3 Months and Counting

Pictures, pictures, pictures: Let's get some recent ones out of the way first off:


Girls at 3 months. I don't think it was exactly 3 months, but we're calling it close enough. And yes, I have them reversed in this picture, Kayla on the right, breaking with our standard.

A few Valentines-themed pictures:






Also, because I'm a sucker for "bad" pictures, Kayla and Megan: A Conversation.

Dude, they're trying to get me to roll over again.







You're kidding? Well, at least you're not on your third outfit of the day like I am.







Oh please, don't talk to me about outfits, you have no idea.







What? It's a little big around the arms maybe, but I really don't see what's so...
















........Touche.








Things have finally got back into the routine now that the holidays are over. Ruth is our daycare, Jenn and I are both back to the grind of work, and Kayla and Megan continue to grow. Ruth has an old baby scale she brought over, and weighed them both at around 12-13 lbs I believe, with Kayla still ahead of Megan. We have their 4 month appt sometime in the next few weeks, so will get the "official" results then.

Both girls are doing fine. We have seen both of them, Kayla in particular, attempting to roll over from their backs. They'll get about halfway and get stalled, just don't have the strength yet to make it all the way, but only a matter of time. Their legs are getting noticeably stronger as well, able to support more of their weight for a longer stretch if hold them up on your lap. Jenn has also been able to get them to blow raspberry's on a couple of occasions with prompting. They're sleeping through the night almost every night, usually 9-10 to around 5-6; on some occasions longer, both girls still asleep when Ruth shows up and after we both leave for work. We lucked out, big time.

Kayla and Megan's Christmas Adventure

The holidays have come and gone, and somehow we've all survived. Christmas with twin infant girls: interesting to say the least.

We lead things off up in Canton with Christmas for the McMannis side. The girls wore their pink Santa outfits that were entirely too big for them, but cute nonetheless.



We also had the opportunity to take a picture of all the McMannis kids (plus some adults to keep young ones in check), minus only Mary's little ones, but still producing enough cuteness to knock poor Bella over.



Quite a crew! Next up, three days later we were in Canton again, this time for Christmas with Granny, Grandpa, Linda, Shane, Jordan and Jalen. The four cousins were kind enough to stage a Cuteness Battle Royal, though at the end of the night there was no clear winner.



Christmas Eve and Day we had Grandma Bingham, Karen, Carl, and Nathan over to our house.



Daddy ended up sleeping most of Christmas Eve, having a little bit of a cold (as well as about 4 hours of sleep the night before). I am told, however, that both Kayla and Megan's cuteness continued unabated.

Finally, the day after Christmas we headed up to KC for the Vogts Christmas at Aunt Kathy's. Here we see Aunt Linda apparently telling Kayla shocking stories of what I was like as a big brother.



This trip also featured baby's first hotel stay, baby's first out of state trip, and perhaps most important of all....baby's first KC Masterpiece! Who knew they made Burnt End flavored formula?

Anyway, that was our late December. We also had a last minute, impromptu KU bowl game watch/New Years Eve party at the house with James, Tricia, Ron and Justin, as well as an "End of Day of Gaming" get together over at James' last night.

As far as day to day life, my time at home is now officially over, and Ruth is now our day care. Girls seem to be doing fairly well for her, she hasn't quit yet anyway. We're also coming up on 3 months, end of next week I believe. They're both doing great, starting to become more and more aware of their surroundings, talking to us some, sleeping through the night more often than not. The amazing continues everyday.

Sleeping Miracles

(I’ll let you guess who’s who in the pictures – answer below!)

There’s nothing quite like a sleeping baby.

Anyone who knows even part of our story knows what miracles we have in our two little ladies. So is it any surprise that there are times I can look at one of them, and merely thinking about their existence brings tears to my eyes?

Last night was a big night for the babies. It was the first time they BOTH slept through the night. Both of them have done it on their own before, but never with their sister. I’m convinced they’ve plotted against us to keep us from sleeping through the night. We think they’re just cooing and chattering, but really, they’re deciding which one will get us up that night and which one will sleep through!

