Good bye trees and 2006

Yesterday saw the topping of 20 trees with about 17 left to go. It has changed our view tremendously and our summers will be hotter for sure as the trees are on the West side of our property.

Glenn had 5 guys come out and help. They worked really hard and the ladies made sure they were fed well. I have a funny feeling they all are sleeping in today. Glenn also took the night shift last night, so he will be sleeping for a bit longer!!

There were a few moments that we wished that we weren't watching, but in the end, the trees got topped, the branches were removed and burned and the trees themselves were cut up and put in our back yard.

Next up is to cut back the trees that fell and hope that gravity (and some pulling) will stand them back up, otherwise they will be removed and we will be staring at the neighbour. The 17 trees left untopped will be dealt with as well, but they are not threatening anything on the neighbour's property, so the immediate concern is gone.

Today is the last day of 2006 and we had a great year. 2007 will be very different for us with the boys in tow, but I think we look forward to the challenge.....but I'll get back to you on that!

8 weeks

Today the boys are 8 weeks old and have been home for 4 weeks. Today's post will be about their dog, who has adjusted nicely to having her boys at home.

I posted back in November about her taking one of the stuffed dogs purchased for the boys. For Christmas, Georgie received a stuffed toy in her stocking. Since she had been hearing "bad dog" for all the things she had been stealing that belonged to the boys, she was a little gun shy about her new toy.

She very gently removed the toy from her stocking and quietly walked away with it (thinking we wouldn't notice). Once she realized it was hers she tore around the house with it. Now she carries it everywhere. At 3am when the boys are crying to be fed....she comes and checks with the toy in her mouth. (She wouldn't co-operate here).

When she isn't playing with her toy, or sleeping on her couch (yes, she has her own couch), she is watching to see what runs across the back 4 acres. There is the neighbours dog(s), coyotes, birds and the squirrels in the back yard that drive her nuts.
Tomorrow she will try and help as there will be a work party here to top the remaining trees that haven't fallen over (a few more went after the inital falling over). She loves branches, the bigger, the better.

She has a great life, up until the summer she went to work with Glenn everyday. She has been home with me everyday since September, and when we go out, 80% of the time she comes with us. We got her when she was 8 weeks old and we love her dearly and are glad she is great with the boys.

Day and night

Sleeping beauty
Unsleeping beauty

Although these pictures were taken around dinnertime, this is what they look like at 10pm, 11pm, midnight, 1am…. you get the idea.

Gavin has decided he doesn’t want to sleep at night. This started a few days ago. On Christmas I moved him to his own room as he was disrupting Riley’s sleep. The last time he eats before bed is anywhere from 10 to 11, once he is done his bottle, to bed he goes. Most times by the end of the bottle he is asleep or very close to it. As soon as his is lying in his crib, he begins the all out wail.

Now this isn’t a small cry, or even a large cry…this is the cry of all cries. He screams so loud I swear he hurts his vocal cords. It’s the type that mirrors the way you yell at a concert, where when you are done it hurts to talk for a day. He forgets to breathe and then it’s even worse. The first night I thought I would just let him cry it out….once the wailing began….well I just couldn’t. He cries so hard he winds up getting the hiccups and takes in so much air you have to burp him a few times. That makes it worse as well.

On Christmas when I went in, I picked him up and he quieted right down and looked at me with wide eyes. It took me about 45 minutes and a few trips back and forth to realize he was just awake. So I trundled upstairs, turned the TV on to a log burning channel (not very stimulating), put him in the chair and he just stared at the TV. No soother….nothing.

We stayed this way, with him watching the log and me trying to get a few zzz’s on the couch until his next bottle. After the next bottle, I tried again, no such luck, but I was seriously lacking in the sleep department. So I brought him to bed with me and propped him with a pillow under his belly as he seemed to have a lot of gas.

