Food Storage

Scott and I have been married a little over 5 years now and it's always been in the back of my mind to get some food storage. We hear this counsel given over and over in church (if you're LDS), and I just kept making excuses as to why I didn't want to get food storage. Our apartment was too small, we didn't have enough money, etc, etc. Well, my excuses have finally run out and now this big burden can be lifted off of my chest because we finally have some food storage!!! This food would probably only last our family about a month if we're lucky, but if some natural disaster comes, we'll be prepared!! I'm going to continue to add more every time I go food shopping.....a can here, a bottle of water there.....so hopefully we'll eventually have 3 months of supply. I'm just so darn proud of myself for finally doing this, so I had to blog. We're sitting on a huge fault line here in Provo, so bring it on earthquakes!! I'm prepared!!

Baby Boot Camp Begins

Yet another post about the progress of my babies. No pictures this time, but you can enjoy the cute picture I took of the girls at the top of the blog. I'm sorry if this is boring to those reading it but I guess you don't have to read if it is. I really like writing these updates because it's fun to read back. I read back all the time on what was going on with Hannah after she was born, so I'm sure one day I'll read back on these updates as well. This week we started "Baby Boot Camp" with the girls. I have a book that is supposed to help your child sleep 12 hours through the night by 12 weeks old. You're aloud to start the process once your babies are 8 weeks old, which happened to be this week for us. I'm not doing the whole program because it's just too much scheduling, but I am doing part of it. The past 4 days have pretty much been heaven because I've been doing these things. What are they, you ask? Letting the babies cry. Yup.

On Sunday night I was bouncing Bailey from 8pm to 12am to get her to sleep. I was tired and my arms hurt and I was sick of bouncing her. Every time she'd fall asleep, I'd put her down and she'd wake up again. Scott did the same with Brynn that night, but he finally got her down around 11:30pm. It was that night that I decided that we were going to let the babies cry like the book says to do. So Monday we made the babies stay awake as long as we could in the afternoon and put them down in their cribs around 7:30pm. We let them cry themselves to sleep (although every 3 minutes we go in the room to pat their tummies and whisper that we're here to them). They both slept a good 6-7 hours after falling asleep and then 2-3 hour increments after that. They've both done that every night since then, and now they usually both fall asleep after only a minute or two of crying. It's AWESOME! I only have to get up twice with them at night versus the sometimes 3, 4, or 5 times that I was getting up. I am SO lucky because they are such good babies. The only times they really cry is when they are hungry, tired, or in their car seats. Occasionally they'll cry because of gas, but not very often.

Oh, and Bailey's rolled over 3 times already. I'm pretty sure they were accidents, but that's way earlier than Hannah did it so I was really surprised.

Anywho, so that's my update for the week.

As promised, here's the video of Brynn smiling. I can't believe she did it for me! What a little cutie!

Stuff

I've been on my own now for a week and a half. I was so scared to take care of three children by myself, but it actually hasn't been too terrible. Sometimes I just have to let one of the babies cry for a few minutes while I take care of the other one. I hate to see them cry but you gotta do what you gotta do to get through the day. Some days I feel like super mom, like yesterday when I took all three kids on a walk around the neighborhood by myself. Hannah rode her new tricycle while I pushed the girls in the stroller. 'I can totally do this whole 3 kids thing,' I thought. It actually turned out pretty good. Other days I feel overwhelmed and tired and wonder how I'm going to survive throughout the day. I certainly would not have been able to do all of this without this woman (my mother-in-law)

and this woman (my mom)


and these two girls




who let this girl come over and play a couple of times a week.
(Sorry, hope you don't mind me posting your pictures on my blog).

I especially could not do this all without this man:

He's such a good father!

I am lucky to have such kind people in my life:)

On another note, Bailey and Brynn have both started smiling. Here's a video of Bailey. I've only gotten Brynn to smile once for me. For some reason she seems to smile for everyone else but for me, it's all frowns :-(. Some time I'll get her on video smiling too and I'll post it. For now, enjoy the video of Bailey because she's so FRICKIN CUTE!

Matching Outfits!

There's nothing cuter than twins with matching outfits, so you will now get a plethora of pictures of my twins in matching outfits! They have many more cute outfits, but it's really hard to get pictures of them when one is not screaming as they are in this first picture.

Bailey looks a lot bigger than Brynn in the above picture. She does have a chubbier face, but the last time I got them weighed they were both 8 lbs 10 oz.

And here's a quick update on what we've been up to:

Scott went back to school about a week ago. We both decided that it would be best for him to only go part time this semester. I am going to need a lot of help these first few months but unfortunately that means that he's not going to graduate until next December. I feel like we've been in school forever, but hey, what's another 8 months? I know that he's exhausted and I feel bad for him, but I know that we'll get through this next year.

I am doing pretty well.....just exhausted all the time. My incision is healing nicely but unfortunately I have about 15 pounds to lose until I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight. It took me about 6 months to lose all of my weight with Hannah so I expect that to happen with this one.

(Hannah has blue teeth in the above picture because she had a blue Ring Pop right before I took it.)

Let me just say that I love this little girl, but Hannah has probably been the hardest part of this whole process. She loves her little sisters (and loves to clobber and kiss them) but I believe she is also jealous of them. She always wants me to hold her when I'm holding the babies. She wants us to swaddle her and bounce her like we do the babies and she even asked me if she could breastfeed. Um, no thanks. She's also gotten strep throat in the past couple of weeks and then last week she broke out with horrible hives for 3 or 4 days. She scratched and scratched them until she would start to bleed. We think she might be allergic to the antibiotic that she took for the strep throat. Those two sicknesses brought a lot of whining, crankiness, and disobedience. When she's not cranky and disobedient, she's actually a delight to be around (very kind and polite). I don't blame her for going through this rough stage. In fact, I feel really bad for her and have cried many times over the past 6 weeks because I want her to be happy. She's gone through a lot with us moving to a new house and having two new sisters that need our attention. I just hope that this phase passes soon.
Bailey has been a good breast feeder since the beginning and we're lucky because she'll take a bottle as well. She's growing tremendously, even though she spits up like crazy. She likes to grunt a lot in her sleep. Both of our girls have gone as long as 5 hours at night without waking up, but Bailey usually wakes up every 3 hours and Brynn every 4.
Brynn was not so good at breastfeeding at first. She would get so frustrated when she'd try to latch on that she'd end up scratching up her face terribly. I started pumping my milk and giving her a bottle because breastfeeding her became really difficult. Then about 2 weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to try breastfeeding her again because I want to have that special bond with her like I do with Bailey. It took a few days for her to get it, but now she almost exclusively breastfeeds. It makes me very happy. Both girls also get a tiny bit of formula throughout the day (like a couple of ounces). I'd like to only breastfeed them both (or pump milk) but sometimes I just feel like they are both still hungry, and then I need to tell myself that it's okay for them to get formula.

So that's what we've been up to lately. Oh, and here's a picture of all three of my girls doing tummy time;-).