Our bedtime routine is bath, bottle, swaddle in crib -- lullaby CD plays, humidifier runs, and they go to sleep. We can put them down drowsy but awake, and they’ll drift off to sleep. If they’re too awake they’ll squawk for a pacifier, but if they don’t “ask” for it, we just keep one nearby. (We’re not encouraging them and hoping to break them of the paci habit soon). Last night I turned out the dresser lamp while they were sleeping. I wonder if that had something to do with it?

I think we’re pretty lucky that both of them cooperate so well in going to bed. I hope it lasts, but I doubt it will. I only watched my nephew Nathan a couple times at night several years ago, but I remember him peeking around the corner for the umpteenth time, and taking him back to bed. I have visions of two little heads peeking around corners in the future, just like cousin Nathan did.

They usually break out of the swaddle, and sometimes I’ll rewrap them back into a baby-burrito while they’re asleep. Usually I can do it without really waking them up, and they sleep better that way. I wonder if I would sleep better if Mike would swaddle me! Megan is still wrapped up in purple in the first picture. Kayla has broken free, wrapped in pink in the second picture.

I like to go in and look at them while they’re sleeping. Not to check if they’re still breathing, (okay, sometimes I do check.) but just to look at them. It can literally bring a tear to my eye. How am I going to going to explain that one to my little miracles down the road:
“Mommy? Why do you cry when you look at us?”
“Because I love you.”

Couple of pictures

Of the girls smiling:

Megan


Kayla


Also, Kayla on her tummy:


I got lucky getting shots of happy babies the other day, who didn't mind lying on the couch while daddy flashed bright lights at them with that big black box he's always carrying around. Pictures also do a good job of highlighting the "identical" in identical twins, now that I look at them together.

Babies in Chiefs gear

Jenn indulges me.



Kayla


Megan


Daddy and his girls


Also, there are a couple new videos up at the Youtube channel.

Girls had their two month appointment yesterday. Kayla weighs 10 lbs 13 oz, and Megan 9 lbs and 13 oz. Megan was a little low on the percentiles for length and such, but is still growing at an expected rate, so all is well. Kayla was around the 50th percentile, for singleton, full term children. Doc found no other problems, they got their shots with minimal fuss and have not shown any negative effects, and all is well.

Jenn went back to work today. Little tough on her, but to be expected, she handled it well. In her stead, I'm taking three weeks off from work, through the 29th, to take care of the girls. Should be interesting; today was pretty uneventful though. Girls slept most of the day, perhaps a little hangover still from their shots.

We were up at Granny and Grandpa Vogts on Monday, took the girls up to the grade school so mom could show them off to everyone there. Then just kind of hung out for the evening; dad and I babysat while Jenn went shopping in Mac and mom went up to a school play for a bit. Sounds like we'll be seeing them sometime this weekend as well, mom's coming down to go shopping.

Other than all that, it's pretty much business as usual. Girls are starting to become more aware of their environment it seems, we can get smiles out of them once in a while, they will follow toy keys somewhat, etc. Kayla in particular seems to be fascinated with chewing on her fists as well, discovering that she has them I guess. Megan has been her usual diva-self, always wanting held.

Holidays are big times for babies

First up, a couple of more recent pics:




Thanksgiving was kind of an interesting time this year. Wednesday night before, the girls were particularly fussy, keeping Jenn up all evening, which was particularly inconvenient as she didn't get any nap that day. So I ended up getting up around 3:30 to give her a break, and staying up the rest of the early morning. We were due to be in Canton around noon, so I woke Jenn up around 10-10:30, we got around, and ended up getting up to Canton only an hour late. Both of us running on empty, sleep wise.

Thanksgiving up there was good, we didn't have to hold the girls much at all obviously, and I totally forgot to take any pictures of aunts/cousins with the girls. We stick around for supper, head home around 8 or so I think, get home and start getting ready for lunch tomorrow, which is going to be Jenn's side over here. Well, Jenn starts getting ready anyway, as I go to bed and sleep for 5 hours or so. And again, I get up around 4 or 5 I think, and let Jenn get a little sleep before lunch. Lunch with Jenn's side went well too, as did the afternoon, I assume, as I had taken some muscle relaxers (tweaked my back a while back) that hit my kind of hard for some reason, and took a nice 4 hour nap.