By 6am he was sound asleep and content (I won’t say happy). He slept most of Boxing Day and I thought maybe he was over his problem whatever it was. Not so, again when we went to put him down in his crib around 10:30, all out screams. Glenn suggested to again let him cry it out. There are certain cries that I can handle and one that I can’t, so again, I brought him upstairs, plunked him in his seat and turned on the TV.

We survived another long night, this time with some help from Glenn. Yesterday I tried to keep him up as much as I could, hoping to break this routine. We went for dinner at my sisters and tried to keep him awake and Grama and Great Grama were there, so that helped. I also started to change over his formula, thinking that maybe that was an issue (he had some really bad gas).

Last night, when we got home from my sisters, we left him in his carseat until the next time he ate as I was in fear that he would wake up and not go back to sleep. Maybe he just had a bug, maybe the new formula helped (haven’t fully graduated), I’m not sure….but he slept for stretches that mirrored Riley.

Riley has had some good sleeps as well since I moved Gavin. I wasn't planned on splitting them up so soon, but that's two nights in a row that Riley has slept for good stretches.

Even though the boys are "twins", they are only twins because they shared my uterus for 7 months. They are different in all other aspects!

Due date

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. The boys did well for their first Christmas. It is amazing to me how much $ is dropped for one day of the year and it's over in minutes. Our tree looked pretty gross, but we have to remember that it was for 9 adults and 2 infants.
Riley and Gavin's great aunt (my aunt, my mom's sister), purchased hats for the boys for their first Christmas, surprisingly they were actually too small, but we improvised!!!

Today was their due date and they are 7 1/2 weeks old. With twins, I wouldn't have been pregnant past Dec 12 (38 weeks), so they would have been here anyway, but gestationally they are term. The paediatrician warned us that once they were term they may change drastically, (crying more often, for example...not possible for Gavin), so we are crossing our fingers that it isn't as bad he made it out to be.

Hope everybody had a great Christmas and your day was special. Ours was, as it was our first with our boys and also our last being able to sit and enjoy our meal uninterrupted.

Merry Ho Ho

One down and two to go

Every year on December 23 my mother has an open house. This is a chance to catch up with people you haven't seen for awhile or in some cases since the previous December 23.

Last night was the first chance that one of the great grandmothers got to meet her great grandsons. The boys have 3 great grandmothers, 3 grandmothers and 1 grampa. My Dad's mom is 86, Glenn's grama is around there as well and my Mom's mom is 92!!!

Great Grama B (my Mom's mom) and Gavin

Great Grama B and Riley

All the great grama's live out of town, 2 live in the province and one lives in Alberta, so they haven't been able to get their hands on them yet. Last night their GGB would not let them go, she gave up food and beverages to hold, stare, talk and sing to the boys. In actual fact, we weren't even in the door 5 minutes and she had a baby in her lap!

GGT (my Dad's mom) is next as I hope to take a trip to Westbank with my Dad early in the new year to see her. GGK (Glenn's grama) will be in the summer when she migrates to BC with Glenn's step mom.

My family is coming over Christmas morning to open presents and have breakfast, with GGB's performance last night, I'm not sure she will eat or open presents :)

Have a great Christmas and I hope Santa was nice to you.

Tis the Season

Whew, what a week....

-finish (actually start) Christmas shopping for 15 people in some cases by myself with two newborns
-wrap said shopping
-visit work with the kids
-take Mom and Barry for birthday dinner
-doctor's appointment - me
-have Christmas dinner and present opening with Dad and Donna
-start to tidy up my house (people for Xmas morning)
-daily house chores
-feed my babies every three hours

I now know why I fell asleep on the drive to dinner last night (Glenn drove :))

Tis the season, last night our household received a new digital camera for Christmas from Grampa T and Grama D!!! We took a few pictures last night and even the bad pictures are better than the "good" pictures from our old camera.



Our old camera we bought probably about 4 or 5 years ago and is only 2 megapixels, we have graduated to 6. To think the old one replaced one that Glenn had purchased when digital cameras first came out. It is a very happy day as I can now take pictures without getting frustrated!!! As for the Auntie Kim picture, she wanted to be included on the blog. So she gets two!!!



