It Tuesday: Fails

We tried two new recipes on Saturday night, and both were failures.

First, I tried using fresh lasagna noodles to make homemade ravioli. I get a semi-spicy chicken sausage from the farmer's market, and it adds a great dimension to the flavor of pasta dishes. But I couldn't get the noodles to adhere, so we ended up with lasagna. Not a bad second-place finish.

Next, we attempted to make fresh-mint Thin Mint ice cream (last week, we used mint extract, so this week we tried a fresh mint leaf infusion). It was really, really complicated, and we ended up cooking the egg yolks. We think. In any case, we cut out losses and scrapped it. I think next time, we'll try using the mint infusion method with the ingredients from the simpler recipe we used the first time. Once we've tried that, I will post our recipe. :)



Fresh mint infusion

 

 

The previous week's successful run with an extract

Graham in the Kitchen

I do love when a man knows his way around the kitchen! (By the way, that's a size 18M romper. Can we say "growth spurt"??)

You might be a mother if ...

... your butler's pantry doubles as a rack for superhero masks.

Jack would like to point out that it's a *butler's* pantry and a *Batman* mask.

#superheronerd

Nap Time ... or ... Play Time?

I put them down to nap. Then I put E down to nap. I checked the monitor, and this is what I found.

Grant's crib is on the left. He is harder to see, behind the mobile (which I need to remove). They are standing face-to-face.

Daddy's Day

We celebrated Jack on Sunday. Carter was so excited by his number-five pancakes last seek, that he wanted to make "D-A-D" pancakes for Fathers' Day. So I did.

Jack and Carter spent the afternoon bonding over their new Lego sets (Carter's castle and Jack's Fallingwater) while I ran at the park. And then we made homemade Thin Mint ice cream (mint ice cream with Thin Mint cookies instead of chocolate chips). The ice cream turned out really well. We will make it again.

Happy Fathers' Day, Jack!

Snack time

Diastis Recti

Warning - post-baby belly photos!

 

Bad news: My midwife recently confirmed what I already knew: that I have diastis recti. (Not familiar with it? It's a separation of the abdominal muscles. In other words, there's a gap down the center of my belly, where the muscles should meet, but don't. It is very common after carrying a multiple pregnancy.) See how my belly sinks in the middle? It's because of the gap. By the way ... that's what your skin looks like, 10 months after stretching to almost double its normal circumference. Makes me long for the (post-Carter and post-Ellyson) days of stretch marks. Who knew stretch marks would be the least of my belly woes?

 

 

Good news: I don't have a hernia. (I was afraid I might.)

 

Good news: My diastis is relatively mild. It measures a 0-2-0. Those numbers indicate the size of the gap (in centimeters) at the top of the abs, at the belly button, and at the bottom of the abs. Severe diastis often runs 5-8 cm or more.
 

 

Bad news: In the words of my midwife, my abdominal muscles are "rock hard." In feeling the gap, you can actually loop your fingers around the side, and to the back of the abdominal muscles. There's no mistaking the location of the muscle wall. Why is this bad? It means I'm not lacking the muscle tone necessary to pull those muscles together. They are plenty strong. And I've been trying to pull them together. So they should have done so by now. Which means they might have made as much progress as they physically can.

 

Good news: My midwife prefers to treat it non-invasively if at all possible, so she has referred me to a physical therapist who specializes in repairing diastis through exercises and stretches, hoping to avoid surgery.

 

Bad news: My midwife suspects my body has done all it can, and physical therapy is likely to fail. We are hanging on to a small possibility, but, if it fails ... it will mean surgery to repair the abdominal wall.

 

In the meantime, the longer I have a gaping hole in my muscle wall, the longer I am at elevated risk for a hernia. So while it is common for new moms to delay surgery (it involves a heavy-lifting ban of a couple months) until their babies are a little older, it is something that should be repaired as soon as we are comfortable doing so. Preferably before my intestines start slipping through the gap (which is the most common form of hernia with diastis recti).

 

So, yay.

 

Here's hoping!

Colossal Coaster World

The kids and I have been at Vacation Bible School all week. It's been pretty hectic. Getting all the kids dressed, fed and to church on time (okay, not really "on time") ... but we got through it! And I was teaching the preschoolers (2-4 years, who haven't been through pre-k yet). We had a really good group, and Ellyson made some new friends (and saw some she already knew).

S, E and K swinging

G&G spent their mornings in the nursery, and Carter was in his own class of just-completed-preK-ers.

Preschool treat time

The theme was about facing our fears by trusting God. And during the wrap-up ice cream party, some severe weather moved through, prompting everyone to move from the gym into a more sturdy building at the church. Good timing on that lesson!

Preschool class

Carter keeps asking me where "Colossal Coaster World" is, though, because he wants to go there.

Here's a little snippet of what the kids did this week. Check out the two cuties on the right. :) Pardon the videographer (me) for getting a little shaky in the middle. Ellyson had me laughing.

Lego Birthday Party

Saturday was Carter's Lego-themed birthday party. I made Lego-inspired brownies, Lego-shaped cakes and mock-Lego treats for the goodie bags.

Buttercream, frosting dye and mini M&M's

Colored frosting and mini M&M's

Lego cupcake wrappers

Jumbo marshmallows cut in half, then covered in frosting to create the Lego shape

Jack also built the napkin/utensil holder out of Duplo bricks

 

The guests (kids and grownups) guessed how many Lego pieces were in jars (17 in the Duplo jar; 1679 in the "little Lego" jar). The kids built racecars and then raced them on a homemade (by Jack) ramp. I think they enjoyed that part.

