Brandich, Party of Five!: April 2015

Spring has sprung!!

8 Months old and in somewhat matching clothes

I don't know where to begin this month. It feels like forever since I last posted and I feel like so much has happened! It was a very hard month (one of the hardest since month 3) the babies have been very exhausting and overwhelming(they are just not very content unless they are held). We started out with some very weary nights a couple weeks ago but since then we are doing better at night and everyone can usually stay in their own room. The babies have outgrown their one size fits all sleep sacks and had to move up to the next size which appears to be one of the things helping with their sleep. They both became tummy sleepers this month too! We always lay them down on their backs but because they are pros at rolling, they are usually on their tummies most of the night and wake up looking like seals on the beach, which is actually pretty adorable. Austin had no interest in sleeping on his stomach so this is a new experience for us.

Happy St. Pattys Day, we are slightly Irish

Tummy sleeper

We briefly put Logan back on Nutramigen because he was always fussy but weren't convinced that was the problem and he is on normal formula again. It's quite the guessing game these days, formula, possible teeth, who knows, they are just super crabby! Both babies have been chewing like crazy and I think I see teeth coming but you just never know. Austin chewed for 9 months before a tooth arrived at age 1!! Logan is progressing by leaps and bounds. He is sitting up on his own with the occasional drop backwards, he can maneuver himself on the ground by rolling and scooting and managing some complex Yoga moves. This week he readily gets on his knees and rocks, it won't be long now until we have a crawler. He babbles dadada but I don't know if we will say it's his first word. He has started holding his own bottle which is extremely liberating for me to hand him a bottle and I can feed Kelsey at the same time. He is also able to use a sippy cup of water during meal times. Speaking of meal times, the babies have had lots to eat this month, those being apple, peas, green beans, millet, peaches, avocado, zucchini, tahini and plums and yogurt. They don't care for the green vegetables and protest by gagging and spitting. Luckily, I found that the Tahini (ground sesame seeds) similar to natural peanut butter is a good flavor masker and they eat their peas and green beans mixed with it.

Playing together

Morning self fed bottle

Kelsey has had a busy month. Her topical Timolol unfortuantely had no affect on her hemangioma so we are moving to the Propranolol. Because she had some heart issues in the NICU we had to have an ECG aka EKG to clear her to be safe to take the meds. The ECG did come back with some irregularities so we had to take her in for an Echocardiogram (heart Ultrasound). She did really well and her heart is just fine so she can take the medicine which will be twice a day for 6 months to a year. As for development, she has been behind Logan about a month with her new tricks and is fine with just rolling around and sitting with assistance. She weighs 16+ pounds and Logan is nearly 19 pounds, both being considerably smaller than Austin was at 8 months (24lbs). Despite being small they have tripled their birth weight by age one just like Austin did, an uncommon thing to do!!!

Drake and Ellee came to visit during Easter break and I found this sweet message after they left!

Kelsey all hooked up for her Echocardiogram

I started work breifly. I had Claire who is 5 months old on Mondays and Fridays for March. She was on a waiting list for daycare and we expected her to start in June but they had a cancellation and she started this week so I am back to the drawing board. It was a good opportunity for me to see if I could manage another child and I did fine. My job hunt has begun again, I am back on Care.com searching for part time infants.

Grandma finally got a picture holding both babies

I recently went buck wild with a new project! While filling out the twins baby memory books (yes I have time and yes they are all filled in)I came to the family tree page and was stumped that I didn't know some of the data needed to complete the page! This sent me on a family history whirlwind. I was able to track down my info but I went many steps further and decided to collect as many generations of photos that I could get my hands on! Once they were found I copied and printed them out for a family tree wall in our house. We are so lucky that I have 7 generations of photos on my side and 6 generations for Paul's side (if you count us and the kids)! I am glad I did it and we learned some really neat things along the way. A couple being that my grandparents lines both date back to Koblenz, Germany and that Paul's side is partly Jewish and arrived from Russia! Combined, our children are German, Polish, Irish, Hungarian and Russian! We may have some other nationalities too that I haven't dug up yet!

My finished family tree wall of photos

As for their schedule, we are kind of all over the place this month. They wake up regularly at 8:30 and have a bottle, from there it gets sloppy except that they eat about every 2 hours and take only 30 minute naps at a time. I have tried larger meals to stretch it but they only eat little bits often. I have tried keeping them up to make a longer nap possible but that doesn't work either. They are downright high maintenance babies! Luckily, Austin is easy but because we are pushing his speech development, I still don't manage to get much education time with him. *We did have two break throughs this week for Austin. One, we got him to wear his music headphones at the OT for listening therapy and just today he signed more and said wawa (water). I know that doesn't seem like much for a 3 year old but for him it is!!! Most days Austin doesn't nap which gets him in bed around 8 p.m. and the babies go down about 10:30. I really don't see any freedom in my near future.

Austin at his OT with his headphones

Indians Home Opener day and playing with his sister

We had a round of sickness this week too. Paul had a nasty cold. Kelsey had a snot nose. Austin spiked his first ever fever on Monday but it was brief and have no idea why. Logan woke up Tuesday with croup again and was on a steroid and his nebulizer for wheezing. I appear to have my seasonal spring allergies so it's been a fun snotty week I tell ya! On a good note we had a very nice Easter weekend visiting our families and enjoying play time with cousins and yummy food! The weather has been decently nice so we can get out a bit more but I am looking forward to even nicer weather for us to all unleash some built up steam!!!