100 Days…

From the Twin-Daddy

As of today we break the 100 day mark to our minimum goal of 36 weeks.  There is a 50-50 chance that within the next hundred days we will jump into all the insane and bleary-eyed bliss of parenthood.  I’m not certain why but the prospect of counting down from 100 is intriguing and exciting to me.

This week we are looking at new rental houses, and we hope to have something picked out by Friday.  We could end up moving as early as Memorial Day if everything goes well.  I know exactly why the prospect of packing my house and moving my pregnant wife is not intriguing or exciting to me.

Seriously, we were initially not very happy about it, but our attitude may be swinging in the other direction.  By moving, we may get more space for the family and end up a little closer to the people and things in Sacramento that we like.  Our commute should be almost the same so that is something to be happy about.

Learning Strange Skills

Tonight is the socially awkward parenting class about breastfeeding, and once again we hit special challenges in this regard.  Normally, a mom can hold the child before her in her arms.  It’s idyllic, serene, and practically an inspirational gift card.  It is so sweet you want to hug a kitten.

My wife will have to use a double-football grip with one kid snugged up under each armpit and their heads poking out in front like little milk-thirsty groundhogs.  I expect it will be harder to be discreet with a carefully placed blanket when you have two hungry boys and no free hands.   It means that semi-public feedings are probably not an option for us.  That is perhaps less idyllic and more rugged frontier-chick mothering.

I know you’re trying to picture how this works and it’s probably an entertaining mental picture.  I like to liven it up by imagining that she is running towards the end-zone at the same time.

She’s on the twenty!

She’s on the ten!

Touchdown Twin-Mommy!!

The crowd goes wild!!

The boys are doing their traditional end-zone belch!!

She certainly has some skills with those taa-taas!!

Babies Countdown – The Double Header

127 days until September 8

• Today is our final child birthing class.
• Wednesday, May 5 is our next OB-GYN appointment.
• Wednesday, May 12 is our next appointment with the Perinators.
• Thursday, May 20 and the twins become viable as early as 24 weeks.
• Thursday, June 17 is Homefree Day. 90% of twins born at 28 weeks survive and that number only gets better from there on out.
• Thursday, August 12 and we hit our goal of 36 weeks minimum. From here on the twins could come at any time.
• Thursday, September 9 and we hit 40 weeks. This is our due date even if we expect the twins to possibly come sooner.
• 4 Weeks Post Delivery – Look for baby smiles.
• Sometime After the Delivery – 4.5 months of the Twinsanity Interval.

Last night we got back from the baby-ninja’s clinic and watched our latest ultrasound video.  Alex was laying across Dominic’s chest, and the two were wriggling around and having a good time.  These two are getting to know each other, and you can see them interacting now as they push back and forth trying to get comfortable.

We watched a National Geographic video this week on multiple births which indicated that once a multiple becomes aware of the other child(ren) in the womb, they play games together, and they may still play these games as toddlers.  That is so cute you may need to take a break to rub a dog’s belly.

The two boys are highly concordant, which means they are very close to the same size, and their growth is still ahead of schedule:

• Alexander
  • 432 grams
  • 0.952 pounds
  • 21 weeks and 5 days of growth
• Dominic
  • 430 grams
  • 0.948 pounds
  • 21 weeks and 4 days of growth

Concordance = 99.54%

Note: You calculate concordance by dividing the smaller weight by the larger one to find a percentage.

430/432 = 0.9954 = 99.54%

We are very happy that Dominic and Alexander are growing together at the same rate, and all indications are that we have two healthy and happy kids in there.

Video of the guys at 20 weeks and 4 days

From the Twin-Daddy:

Week 20 – Monkeys, Frogs, and Ducks

Twin Day has come and gone here again and we got a funny surprise from the doctor last week. Apparently we have another ultrasound with the baby-ninja (Dr. Hershey) and they wondered why we haven’t scheduled it. (Perhaps we were to sense this intuitively or something.)

The nice thing about another ultrasound is that it provides us with a decent number of checks on our growth rate over the next 8 weeks to watch out for Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome.  As of today we are at 20 weeks with our boys growing strong and ahead of schedule on the growth curve. After 28 weeks we can all breath easier aboout TTTS.  Dr. Hershey recommended ultrasounds every two weeks and this is how our actual schedule breaks out:

• April 5, 2010 – Ultrasound with Dr. Hershey
• April 14, 2010 – Ultrasound with the Perinator
• April 15, 2010 – very quick ultrasound to check heart rate with OB-GYN
• May 5, 2010 – Ultrasound with OB-GYN
• May 12, 2010 – Ultrasound with the Perinator

You can see we had an almost 3 week gap in there which has suddenly been filled with an appointment with Dr. Hershey on Monday, April 26. This means our largest gap in the monitoring of the tummy-monkeys will be about a week and a half. When we reach June 17, that means we are largely clear of the danger period and the twins could be delivered in an emergency if necessary anywhere from there until September 9 which is our best guess due date.

