Hapy New Year!

Well, 2008 will have to go down as my best year yet. On January 10th, the boys were conceived, and of course on August 8th, they came into the world. I moved from Pennsylvania to Oregon, spent many weeks visiting family in Massachusetts, and was the grateful recipient of outpourings of love and generosity that defy description. The boys were born early, but have no lasting problems from their prematurity.

Here's to a wonderful year, and an even better one to come. So much gratitude!!

Oh, and by the way, Shoghi and Maxwell both started laughing this week!! Max on 12/26 (for me!) and Shoghi on 12/28 (for Memere). It's still something that only happens once or twice a day (despite much encouragement), so when it's more regular, I'll definitely post a video. It's completely delightful and miraculous.

And here are some little videos, taken since we arrived here in MA.

"you don't look at me, i don't look at you" - a game shog plays with popi whenever he's on his lap.


uh, oh... you know what this means...


max's funny new sound

a smattering of photos

with great grandparents

max in his sweet new bib from uncle george & aunt chris

max wakes up after a morning nap

shoghi loves playing with this mirror

shoghi lifts his head so high!

max with his stocking contents on christmas morning

text only

Hello from the land of dial-up! Shoghi, Maxwell and I safely arrived in Massachusetts on Wednesday, after a long and harrowing ordeal traveling the 3,000 miles that separate my current home from my childhood one. Harrowing for me - fortunately the babies fared very well through the whole ordeal.

But before I launch into my newly-acquired tips for traveling alone with infant twins post, I just want to get a little caught up on the exciting events effecting other members of my family! (drat! Max just woke up! I'll keep this quick and then hopefully come back with a more complete post later today or tomorrow.)

Laurie was just published in a book! If you know my sweet sister, be sure to visit her blog and congratulate her on this most auspicious event!! She might still have some of the cards that were selected for publishing in her shop.

OK, I have to quickly address Max's hungry tummy or we're going to be in trouble! Sorry for the lack of posting lately - as you'll know if you check out Laurie's post from today, she and I both suffered the losses of our computers last week. Mine is back in Portland, being looked at by a generous friend. We'll see if it's salvageable.

Tata, my friends!

many new things

i just don't have a lot of time to write these days... the boys are changing so fast, and keep me busy from 7am until i finally go to bed at maybe 11pm. right now, i'm especially tired, after two atypically wakeful nights, but i wanted to share some landmarks...

shoghi has finally, finally started socially smiling, and it is completely delightful. now the race is on for who will let out the first laughter. he also spends 20 minutes or so on the playmat, batting at the toys and kicking his legs in excitement. he actually grasped a toy the other day, and i caught the moment! he looks so much like his uncle simon, it's amazing.


i put together the used mountain buggy stroller a few days ago, and it's awesome! so nice to be able to walk without wearing one... don't get me wrong - i wear the boys on and off all day long and love it, but my postpartum body is much changed, and frankly, i hurt all over. i've been taking motrin for days now for my poor, aching joints and muscles.

anyway, love the stroller.


max is starting to get his hair back, and as we all suspected, it won't be red... i'm sure we have two brown-haired boys. he's almost 12 pounds now!! he is such a happy little guy, with cheeks as edible as the shiny red apples they resemble.

i don't know... i had a bunch more composed in my head, but it's all gone now. i've got to do a big nursing update soon, plus we're leaving on tuesday for our big trip east.

just quickly

laurie's got some cute new photos up on flickr!

today's the boy's four month birthday, and i've got to admit it, i have no time for a thoughtful post. maybe after they go to sleep tonight, and after i clean up, make bottles and lact-aids, eat dinner, pay bills and write a couple more birth announcements. can it still be called an announcement four months after the fact???

these cuter-than-cute booties are just one of the many, many handmade
things the boys have at their little finger and toe tips...

answers and photos

thanks for the emails & comments on that last post!! they all mean so much to me. here's an attempt at responding to some:

CNH - hi Chantel! I've been watching your blog w/rapt interest!! I can't believe your LOs are scooting around already. That prayer is excerpted from a prayer here... I'm sure quoting it is fine - I forgot to source it when I posted. I'd love to read your take on it, given the differences in our situations. Thanks to Jennie for posting the link.

MKW emailed me w/ this empathetic thought: As for full-time nursing and cloth diapers... I hope you not setting the bar too high that failure, of some sort, is immanent. And you're left feeling depressed, and frazzled to the bone and defeated. I fully believe in nursing and did both boys for about 7 mos., but I also knew I was a better mom for being able to bottle/formula supplement and leave them and regroup with time out with J or friends and come back to them anew. Full-time nursing is a draining anchor. And yes, it's great for the babies, but you need to watch yourself along the way and protect your sanity, because THAT'S what will be best for the babies and you. You will be close and loved by them because of who you are, how much you wanted them in your life and how much you love them everyday, they'll never measure your love by whether or not you used disposable diapers, bottles, or breastfed them every meal. Choose your battles... and in this case how much you're weighing down an already very demanding daily job of love.

