On Sunday, our friend (by way of 1928 Bungalow and former EP resident) Marsha stopped by to visit with the girls and see the house.  Marsha brought toys and books and helped out with a feeding and even changed a couple of diapers!  It was great to finally meet in person!

Sunday night found us loading the car (which took three hours, because it’s hard to function when babies are crying in unison) to head to Macon to visit Grandma Johnnie and Grandaddy Bill (okay, so both grandads are named Bill, but we’ll have to figure that out later).  Aunt Kathy came by to visit on Sunday night.  On Monday, honorary “aunt” Deidra came over with her son Elisha.  Deidra is expecting a little girl any day now, and so we all piled in the van to visit the Ocmulgee National Monument (aka “The Indian Mounds”), since Brandon had never been and because Deidra hoped walking a lot would induce labor (it didn’t).  Elisha, who is almost 9, was awesome with the girls and helped feed them, pushed the stroller, and sang them to sleep.  Hadley is in love with him and he says she is his favorite, although he admitted that Emerson was cute, too.  We had a nice long walk and the day was gorgeous.  We had to go “off road” with the stroller and it held up okay, although it doesn’t do so great in the grass.  Deidra actually introduced Brandon and I four years ago today, so it was fun to hang out on our “anniversary.”

On Monday night, Aunt Kathy came back to visit (she’s in love with the babies!) and brought Uncle Tom.  Grandma Johnnie made a great pasta with fresh tomatoes and grilled chicken, and then we all walked down to visit Great-aunt Mary, who lives around the corner.  Cousins Rosemary and Ken were there, as well, and while the girls were not on their best behavior (fussy and then asleep), we had a nice visit.  Then Uncle Bill and Aunt Phyllis showed up just as the girls were going to bed, but stayed around to visit with the grownups.  Around 11pm, Deidra sent word that she was possibly in labor and on her way to the hospital.  We’re waiting for word on whether or not little Soraya will make her appearance tonight or not!

Tomorrow we’ll visit Great-grandmother Allen (who turned 100 this year) as well as cousin Johnny and his twin girls (born in April).

Photos posted soon!

Here is Brandon’s attempt at creating a yin-yang photo

Last night the girls ate at 9:30pm, and went back to sleep around 10pm. They slept through until 2:30am, and woke alert but not hysterical. Yay!

About a week ago, Hadley discovered her mobile. We think she might have stared at it so long one night that she didn’t sleep for a whole two hours. I thought this was causing her new habit of being easier to put to sleep, but now I realize that because she has more periods of calm restfulness, she is able to focus on the mobile without getting overstimulated. Before last week, just a few minutes with a toy hanging over her head was too much and she would start crying.

Emerson is getting a little fatter! She hasn’t caught up to Hadley yet, but is getting little rolls of fat on her arms and legs, and her cheeks are definitely chubbier. Hooray!

Not so cute: Lady at Scott’s Antique Market, “You’re not over 40 are you? Because a friend of mine is 42 and she just had twins, too!”

The current winner is Twinevitable, unless someone has a better suggestion?

The Baby Brain app for tracking feedings, diapers, and more.

More photos have been posted at our photo site.