Frogs, Ducks, and Monkeys

With the Spanish swordplay articles out of the way I should also mention that while neither Mary or myself would consider ourselves too thematic or plugged into fashion, we’re looking at frogs and ducks as our general theme for the nursery and baby stuff. Mary has also started calling them the tummy-monkeys so monkey stuff will get a kind eye as well. We are taking steps to get registered, but with the double baby bump developing so much faster than it would during a singleton birth, Mary’s energy level isn’t what it would normally be.  (That and we may be packing up all our stuff and moving to a new house.)

We may try to get registered this weekend, but with a large collection of family and friends saving baby-stuff for us, sorting it and deciding what we need takes some time.

The Diaper Tsunami

It may be unromantic but we are certainly going to need piles and piles of diapers. For a moment, let me release the inner-geek with a tip of the hat to John and Teresa who first warned us about the joys of twin diapering.

Facts:

• 1 meal every three hours per child with 24 hours in a day.
• Each child will be changed at least once per meal.

Calculations:

24 / 3 = 8 meals per day per twin

= 8 diapers per day per twin

That is 16 changes a day and John and Teresa were estimating 20 diapers per day is a good bet.  Any engineer with a calculator is going to immediately extrapolate this out a bit.

1 week = 140 diapers

1 month (30 days) = 600 diapers

1 year = 7300 diapers!!

(I may need to go lay down for a bit with a cold towel on my head.)

Just looking at this amazing number you can see that diapers are going to be something we will desperately need. Gift cards to Wal-mart, Target, and other diaper-rich places will hopefully keep our boys from running naked through the streets. (I say “hopefully” because they are related to my brother and there’s no telling what genetic code might be passed on that promotes nude sprinting.)

Baby-Wrapping

Knowing the diaper tsunami was coming, at Mary’s birthday party I challenged my male friends to a “baby-wrapping” contest at her birthday dinner and, like true primates, all the men competed against each other to impress the females with our prowess as possible mates. In order to better simulate a late night diaper changing the men wrapped the babies blindfolded.

There may be some people that say stealing another man’s baby and hiding it under the table is unfair.  Honestly, if he wanted to pass on his genetic material to the next generation, he should have guarded his baby a little better.  After the initial baby-theft incident, the men became much more cautious hovering over their babies with a protective guard position or pinning the baby to the table while changing it.  Some men would scurry off with their babies to change them in the relative safety of a chair instead of the more dangerous table region.

This contest proved that the recent Dads (Tom, Eric, and Jim) were the ones to beat and Eric eventually won the day edging out these two with a photo finish.  Truly he was much adored by the ladies.  Several of the younger men performed well too and may be getting additional interest from the female population as a result of their manly demonstrations.

Babies Countdown – The Double Header

134 days until September 9

• Today, April 26 is 20 weeks and 4 days and an ultrasound with the Baby-Ninja.
• Tuesday, April 27 is the Sacramento Mothers of Multiples Meetup.
• Tuesday, May 4 is child birthing class number 5.
• Wednesday, May 5 is our next OB-GYN appointment.
• Wednesday, May 12 is our next appointment with the Perinators.
• Thursday, May 20 and the twins become viable as early as 24 weeks.
• Thursday, June 17 is Homefree Day. 90% of twins born at 28 weeks survive and that number only gets better from there on out.
• Thursday, August 12 and we hit our goal of 36 weeks minimum. From here on the twins could come at any time.
• Thursday, September 9 and we hit 40 weeks. This is our due date even if we expect the twins to possibly come sooner.
• 4 Weeks Post Delivery – Look for baby smiles.
• Sometime After the Delivery – 4.5 months of the Twinsanity Interval.

On Friday afternoon, I had intended to write a quick blog about some other aspects of the past week, but I had only typed about one line when Puck called to share some news with me – another curve ball in our life. First, let me make it clear that our boys are fine; they’ve been having a good time doing somersaults and trying to push my bellybutton out to make more room.

What’s the curve ball? The fellow who manages the house we are renting called to say that the owner had lost his job and was wanting to sell the house. While our contract is until the end of July, it sounded to Puck like they would like to have us out sooner than that if possible, and we would also have the option of purchasing the house. While the house is nice, I’m not sure we are quite ready to buy a house, and I don’t know that this house would be the one we would choose to buy. We haven’t heard what price they would want for the house though.

My initial reaction? Well, I am pregnant, and I’ve noticed that I don’t handle stress nearly as well as I used to. After being stunned a bit numb for awhile, there was a period of tears just slipping out – not sobbing, just tears. I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to stay up with all my “should’s” of late, and this just felt Herculean.

