We're Back!

Ok, I know its been months, and I just haven't had the energy to gather my thoughts and post something. Its 5am here now, and this is my best attempt at getting this blog up to date.

Lets start with the biggest news: THE TWINS ARE ONE! Holy monkey! We have one year old TWINS! It is still amazing to me that we were lucky to get TWO babies. I still have no idea when that will wear off.

The big guy is walking...or should I say RUNNING all day long! The little on, my little pajarito, is still a going at his own pace, but walking is definitely on the horizon. He cruises along anything he can hold on to, but is just hesitant to let go and try on his own. I've been taking his hands and walking with him, slowly releasing my grip so that he's really walking on his own and as long as his hands are touching mine, he is good, but as soon as I let go he goes down! Yesterday he was watching his brother jammin all over the place and he finally let go and took 2 steps on his own, so I know pretty soon we are going to be in big trouble. :)

They are both talking up a storm (in their own language of course) and I'm wondering if they do it on purpose to keep us guessing. In English they say: Mama, Nana, Toot (hahaha), Hi, Bye (or "Ba"), and they do the cookie monster laugh! Which totally cracks us up! The big guy is also saying "wow wow", which is how we refer to our dogs.

On the health front, we made it a whole year without them getting sick and then, not only did they catch something but I ended up in emergency with both of them (while my wife stayed home with the other) within a week apart - so NOT fun. The big guy had croup, which sounds scarier than it is and he was wheezing and uncomfortable, he even woke himself up from a nap struggling to breathe (hence the emergency room visit). They gave him a breathing treatment and steroids to help open up his lungs and within days he was good as new. Of course, I panicked wondering if the little guy was going to catch it, and how badly it would be for him given his lung issues. We tried our best to keep them separated, and disinfected everything, to no avail. Luckily, when he did finally get sick a week later, he didn't get croup, just a cold. I ended up taking him to the ER because he started having retractions again (where his breathing causes big indentations under his rib cage) which he hadn't done since he had been taken off the oxygen. I thought for sure we'd have to put him back on, but again, it looked scarier than it was. His oxygenation levels were in the mid 90's so he was getting all the oxygen he needed, just working harder to get it.

I was a wreck, mostly because we were so close to the official end of RSV season and the boys were doing so well. I had this silly notion that I'd be able to protect them forever, which proved impossible no matter what I did. I am happy that at least they were bigger and stronger, and survived just fine without having to be admitted into the hospital, but I don't want them to be sick again for a long LONG time. It is just too stressful, and I'm still exhausted from their being born! ha!

Now on to the only thing since pregnancy that I have been able to control, Breastfeeding. Yes, the boys are still drinking breastmilk exclusively (in addition to solid foods now) and have not had any cow's milk yet. I can't believe we made it to a year! I calculated that I have spent roughly 2300 hours of my life pumping! and that doesn't include the hours on end of nursing day and night.

I still nurse the big guy when we are together and the little guy gets bottles of expressed breastmilk from my wife. When I am at work they both get bottles from my mom with no problems. Since they are eating 3-4 meals a day, plus snacks, their milk intake has dropped to 20-25 ounces each, which is about half of what they used to drink. It has been so nice to not have the pressure of pumping 80-100 ounces a day!

My ultimate goal was June 12th (the babies' due date) since that is when they "really" turn one. So far, it looks like I'm on my way to achieving that goal, and then some. If I didn't have to pump and could just nurse I'd do it alot longer, but lugging my pumping gear, coolers, bottles, etc. to work everyday is really a pain in the butt, and I just don't know how much longer I can do it. So as of June 12th we will officially be transitioning over to cow's milk. Hopefully their little bodies can handle it and they won't have any adverse reactions to it. If all goes well, I will start decreasing my pumping as they increase their cow's milk intake and I think by August I will be done, for a total of 16 months of breastfeeding twins. Crazy! I never thought I'd make it and as we got closer to a year I started to set goals by the day rather than the week because I was just so exhausted.

Lastly, we took their one year photos with the same photographer from last time so I will be posting those shortly. They have both grown so much in the last 6 months, and are so much fun. We take them with us everywhere now, and they are such good babies. They eat, nap and play pretty much on schedule no matter where we are, so its been much easier to go places. We took them to get their first hair cut shortly after they turned one, which the little guy needed desperately (their photos are pre-haircut) and they didn't like it one bit! I was sad. They no longer look like babies, now they are little boys.