Jake and Abby: I have no idea where the time goes.

Did October even happen? It is amazing how fast the days go by! It's been over a month since my last update because...well, taking care of two babies is pretty time consuming. I have now survived a total of 4 nights with both babies while Jeff was out of town - two by myself, and then two looooong nights in a row where thankfully Ang came over to help out. Even just having someone to laugh with at 2am while both babies are squawking makes a huge difference! Solo nights aside, we're getting pretty good at our typical routine. Days for me are pretty easy now, and nights are tougher but we keep reminding ourselves that they won't be like this forever, and millions of parents have survived the sleep deprivation so we probably will too.

A typical day goes something like this:

Jeff leaves for work in the morning, and hopefully Ollie doesn't start barking because A) it wakes me up; B) it wakes one or both babies up; or C) it wakes us all up. Sometimes Jeff has time to squeeze in breakfast bottles for the babies before he leaves, and sometimes it's my job. We still have them on a roughly four hour schedule, but the four hours are different every day - so a 6am bottle today may mean a 7:30am bottle tomorrow.
Depending how much sleep I got the night before and how early the morning bottle is, I either try to catch a few more hours of sleep after they eat, or start the day in a seemingly never ending cycle of washing bottles and doing laundry. I couldn't figure out why there was so much of it until I realized that I now change clothes about 3 times a day, purely out of necessity. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that one! Babies are messy. Although I'm still not a fan of laundry, I don't mind washing bottles...which is good, because we use roughly 16 bottles a day.
If it has been a particularly rough night, my magic cure for not sleeping is as follows: giant chocolate chip cookie, chug a can of Coke (I know, this is a terrible breakfast), and then dress the babies in something adorable and take pictures of them. This is successful approximately 90% of the time in making me feel like a human being again.
The second bottle of the day includes some vitamin drops with iron, which smell gross and taste yucky so I consider it a success if we make it through these without major spit up on me.
At some point I take a shower and get dressed, and also put on makeup every day, partly because it makes me feel more like a "normal" person but also because I learned quickly that a shower is a great substitute for sleep when you don't have enough time for a real nap.
I know it's important to try to get out of the house sometimes, but we are still being super duper careful about germs so trips to Target, the grocery store, the mall, etc. are out, leaving our options for outings pretty limited. We have gone on some nice walks around the neighborhood - one time, two women on bikes passed us and yelled, "Are you tired?" and I yelled back, "Not yet!" (which was true at the time). We have also enjoyed visits to Cosley Zoo a few times, and I can already appreciate how nice it will be to have a free zoo that is a 5 minute walk away when the babies get older to really enjoy it. I have also sometimes selfishly loaded them in to the car so that I can go get whatever food sounds good to me, because actually preparing a meal for myself is about 7,325 on my list of priorities. To be honest? The babies don't care about getting out of the house, and most of the time during the day I don't either. If I have a break in the action, give me a good book and some time on the couch with Ollie, and I'm pretty content!
There is usually a stretch of 1-2 hours in the afternoon where everyone is fed, the house is reasonably clean, the laundry is either done or in progress, and there isn't a lot for me to do except relax. Typically this is when Ollie starts demanding to go outside, to get a treat, to sit on my lap, etc. and as soon as he is satisfied, one or both babies starts making noises - not crying, but fussing enough that I'm up and down replacing pacifiers or talking to them at what feels like 30 second intervals. There are enough days though that I actually squeeze a nap in here that I am always hopeful it will happen!
Jeff usually gets home in time for us to do "bedtime" together. I call it "bedtime" because we have yet to get anything together that is a routine, which I keep hearing is important but mostly just sounds like a lot of work. I understand there are people that give their babies baths every day. I believe these people are insane, because my children hate to be naked, hate to be cold, and hate to cry, so baths are not quite the relaxing luxury for them that they would be for me. Usually we just do bottles, swaddle blankets, maybe a book and a little rocking, and then cross our fingers and pray that they drift off to sleep with no meltdowns.
Usually our first attempt at bedtime is pretty successful, leaving us a little time to either eat together and watch a little TV, or if we are especially tired just crawl in bed at 8:00pm and try to get some sleep before the night time circus begins!
In the good old days (about two weeks ago), it was easy to feed, change, and soothe both babies back to sleep in an hour, so we took turns at night so that we each got a block of sleep. Now, Abby is *usually* good for that, and has actually started sleeping some longer stretches at night which is amazing!....but Jake is another story. There is at least one nighttime bottle - and sometimes two UGH - where he just. won't. sleep afterward. For awhile we thought he was still hungry so we would keep offering him a little more milk, and a little more milk, until he got sleepy enough to put down. It turns out this was not a good solution - we were overfeeding him which we learned when he started projectile puking during the day and we realized he had gained a whopping 3 pounds in 2 weeks! So now, we employ an assortment of baby sleep solutions - swaddling, swing, white noise, pacifiers, rocking, patting, shushing, ANYTHING that will calm him down. What inevitably does it? Sleep on or next to one of us. I swore I would be a parent that never does this. I now realize that if you say "I will never..." before you are actually a parent, you will inevitably end up doing that very thing (see also: pictures of my children in matching outfits).
Somehow we survive the nights, and even when they seem painful at the time - Jake shrieking at 2am is a sound that you really have to hear to appreciate how crazy loud it is - it doesn't seem so bad during the day when they're all cute and cuddly and magically fall asleep within seconds. The days of sleeping through the night seem like a glorious mirage in the distance, and I promise that when they actually get here I will never, ever, EVER take my sleep for granted again!