The boys last sunday..



If I don't get back here before Sunday, I hope everybody has a great Christmas filled with lots of love and laughter.

36 hours

Does anyone realize how long 36 hours is? I know it’s 36 hours, which is 2,160 minutes or 129,600 seconds. When you have 2 infants ...it’s a loooooong time.

Thursday night’s storm left us without power for 36 hours. Now, think about this, our boys are 6 weeks old, still two weeks early and up until three weeks ago couldn’t regulate their own body temperature consistently. The news on Thursday told us that the storm would start around 3 am, right on the money. I was up feeding the boys at 3 and put them to bed at around 3:30. No sooner had my head hit the pillow, did the “parental” unit of the monitor start squealing (which is does when the base has no power). Nothing I could do, so I hoped to God the babies would be okay and went to sleep. I woke up at 6am and went to check on the boys, still alive but crying……

Since Glenn works from home in the morning and goes to his “other” job in the afternoon, he got up helped me feed the boys and left for the office. He returned shortly….seems the main road outta here has a tree across it!!! There is another way out, but it’s a little scenic, so off he goes with promise to return early afternoon.

The boys and I hung out upstairs with the hope that power would return shortly….no such luck. Glenn came home started a fire and fired the generator on the motorhome, so that we could have some light. We still had Christmas shopping to do, so once the chill began to set in, we packed up the boys and off we went. (Still no double stroller, so we used the jogger stroller).

After we had closed down the mall at 9, we headed home….hoping to have power but knowing that we were probably headed to my Mom’s. We attempted to come home the main road and made it, but the tree was still across the road (with just enough room for a vehicle to pass) with nobody working on it. So we ran into the house and packed up what we would need for the night and grabbed the dog and off we went (the poor cat had to stay home as my Mom has dogs and they don’t do well with cats).

Saturday morning Glenn left early to go to the States to pick up the stroller with Super Dave….bright spot…we have a double stroller which holds car seats!!! Once he was done, he came back to my Mom’s to pick us all up. As we drove home, they had opened up the main road and were working on the wires and the tree was gone. Is the end near?

We still didn’t have power, but we have a motorhome. While I would like the boys to get used to being in the motorhome, I was hoping to attempt this in April when race season started, not December when snow was falling in parts of the City.

Glenn fired up the generator and we blasted the heat to get it warm inside, the boys slept peacefully in my truck in the meantime. While we waited Glenn took Georgie and went next door to discuss some fallen trees with our neighbour…

On Thursday afternoon, the neighbour came over and informed me that 12 of our trees had fallen onto a few of their structures. This was BEFORE the storm that knocked out our power. I guess with all the rain and snow over the last month and a half, the root system just gave up!!




Now when you have 10 acres of land, why would you build RIGHT ON your neighbour’s property line??? There isn’t too much damage and now we have a different view and it will be even more different once the trees are cleared…..the neighbours uncle lives in a trailer right behind those trees!!!!

We napped in the motorhome and contemplated our options, but our power returned at 4pm and we didn't have to worry about a night in the motorhome. Now that that is over......

Does anybody want a cedar Xmas tree?

A humourous spin

Today the boys have been home for 2 weeks, tomorrow they will be 6 weeks old. In those two weeks they have been home, their sleep pattern has changed constantly. We have played around with their routine a bit as we were hoping for 4 hour stretches, but in the end we are lucky if we get 3!!!

I have been researching sleep patterns in infants and trying to find out when I'm going to get to sleep for longer than an hour and a half at a time. While researching I found this..