So after two days of being fawned over by relatives, what do we get from little girls? That's right: fussiness. Last night Megan especially would just go beserk any time we tried to put her down, until we finally figured out she was just hungrier than she normally is. Babies eat more as they get bigger: who knew?

So that's Thanksgiving. For Christmas, we're going to be headed up to Canton for my side like the week before (I think, Jenn has a bead on all this for sure), here with Jenn's side on Christmas day, up to KC for the extended Vogts side the day after, and the McMannis side....some other time? No idea here. I'm sure the women in my life will tell me where to be and when.

In other news, I'm basically taking the month of December off from work. Jenn goes back to work on Dec 8, and I'm going to start 3 weeks leave to stay home with the girls, through Christmas. Witnessing Jenn's sleep schedule, or lack thereof, the past couple of months, I must admit I'm a little nervous, but it should be great. Hopefully they'll start sleeping for 8 hours a stretch starting December 7. Or, I'll just continue to make judicious use of the DVR for late night TV viewing.

Girls continue to do great as well. Next week is their 2 month checkup at the pediatrician, it will be interesting to see how much weight they're up to.

We were someplace around Barstow...

...on the edge of the desert when the formula began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit poopy, maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge pacifiers, all swooping and screeching and diving around the crib, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the rail down to Las Vegas.

The diaper bag looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of cheerios, seventy five boxes of Animal Crackers, five sheets of high powered Fruit Rollups, a salt shaker half full of Pixie Stix, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored Skittles, M&M's, Nerds, Runts....and also a quart of apple juice, a quart of Kool-Aid, a case of formula, a pint of raw GoGurt and two dozen apple slices. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious snack collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the GoGurt. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a baby in the depths of a GoGurt binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

The greatest picture I have ever taken

I'll probably get in trouble for posting this picture, but I couldn't resist. Kayla's hair has been going all Super Saiyen on us lately, so I decided to try and document it, then lucked out and got a great "crazy eye" pose from her as well.

Who Am I?

Daddy's sleeping, and Mommy's trying to sleep. I just want to play! So let's play a guessing game.

Can you tell who I am?

Mommy covered my hair with the hat for this picture, because sometimes people can tell us apart by our hair. One of us has more hair that's a little darker than the other. Mommy also put me in a sleeper that's too big for me, because sometimes people can tell us apart by the way our clothes fit. One of us is about a pound bigger than the other.

Mommy says it's easy to tell who's who when we're together, but not as easy when we're not side by side. She can almost always tell us apart in pictures, but in person she keeps calling me by my sister's name! I'd tell her who I was if I could talk. Daddy does a better job of telling me apart from my sister.

So can you tell who I am?




















I'm Megan Rae!

And Your Momma Dresses You Funny...

I've been accused (thanks mom) of playing dress up with the girls, like dolls. Now she's not serious and she knows I don't have the patience to change from outfit to outfit with them just for the purpose of seeing them look cuter than cute. (I admit, I'm biased) However, I AM guilty of putting them in complete outfits and staging them for pictures once in a while when I change their clothes. I definitely don't have a future in the fashion industry.

Unfortunately, the downside of them being small at this point, is that most of their clothes are way too big. They're in "Newborn" size still, but even some of those are still too big on them.

And sometimes, a 3/6 month piece of clothing finds its way into the drawer and Mommy doesn't realize it until it's half way on Kayla.

Then Mommy decides to put it on anyway, just to see how big it is! Kayla isn't having any of it, though!

Maybe if her foot reached further than the knee of the outfit, it wouldn't be so bad...



Then there's the cute little sleeper that I thought would look cute on Kayla.
Uh, Mommy? I think they're on backwards....

Pants can be particularly challenging.