Cramming more than 1600 bricks into a jar

 

Building their cars



 







Racing

Finish/stop end of the ramp







I have to admit, I was a little afraid about the Lego theme. I know our kids are really into playing with Legos, but not all kids are. I think it went fine, though. Carter certainly had fun.

Jack also made homemade chocolate ice cream.

And have I mentioned lately how much I love my from-scratch recipes for Black Magic chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream frosting??? They are so good.

Happy Birthday, Carter!

Carter turned five today!

His biggest goal in life is to be like his daddy - go to work (sometimes on an airplane), and have a wife who stays home with the babies. He decided he wants to go to college because that's what his daddy did.

Reading the gift note inside his Amazon delivery from out-of-town daddy

Jack is actually out of town this week. Carter and I had some leftover birthday cake this afternoon, but his song and candles came out at breakfast time. I used a plastic bag to pipe pancakes shaped as number "5". He said this was his favorite part of the day.

I also let him pick his birthday balloon (a tradition for our kids) at the grocery store, after we left VBS this morning. He's been begging for homemade tortilla soup lately, so I made if for dinner tonight (even though the thermostat hit 90 degrees today).

He is still a big kid, wearing size 6 clothes (except at the Disney Store, where clothes run small and he wears a 7), and size 12-1/2 shoes. Height is 45" (86%) and weight is 45 lbs (77%).

June 2008

Try-it Tuesday: Baby Chicken Stew

Grant and Graham will eat me out of house and home. Mark my words. Seriously, when I have four teenagers (three of them boys), this house is going to consume some food. The twins are almost entirely on table foods now. I think they've had no mashed/pureed foods in the last week ... maybe just once during the week prior. They still eat yogurt a few times a week, and that is obviously a spoon-fed food ... but everything else, they're self-feeding. Most foods are Cheerio-sized, since they still are learning to chew (with gums and front teeth only). But they eat cheese, meats, pasta (they love tortellini), cooked vegetables, soft fruits (including ripe melon and grapes - cut into eighths, which take some chewing), breads, etc.

And Graham eats fast. Don't let his skinny self fool you. That kid puts back more food than Carter. I am not even kidding. So chopping all their food into Cheerio-sized pieces? That takes some time. I often found myself spending an entire mealtime, chopping their meal. With purees, I was able to make a few meals' worth at a time, and re-heat what they needed for that meal. I hadn't figured out a way to do that with table foods. And still, usually, they eat what I made for that meal. In which case, I'm not really pre-prepping. But, to save myself time (especially this week, because we have a pretty crazy schedule going on, which I'll probably discuss when we re-surface - as I am actually writing this post before the crazy week begins) ... I found some meals I can cook in bulk, freeze, thaw and serve when I make some quick sandwiches. Why hadn't I thought of this sooner?!

So last week, I boiled some chicken breasts. Removed the chicken. Threw some diced carrots into the broth and cooked until they were almost soft. Chopped the chicken, then added it and some orzo pasta (because it's already perfectly sized) the broth and cooked another 10 minutes until the pasta was soft. Chicken. Pasta. Carrots. All pre-diced and with no added sodium (or added anything, really).

I used about a pound of hormone-free, antibiotic-free boneless, skinless chicken breasts ($5); about 1/2 pound of organic baby carrots ($1); and about 8 oz. orzo pasta ($.50). It yielded seven, one-cup servings. I expect that one cup will be one meal for the two of them. So in other words, 14 meals for one baby or 7 meals for two babies. And actually, I left one of these meals when Jack's mom watched the boys one day, and they ate less than half of the "serving." I think that's just because it was someone new for them at mealtime. I think they typically would eat that much ... Compared to the shelf-stable (and full-of-sodium) toddler meals, running $1-2 each, I was really excited!

Uncle Greg and Aunt Katya

As noted in another post, my youngest sister (who moved to Colorado after college), was in town for almost two weeks recently, as she and her husband traveled to Germany. While they were here, we hiked Stone Mountain, had a few cookouts, played with Lego sets, picked strawberries, toasted marshmallows, spent time at the park, and ate some ice cream at Bruster's. I'm looking forward to hearing about their next three years in Germany! (And maybe we will win the lottery so we can all go visit them.)

 

Ellyson and Aunt "Tah-tah" Katya ... E pretty much only wears dresses (and the occasional skirt) right now.

 

Tubes, Take 2

Last Thursday, Carter had a second round of tubes put in his ears. He also had his adenoids "removed" (which is a misnomer because they actually aren't removed entirely). His first set went in when he was 10 months old. One tube fell out on its own last summer; the other was surgically removed last Thanksgiving. After about three years, they run a risk of leaving a permanent hole in the ear drum, so Carter's ENT doesn't like for them to be in longer than that - and his had been in for 3.5 years. He got a cold a few weeks later, which led to fluid in his ears, which became infected. The infection cleared, but the fluid never did. His hearing screenings have been showing that the fluid is impacting his hearing (plus, it can wear away the bone behind the ear drum). So we opted for a round 2 of tubes. Hopefully by the time these come out, he will have grown into his eustachean tubes, so that his ears will finally be able to drain fluid the way adult ears can.

Ice cream

Two little boys enjoyed some ice cream cones last night at a send-off for Aunt Katya and Uncle Greg, who leave today for Germany!