Sleep Training - A Baby's View

OK, here's my situation. My Mommy has had me for almost 7 months. The first few months were great--I cried, she picked me up and fed me, anytime, day or night. Then something happened. Over the last few weeks, she has been trying to STTN (sleep thru the night). At first, I thought it was just a phase, but it is only getting worse. I've talked to other babies, and it seems like it's pretty common after Mommies have had us for around 6 months. Here's the thing: these Mommies don't really need to sleep. It's just a habit. Many of them have had some 30 years to sleep--they just don't need it anymore. So I am implementing a plan. I call it the Crybaby Shuffle.

It goes like this:

Night 1--cry every 3 hours until you get fed. I know, it's hard. It's hard to see your Mommy upset over your crying. Just keep reminding yourself, it's for her own good.

Night 2--cry every 2 hours until you get fed.

Night 3--every hour.

Most Mommies will start to respond more quickly after about 3 nights.
Some Mommies are more alert, and may resist the change longer. These Mommies may stand in your doorway for hours, shhhh-ing. Don't give in. I cannot stress this enough: CONSISTENCY IS KEY!! If you let her STTN (sleep through the night), just once, she will expect it every night. I KNOW IT'S HARD! But she really does not need the sleep, she is just resisting the change. If you have an especially alert Mommy, you can stop crying for about 10 minutes, just long enough for her to go back to bed and start to fall asleep. Then cry again. It WILL eventually work. My Mommy once stayed awake for 10 hours straight, so I know she can do it.

Last night, I cried every hour. You just have to decide to stick to it and just go for it. BE CONSISTENT! I cried for any reason I could come up with.My sleep sack tickled my foot. I felt a wrinkle under the sheet. My mobile made a shadow on the wall. I burped, and it tasted like pears. I hadn't eaten pears since lunch, what's up with that? The cat said "meow". I should know. My Mommy reminds me of this about 20 times a day. LOL. Once I cried just because I liked how it sounded when it echoed on the monitor in the other room. Too hot, too cold, just right--doesn't matter! Keep crying!! It took awhile, but it worked. She fed me at 4am. Tomorrow night, my goal is 3:30am. You need to slowly shorten the interval between feedings in order to reset your Mommies' internal clocks.

P.S. Don't let those rubber things fool you, no matter how long you suck on them, no milk will come out. Trust me.

I think I need a nap.....

Make that a double

Yesterday the boys reached gestational age of 38 weeks. If everything had gone according to plan, the doctor would have delivered them sometime this week!!!

Last week I made a prediction that Riley would hit 6 pounds at today's weigh in..... Gavin is a outstanding 6lbs 1oz (almost 2oz) and Riley is 6lbs 5oz, that was WAY more than expected. I honestly didn't think that Gavin would reach 6 pounds. Their doctor was quite impressed with their gain. So she should be, they eat every 3 to 3 1/2 hours and are eating about 4oz at each feed!!!

Do you think they look bigger?




My tummy hurts just thinking that they would have pretty much doubled in weight had Gavin been patient. Ouch!

McGyver

Do you remember the show McGyver (sp?)? My mother used to watch it all the time. Glenn sometimes comes up with ideas that parallel McGyver. I told you on Saturday that Glenn took over the Saturday early am feedings. When he got up he informed me that he and the boys had a great night and that he took pictures of it……



That's not EXACTLY what I had in mind, but they got fed and survived the night!

Saturday night the boys attended their first dinner party and oh my god, they were soooooo well behaved. It was a very nice evening spent with friends that we haven’t seen this year due to taking a year off from racing. Between Dar, Pam and Gloria, I really didn’t see much of my kids but the ladies ate them up and took as much cuddle time as they could. They held them, fed them, but DIDN’T change them…which was fair enough, they change enough of their own.

My favorite picture of the night (which he says wrecks his reputation!)…


Tomorrow I’m off to get my hair cut, finally (had an appointment booked the day I went into the hospital, a month and a half ago) and then will head to my office for a short visit. Glenn’s mom is coming to babysit so the boys won’t make an appearance at the office, but I will be taking them shortly.

Happy Monday everybody and yikes only 2 weeks left until Xmas!!!!