Mike declared these pink pants their "MC Hammer Pants", complete with dancing Megan through the air Hammer-Style, to emphasize the image. If only I had a video!


Loki just looks like he's begging me not to make his twins look funny -- or at least not to make him the next to wear the big puffy pants!

Hmm, I wonder if I can find some dog-clothes that would coordinate with the girls' clothes...

One month down

Couple of pics of girls in KU outfits to lead off. See, they're not always in pink and purple.





Sleep schedules continue to be nonexistent. After a couple of promising nights last week where babies slept for several hours straight at a time overnight, babies have apparently decided that we live in Japan again. Poor Jenn has probably not slept more than 4 hours between the hours of 11pm and 5am the past week. The general schedule lately has been for Jenn to get a nap from around 7 to 10 while I watch them sleep peacefully, then tag team and she replaces pacifiers about 500 times, then gets an hour or so while I get ready for work at ~6am.

The good news is that we've discovered the magic of swings. Babies probably will never suffer from sea-sickness, cause they're pretty much living in these swings now. Plug-in powered ones at that, no cranking or even battery changing. Jenn picked one up the other day at some second-hand store, and it worked well enough that we've got a new one to go with it. It's not a 100% cure-all, but it's pretty close.

Jenn has had the girls at the pediatricians a couple times for diaper rash (which is finally getting better), and both girls are around 2 lbs above their birth weight. They're starting to eat more as well; Kayla has put down 5 and 6 oz of formula in a sitting a couple of times, and Megan's average feeding is probably pushing 4oz now. You don't really notice the growth in Megan, since she's still trailing Kayla in size/weight, but with Kayla, every once in a while when you pick her up, you definitely feel her getting heavier.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Depending on where you look, the girls’ names have different meanings. Kayla means pure. It is also the feminine form of Michael (derived from Michaela, which we discussed and elected NOT to use as her name). Megan means pearl. But we didn’t pick the names based on meaning.

How did we pick the names, you might ask? With great trial and tribulation! Wow, what a responsibility for a soon-to-be-parent, picking the name your child will live with for the rest of their lives. When we had the names – we both knew they were right. It was a challenge getting there, though!

Over the years, I built a list of potential names. Mike thought from the startthat we were having girls, so we started with the girl names. I gave him my list. Over three years in the making, that list – and there was only one name he liked. One name. We had four girl names to pick – and he only liked one! The quest was on to find more names. I made more lists. I tried giving him some of my favorites from the original list to him again, but he kept rejecting them. He suggested names, but nothing sounded right to me.

Discussions continued, suggestions continued – and eventually, we switched from the original name Mike picked off the first list to a similar but different name from the first list, KAYLA. Then Mike suggested a name that we agreed on for a few weeks. We eventually changed that one to a new one as well, MEGAN.

Middle names were MUCH easier to pick. We wanted to name the girls after our mothers, so we took both of their middle names – MADELYN and RAE, and gave them to our girls.

We had refused to assign them names to the girls before they were born, so they were “Baby A” and “Baby B” until the moment they were born. We had agreed on Kayla’s name first, so we decided the first baby born would be Kayla. It turns out that it was Baby A. During surgery when the girls were born, I remember whispering, “That’s Kayla” and “That’s Megan”, although I don’t know that anyone in particular was listening to me at the time, as it was quite hectic in the OR and Mike was following the babies across the room. It didn’t matter, we both knew who they were the moment they were born. Kayla Madelyn and Megan Rae -- and I can’t imagine them with any other names.

Bedtime Babies

As small as the little ladies are right now, they get lost in some of their clothes. All the sleepers we had were humorously large on them, so they've been wearing regular onsies to bed each night.

For Halloween, Granny Vogts gave Kayla and Megan each a small-sized sleeper that doesn't swallow them up whole. Megan is still a little overwhelmed in hers, but not comically so, except in the feet. It's okay though, she was way too tuckered out to notice!


They wore their sleepers tonight, and mommy couldn't resist taking pictures before tucking them into bed. (It's a shame she didn't brush Kayla's hair before the picture!
Bedtime bath makes
for spikey hair.)