I wanted to share this with you all because this is something I think and talk about often. And I agree with what you wrote, M.

I am using cloth diapers part time - mostly during the day. I think w/ the next size of diapers, I'll be able to use them at night, too, but really, I don't push myself on this subject. Right now, K is doing virtually all of our laundry, and I just don't know how it will be when I'm doing it myself. I plan to do it as I can and won't worry about it when I can't. I'll be using prefolds during the day only, and fuzzybuns as much as possible, for those who are interested in knowing. ;o)

As far as breastfeeding goes, I persevere because I can, and because I simply want to. I want that relationship with them both. I want that nutrition and all those benefits for them... but don't think that I am going to play hardball w/this either. Anyone who knows me will know that I'm just not an all-or-nothing person, sometimes to a fault. In this case it just means that I'm going to continue to perservere and see how close to exclusive I can get in nursing. I'd like to know that my supply is sufficient to feed them both, but given the demands of twins, I'm pretty sure that I'll always be ok with offering the occasional bottle. And if I get to a point where I feel like my supply is good enough without being 100%, I'm ok with that too. I just feel like, for now, I'm on the path, and I'm ok with this being a process.

A while ago, Megan asked me in comments about the amount of supplement I am giving the boys. I responded there, but I wonder if she checked in. I just wanted to make sure that you know your question wasn't ignored. This week, I think I'm down to about 22oz a day, combined. Still a long way to go.

Finally, thx to Maylily for the email & all you others who send love & encouragement... Your words make this easier.

Here, some new pix - all by Amy - & a video of Shoghi finally having some happy time:

amboobdextrous, or the next nursing update

Moving right along... the biggest change since my last nursing update is that Maxwell has taken off! He's latching so much better, and at our last visit to the lactation consultant, he actually managed to get more milk than Shoghi! I'm still not giving him lact-aids, but I hope to start trying that this week.

One "bad" thing that's happened is that I'm running out of the domperidone I was given by a friend, and my doctor won't prescribe it since it's off-label. I can't take the other common medication that they will prescribe because it can cause depression, to which I am already predisposed. I really can't risk that right now, on top of everything else. I have recently learned that 4 months postpardum is a common time to start having PPD, and the boys just hit 16 weeks yesterday. So, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. I have another 3 weeks of the dom, so I have to come up with a strategy right away if I'm going to wean off of it.

Speaking of weaning off of things, what's your take on caffeine while nursing? I know you're not supposed to drink coffee, but seriously, how could I possibly endure life without it right now? Do any of you readers have experience with caffiene affecting your supply?

As far as supplement goes, Shoghi is, as of today, down to one ounce, about five times a day! That means he's probably getting more than 20 ounces from nursing - wow! When Max gets to have a really good nursing session, I drop his supplement down to 1.5 ounces for that feeding. Granted, this doesn't happen as much as I'd like, but how could it, really - I end up having both of them in my arms at the same time so much, there's just no way I can do it right now. I can best manage to feed Max with a bottle while having him sit in my lap, and with the other arm, hold Shoghi while he nurses. This is the position we often use at night. On a good day, I manage to get them both nursing at the same time once or twice (hence the title of this post). I can say this much - it's getting much, much easier to have them tandem nurse as they get bigger. It was such a huge frustration when they were so little that I completely tabled even trying until pretty recently.

I couldn't talk about nursing without talking about sleeping. On quiet days at home, we are now falling into a clear pattern, with a rough morning and late afternoon nap, and settling down for nighttime napping/sleep at about 7pm. The coolest thing is that lately, the boys are getting into some really long sleep periods at night, and I have begun to be able to offer nursing only to get us through from midnight until about 7 or 8 in the morning. I don't really have an expectation of them developing fast and clear habits this early, so I just love it for when it happens.

I sleep with the boys in my bed, with Shoghi next to me and Max on the other side of him. I've begun experimenting with sleeping between them, and rolling back and forth as they want to nurse, but so far, that's been more exhausting, and it makes me uneasy to have my back to one. It's easier to simply move to the other side of the bed to nurse Max when he wakes. I love sleeping with the boys - I really can't see how I would get any sleep at all if they were not in bed with me.

Finally, this week was our first Thanksgiving, and it was also my 36th birthday (on Thanksgiving). It probably goes without saying that this year I had more to be thankful for than ever, and thinking about all that is going to happen in terms of the boys' development in the next year just astonishes me. I certainly missed being with both my East Coast family and Jennie's family with whom I have celebrated in recent years. It was a joyful day here, though, and we all got just a little teary, noting the election of the embodiment of hope, Barak Obama, and all the tremendous gifts our children, family and friends are bringing to our lives.