Refreshed

Did ya miss me? It was a week of trying to figure out my babies and their routine at the expense of sleep. My dear, wonderful husband took the shift last night and I went to bed at 10:30 and didn’t leave the bed until 8 this morning. Not to say I didn’t wake up cause I did…..but I just didn’t have to get up….loverly!!!

The boys went to the doctor on Wed and had a weigh in. Gavin is now 5lbs 6oz and Riley is 5lbs 10oz and you can definitely feel the weight. We have another appointment next Wed and I have a feeling we will see a 6 pounder!!!

When we brought the boys home we had decided to try feeding them every 4 hours or at least close to that…..well that plan has fallen through. At about the 2 ½ hour mark, one or both would start to fuss and it took us a bit to realize that they were hungry. So I have increased the formula and they are eating on demand now, which is about every 3 hours. One will wake up and fuss and the other will sleep peacefully for one feed and the next they may change who is sleeping and who is really hungry, but they both get fed. Otherwise I would be constantly feeding!!!

Yesterday my Mom and my aunt came over to babysit the boys so I could get some shopping done. I can check three people off my list….yeah me!!! I also purchased my Christmas cards and had the birth announcements printed, twice!!!

I had been trying all week to get a picture of the boys that was worthy of their announcement. Not easy, one would co-operate and the other wouldn’t. Typical. Glenn finally got a picture on Thursday (not great, but not horrible either). Off I went to Shoppers Drug Mart. You take your CD with your picture(s) on it and submit it yourself. I inserted my CD, picked “Specialty pictures’, sadly they only have two templates for “New Baby” and I picked the “It’s a Boy” (I have looked everywhere and couldn’t find twins – but that’s another story) template. I uploaded the picture and began to type in the text…ok….done!!! The photo finishing lady said 40 minutes….I’ll be back in a few hours…no rush.

Off I go to the mall (20 minutes away). I was almost at the mall when it hit me………I didn’t put their birthday on the announcements!!!!! I had to wait until I got to the mall and phoned the drug store….oh I just finished printing them! CRAP!!!! Once I was done at the mall, back I went to do it all over again, but she had them printed in about 5 minutes this time. The good thing about Shoppers is that when you shop there you collect points to redeem for $ off. Well I had enough points that I could redeem some and it offset my mistake…$25!!! It’s seems I forgot to put our last name on it as well, but you know what….everybody knows who they are and where they came from!!!

So today I am energized and have things to catch up on....like put away the loads of laundry I managed to wash and dry, but not put away!!

Have a great weekend!

Housebound

Back in September before I was put on semi bed rest by my specialist, Glenn and I went to Toys R Us and created the baby registry. While we were there we picked up two car seats. As the car seats are large they do not stock them on the shelves, you pick a card from an envelope in front of the item you want and take it to the register. While you are paying they send somebody to the back to get your item. Fairly simple......not really.

Now, I'm pretty sure that the seats that we looked at were black and grey, but I have to admit I wasn't paying too much attention and now can't think back that far. In the end our seats look like this:



which is called "Sunny Safari". Nice enough pattern, don't ya think?

When we were at Toys R Us, we registered for a double stroller that would hold the car seats. Again no thought to this really, point the laser gun, voila, on the registry. Well, my Mom found one at Sears on sale, so she purchased it back in October. Since the boys weren't here yet (and not supposed to be close) and our house was still in disaray, I asked her to hold on to it......

She delivered it last weekend



Glenn noticed that it is a pattern called "Mystic"....easy enough phone Sears and see if they have Sunny Safari in stock.....no, they only carry Mystic. Ok, try Toys R Us, this shouldn't be TOO difficult, nope...they only carry "Blackwell". Glenn is stumped and would prefer that the car seat and stroller match (and so do I)!!! He then tries Target in the states, YES, they have the Sunny Safari, only they call it "Family Tree". After a phone call to Target, they don't have any in stock!!! We could have it shipped, but we need a US address.