Silver lining: Still, given a little time along with starting a little research and talking to Puck when he got off work, I started to feel that this could be a good thing. As always, it will be difficult to find a place that will rent to us with our darling Great Dane and that will match our criteria for price, size and proximity to Davis, but we might be able to find a place with the space allocated in ways that are better for us. Also, if they want us out earlier, then we could move in May or June instead of July (which would be a bit too close to when our boys might arrive for our comfort). Plus, it is now a good thing that I never got around to hanging all our pictures and photos, that we still have boxes we never unpacked, and that we stored all our storage/moving boxes in the garage (though my nesting moment breaking down the last batch of empty boxes seems a bit counterproductive).

Concerns: It will undoubtedly be frustrating for me not to be able to participate as much in the moving process (especially the loading and unloading). Puck is talking about possibly taking a week off work to get us moved after we find a place, and I hate for him to use that week to move us instead of having it to spend with our boys when they arrive. Though I suppose the first concern is finding the time to search for a place and then finding a place.

An interesting life: Still, even when unexpected curve balls come our way to make our life “interesting,” I can take consolation and joy in sharing this journey with Puck. Somehow, we will make it all work, and we are lucky to have the love and support of our family and friends who make life so much more sunny, fun and meaningful.

P.S. Mom, the dark purple flowers in the window box have bloomed beautifully this spring with one of the pink flowers making a showing and the antique lavendar still hanging in there. I’ll try and get a photo of it tomorrow!

Our niece Kate loves cats. Recently, she drew a lovely picture and wrote a short story about her cat Crystal.

Kate

We thought it might be interesting to interview Crystal the Cat, and we called Papa who lives with Crystal to see if he could help us out. We weren’t expecting much beyond a ‘meow’ or two, but when we explained the purpose of the call, Papa seemed very happy to help. In fact he claimed that he could easily translate for us.

Me: Papa, nobody can speak to cats. This is silly.
Papa: I do it all the time.
Me: That’s not what I meant. Nobody can understand what cats are saying.
Papa:You’ve never used an iPhone have you?
Me: No… but…
Papa: Then you should know that I have a program on my iPhone that lets me translate my cats’s meows into English, Spanish, or Texan.
Me: I don’t know about this… it seems fishy.
Papa: I do have a Ph.D. in chemistry.
Me: Well… okay then.

With that Papa fired up his iPhone, and we began the interview with Crystal the Cat.

Me: Hello, Crystal the Cat. I’m very pleased to be interviewing you today.
Crystal: Meooowrr!
Papa: She says it is nice to speak with you too.

Me: Crystal, how did you come to live with Papa and Grandma?
Crystal: Meooowrr!
Papa: She says that she adopted Papa, Grandma, and their 6 dogs as her new family.

Me: Papa, I can’t tell that this ‘meow’ was any different from the last one. Are you sure this is working?
Papa: Incredible isn’t it? Those guys at Apple really are amazing.

Me: Umm, okay… Crystal, why would you pick a family with 6 dogs?
Crystal: Meow… Mew.
Papa: She says that dogs aren’t really scary. If you can get past the slobber, they really are quite nice. Plus, other cats don’t mess with you if you have 6 dogs as your best friends.

Me: Where do you live in the house?
Crystal: Meow.
Papa: She says she initially chose a drawer in my workshop. It was the perfect place to have her baby kittens because if she needed an extra screwdriver, wrench, or hammer, it was right there and easy to get. My human Kate helped me pick out names for my kittens Pearl, Cloudy, Tiger, Tom, Juliet, Romeo, and Crazy.

Me: You got all that from “Meow”?
Papa: Yep. Cats compress their speech a lot, and it saves plenty of time.

Me: Crystal, could you describe your relationship with Kate?
Crystal: Prrr Prrr Prrr Prrr.
Papa: Kate makes her Purr. Kate’s her human even though they don’t get to live together all the time.
Me: I think I got that one. I might actually be starting to believe this works.

Crystal: Meowrr meow.
Papa: She says she likes it when Kate visits because she gets to play with her. The kittens like her a lot too. They enjoy exploring the backyard with her.

Me: Do all of your kittens get along with each other? Do you like living with Papa and Grandma?

Crystal: Meowrr Meowrr Prrr.
Papa: She says they all love living with Papa and Grandma because they always have good food and now can come in the house to explore and cuddle. Some of the kittens have found their own homes, but they all get along. For example, Tiger and Romeo are best friends, and they love hanging out together.

 

Me: I was wondering if Crystal the Cat has any advice on how best to reform the financial regulatory system to prevent future predatory lending behavior, speculation by banks into high-risk investments, and the rebundling of toxic assets. In addition, I was hoping she might comment on the possibility of the job market improving.
Crystal: Zzzzzz
Me: What did she say?
Papa: She fell asleep. I guess that ends the interview.