And of course we can't forget our "oldest child", Loki, who beat them all to bed this evening!

First Night in a Big Girl Bed

Since Kayla and Megan are only three weeks and three days old, we can’t reasonably expect to sleep through the night. However, I’d expect to get a little bit of sleep at a time, somewhere from one to three hours at a stretch, while the girls sleep. I didn’t think that was asking too much of them at this age.

If they sleep in the pack-and-play in the living room and I sleep on the couch, it happens. But if we put them in the pack-and-play in the bedroom with us, it doesn’t happen. I don’t know what the difference is, but there obviously is a big one to the girls! They’re restless and won’t settle down. Everyone thought I was just getting up quicker with them being 8 feet closer to me, but that’s not the case. They behave differently! So I’ve resorted to sleeping on the couch if we both want a decent amount of sleep.

So last night, Mike hooked up the baby monitors and put them down in the nursery. The first night of having them sleep in a real crib, and not a pack-n-play. A Big Girl Bed. Well, big girl to us right now.

There’s still some logistics to work out with this arrangement though, as the monitor only works for a few hours before running down. We do have two receivers, so changing them out in the middle of the night worked for last night. If mommy wasn’t such a wuss she would trust that they’d wake up hearing them across the hall! But she just isn’t ready for that on the first night! (Speaking in third person allows me to be in denial about my wussiness.)

And then there’s the issue of lighting. With Megan’s diaper rash, we’re changing her in the bathroom and washing off her bottom instead of using wipes. I’ve mastered accomplishing this using only the bathroom nightlight. However, the nightlight in the nursery doesn’t light up in the crib itself. I found myself attempting to put Kayla’s pacifier somewhere between her ear and her left nostril, and wondering why she was still fussing. Or perhaps I was just too asleep and it wasn’t a lighting issue at all – time will tell!

All in all, the night went pretty well for a first night in the nursery. We’ll see if it can be repeated, improved upon, and perhaps be the ticket to letting mommy and daddy both get some sleep at night!

More evidence

That taking pictures of babies is tough business.



Jenn was trying to get a couple of pictures to send to me at work this week, and Loki decided that he needed to help.

So we made it through the first week of me being back at work. It was a little tough for Jenn, as the girls still tend to get a little fussy during the night, necessitating her staying up to all hours. Karen has been able to come over several mornings though, allowing Jenn to catch up on her sleep somewhat, and of course Ruth has been over to help about every day as well. And the girls are getting a little better about sleeping for 2-3 hours at a stretch overnights, the past several nights have been much easier. Aside from lack of sleep though, and a little case of diaper rash lately, the girls are doing great, and mom and dad are holding up. We may get this whole baby thing figured out yet.

Babies dressed up for Halloween, sort of, thanks to Aunt Karen.



Big adventures for babies today. Jenn and I took them up to BeautyFirst so she could show them off to several people she knows up there, and then we took them to the mall. We were primarily there to buy a new washer and dryer, which we did from Sears, scheduled to be delivered Monday. I also got my hair cut, and we bought a couple of outfits from some baby clothes store. Jenn had to change both their diapers at various times, we fed them while we were eating lunch, a nice little 3-4 hour trip all told. Again, perhaps we'll be able to figure out this baby thing yet. Mental note though: Next time bring a stroller.

Having twin girls in a public place is interesting to say the least. Everyone sort of does a double take at a minimum, you hear a lot of "Oh look twins" type comments as they walk past you, and a lot of people can't help themselves, and have to ask about them. Are they twins, how much did they weigh, how old are they, etc. Maybe it's just the carseats (bright pink) that make it obvious, but something tells me that this will only get worse as we go. When they get a little older and can interact with people, we may just have to assume we won't be able to get out of any store in less than an hour.

I sent this via email to many, but for anyone I may have forgot to tell, we also have a Youtube site setup for videos of the girls. All of these are a little dated (girls were three weeks old this past Thursday), I need to take some more, but videos of babies sleeping really isn't that compelling. Keep that site bookmarked though, as any video I do take will be uploaded.