I'm now at the point that I don't care that they don't match, but they guy who wore pink shorts in the 80's AND 90's is worried about how it will look :)

So for now I am housebound, as I can NOT carry two car seats and do any shopping or visiting. On the plus side my Mom and Aunt are coming to babysit on Friday so that I can start my Xmas shopping....maybe not having a stroller is a good thing?

1 month and 1 day

Wow.....the boys were a month old yesterday!!!! Hard to imagine as they aren't even supposed to be here yet.

The weekend was a little overwhelming as we had a stream of visitors, but it was nice to have the company. Today though, I'm not accepting visitors....I need some sleep.

The boys are eating every 3 1/2 to 4 hours and at the 4am feed today I let Glenn sleep. He has to get up at 6am and I get to sleep until well, today was 6:30. Gavin likes to talk in his sleep, he squaks (sp?), shrieks and cries, all the while he is still asleep. Since Glenn was up and working, I unloaded Gavin on him and went back to sleep, kind of. Riley started to fuss and cry, so he got the position of my tummy whilst I got a few more zzz's.

We are a little sleep deprived around here, but wouldn't trade it for the world.
So please forgive me if I don't post everyday (it's nice to know I have junkies who check me out daily), but I won't deprive you for too long a stretch at a time!

The things people find

From Barrie and Bev

From Jen Mc

From Landon and Jaxon


Have a good Sunday!!

Still in suspense?

Are you on pins and needles? Well so was I for two days.....on Wed I waited for a call until about 5pm...the nurse called and said that the doctor wasn't going to make it in but would be in first thing in the morning. Ok, so I will still room in with the boys to get a taste of parenthood.

The night was uneventful and the boys ate every three hours. I made sure I set the alarm on my cell phone so that the nurse didn't have to wake me and to prove I was a worthy parent!! After the 6am feed I slept for only about an hour as I wanted to make sure I was awake to talk to the doctor. I had a total of 5 hours of sleep.

And so I waited.......at about 8:30 a doctor who works with the doctor that has to discharge Gavin and Riley showed up with a medical student to do the assessment of the boys. Once he was done he said he would talk to the doctor and hopefully give us the green light to come home.....and so I waited.

In the meantime, my sister called, my mom called and my husband called.......still no news. Finally at 11am, the doctor who assessed the boys came back and said that the doctor went straight to his office this morning due to the roads and would come in and see them after he was done at the office....around 5pm.

Glenn had dropped me off the night before and now I had to call him and have him pick me up. I wanted to go home and have a shower and a nap. He arrived just in time to feed Riley for their noon feed. I promised the nurse I would return by 4:30 as I really wanted to talk to the doctor.

I came home, ate, showered, watched The Biggest Loser (taped from the previous night) and never did get my nap. I arrived at the hospital at 4:30 on the nose! The waiting began again......at 5:30 the nurse decided to try the doctor at his office, it was closed. Glenn called and wanted to know if we knew anything (I'm beginning to hate that question!), no still nothing. Did I want him to come to the hospital now.....um YES!!!

The nurse paged the doctor, he called her back and said he hadn't forgotten about us, but was still at his office (half hour away). Ok, at least we know he is still coming. Around 7pm he finally arrived, I heard him ask a nurse if he was in trouble :) At least he realized we'd been waiting awhile!

After a complete assessment of the boys, from head to toe.....he pronouced "They're perfect", hey I knew that!! So we bundled them up in their car seats



and got the heck outta there



We made a quick stop in NICU so the nurses could say goodbye and we wanted to thank them for all the care they gave our boys.

I won't bore you with the all the details, but we made it through the night and changed their feeding to every four hours, but Dad still only got about 1 hour he thinks (I got a little more). Georgie isn't too sure what they are all about but is very gentle and she didn't get much sleep either. Everytime they were up, so was she.

We will work it all out, currently they are sleeping in their playpen in the living room. And THAT is a 2 second walk vs. a 20 - 30 minute drive, I'm so very happy!!!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!!!!