So, we're surviving. Most days I actually feel like we're doing great. Jake and Abby are starting to have more awareness of everything around them - reaching for toys, watching us as we move around, looking at each other sometimes which is beyond cute - and every time they do something new I am amazed. Abby rolled over the other day like it was nothing, and I was so shocked I almost pushed her back over to make her do it again. We have been told to expect that they'll hit their developmental milestones somewhere between their actual age (3 months) and their adjusted age (1 month), but I'm trying not to stress about it because I figure they'll do things when they do them. We try to get in some tummy time every day, and we talk to them and sing to them all the time, and generally just hope that we're doing enough that we aren't causing any permanent damage. We are still waiting for those first intentional smiles, and I swear if they are directed to anyone but me, NO ONE is getting a car for their 16th birthday.

I have learned a lot about being a parent in the almost two months that Jake and Abby have been home, things people always tell you but you don't really get until it happens to you. Like when you think to yourself, my babies are so big! that your heart can break and fill at the same time. That some days a little help sounds helpful, but when I think about missing out on a bottle or a diaper change it reminds me of all of the ones that I missed out on in the NICU, and I just can't do it because I don't want to miss any more. Now I understand why bleary eyed mothers wait months to leave their kids with a babysitter, which is completely illogical but now makes perfect sense to me. Even the thought of it makes me feel panicky. (Maybe I'll rest easier after seeing some smiles, so I know for sure I won't miss out on the first ones!) I remember my sister-in-law Cari (who is, by the way, an amazing mother) telling me that she missed my nephew Jimmy when he was sleeping. As a 25 year old who valued sleep above all else (necessary when you go out 2-3 times a week), this was crazy to me because right after this she told me she had gone for MONTHS not sleeping more than 3-4 hours at a time. What???! No way. But you get used to it, just like the millions of parents before you got used to it. If I slept 4 solid hours at this point, I could probably be awake for days and feel just fine. Being a parent is HARD! It's a lot of work with very little specific feedback on whether or not you're doing a good job. But, I'm a hard worker, and this may be the hardest job I've ever had but that also makes it so amazingly deeply satisfying in the moments when I feel like I'm doing it really well.

So, here's what we have been up to the past few months...

Two months old!

It took us some time to warm up to the photo shoot...

Okay, A LOT of time to warm up to the photo shoot...

....but we got there in the end. I'm glad everyone likes this picture, because it is the only one out of the almost 100 I took of the two of them that turned out well!

Sonny Acres for pumpkins, Cosley Zoo for animals, and other fun stuff