The Good

• Happy baby noises.  Hadley’s started making a little gurgling, quacking kind of noise.  Up until now, the girls have really only had screaming, crying, or quiet.  Hadley hasn’t quite figured out how to make this noise on purpose, I think, but it seems to just come out more and more often over the last few days.
• Baby smiles.  The girls are starting to stare at us and every now and then will smile in response to seeing our faces.  They are really focusing on things around them.  Emerson sees everything and loves it, while Hadley gets a little overwhelmed by too much visual stimulation. 
• Baby swings.  Our friend Laura loaned us hers and at first we didn’t think we’d use it.  Sometime around 4 weeks old, the girls got fussier in the afternoons and we pulled out the swing.  It worked so well, we went and bought another the next day!  We’ve actually acquired one more since then, so I guess I can go ahead and return Laura’s to her.  The two we have now are a little smaller than the original one and don’t stand out in the living room quite so much.
• Pacifiers.  Yeah, we weren’t going to use those, either.  Whatever.  The girls have (after spending a small fortune on trying different brands) finally settled on the MAM brand.  Their second choice is Avent (which is slightly more expensive), and third is Nuk.  Playtex and the Binky style are not well liked at all.  With the MAM’s, even Emerson has decided she can tolerate a pacifier now and then.
• Losing pregnancy weight.  The day we came home from the hospital (the girls were four days old), I weighed in at 168.  When I delivered them four days earlier, I was closer to 195!  Once I started losing more of the fluid I had retained, I lost even more weight–by two weeks after delivery I was down to 148 or so.  Right now I’m at 145, which means I lost 50 pounds, and I’m 20 pounds below what I weighed when I first got pregnant!
• Sleeping in separate cribs.  About a week ago, we started putting the girls in their cribs to sleep at night, and putting them in separate cribs.  They were outgrowing the co-sleeper and keeping each other awake.  Hadley likes to go to sleep quietly, where as Emerson likes to wiggle and squirm and make little noises until she gets comfy.  Emerson also likes to stick her legs out and sleep on her side, which meant she was poking Hadley in the ribs and waking her up.

The Bad

• Nestle Good Start formula with so-called “Gentle Proteins.”  This stuff is foul.  We finally tasted it after the girls kept spitting it back out (they would eat an ounce or two hungrily, and then start spitting it back out and crying).  It tastes very minerally and metallic, kind of like licking a nail.  We’re going back to Similac for the time being until we decide if we want to try swapping again.
• Stinky, gassy babies.  We thought they were stinky with the Similac.  Don’t get me started on how  quickly things went downhill once we tried the Good Start brand.  *shudders*
• Huggies diapers.  Yesterday Hadley started screaming while in her swing.  When I picked her up, the back of her outfit felt damp.  We’ve had Pampers leak a little when really, really full but they leak from the legs.  The Huggies actually leaked through the diaper!  I had to wash her swing cover because it was damp as well.  Today, we had a similar incident with Emerson.  Yuck!  Thank goodness we have more boxes of Pampers in the basement!
• Avent bottles.  They leak, too!  Enough said.
• No more breastfeeding.  As you might have guessed from the formula info, we’ve started feeding formula exclusively since the girls were 5 weeks.  If I knew then what I know now, things might have turned out differently, but by the time the girls latched on around 3 weeks, my milk supply was running low.  I tried fenugreek and Mother’s Milk tea, but without much success.  Had I been prepared for the fact that they probably wouldn’t latch on at first, and tried the fenugreek, etc. before I had c-section complications, then maybe it would have gone differently.  At any rate, I miss it and wish things had worked out differently.
• Feeding every 2-3 hours.  The girls are still eating every 2 or 3 hours, sometimes more often during the day.  At night, they seem to be going about 3 hours, but every now and then Hadley will sleep longer in the mornings–but only if we put her in the bed with us!  I think if either one was an only child, then they would sleep longer, but one still invariably wakes the other when hungry.  Hadley is just over 10 pounds now, and Emerson is just over 8 pounds, so we’re hoping that they will start sleeping longer and eating every 3-4 hours, and maybe, just maybe, sleeping 6 hours straight at night…hopefully sometime before Mommy and Daddy go completely insane from lack of sleep.

The Ugly

• My bellybutton.  Not that I plan on wearing a bikini ever again (since next to my bellybutton are some lovely stretch marks courtesy of Emerson spending her time in the womb curled in a ball), but my bellybutton kind of freaks me out.  Just as well that I still look a few months pregnant…hoping most of that goes away at some point.  Oh, and Sadie?  You were right–other things will never be the same again, either, and I have stretch marks there, too.  Sigh.
• Spit-up.  Especially of the projectile variety.  Emerson spits up a large amount every other day or so, and a couple of times in a row when she does.  And usually when you forgot to grab a burp cloth first.
• Babies screaming in tandem.  Yes, they’ve started crying at the same time.  For weeks, they barely noticed each other.  Now, when one cries, the other starts immediately even if five seconds ago she was just fine.  When the first one stops crying, the second one does, too–and usually looks a little confused since they don’t know why they were crying in the first place.