I blinked, and suddenly Julianne and Henry are four-and-a-half months old.
Honestly, I don’t know where the time went.
I feel like there’s been this snowball effect in how quickly the changes are coming. Henry started babbling first, quite a while ago, with Julianne following not long after. They love to tell me squeaky, animated, smiley little stories during the day now (and groan away when it’s nap time ;)).
Just last Monday (less than two weeks ago) Henry turned from his back to his front for the first time, and he’s been taking advantage of his new-found skill ever since. Almost every nap and overnight is now on his tummy, which at first freaked his poor dads out. We of course are always putting him to bed on his back, but he flips to his front pretty much right away, pops in his thumb, and conks out. We’ve been watching the video baby monitor like crazy to make sure he’s got his head to the side so he can breathe properly, and so far so good on that front.
Julianne can turn about 85% of the way from back to front, but she still gets stuck on her right arm and can’t quite complete the turn yet, but I’m sure she’s not far behind. In the meantime, she does a lot of sleeping on her side, with her legs in scissor kick formation. Julianne has the most amazing all-gums smile that Matt and I just live for. She smiles slightly less often than Henry (and he has a megawatt smile), so when you get a big smile out of her you really feel like you’ve hit the lottery.
We’ve been all about organization and planning with sleep training and daily scheduling, and consequently the kids are really quite content and hit their feeding and sleeping marks well throughout the day. They now feed about every four hours, starting around 7 a.m., with final bottle around 7 or 7:30 p.m. Two hours after a feeding they go down for a nap, sleep for about two hours, and then are ready to feed again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Once the twins are in bed for the night, they sleep until around 2 a.m or 3 a.m., then I feed them a bottle, and they sleep through to about 7 a.m. That means they usually get in a 6-7 hour sleep stretch overnight, which is pretty good. They’re also up to five-ounce feedings (150 mL), and Julianne, who’s a little shorter and lighter than Henry, can sometimes eat more than her brother. She’s a growing girl. 🙂
Having the kids on such a good schedule has made my life as an at-home dad pretty manageable. They hit nap time and Daddy can throw in some laundry, do a load of dishes (and bottles–oh, the bottles!), and sometimes get in a little Dad time (a few pages of a novel or a magazine, or a sandwich and a few minutes of a TV show on Hulu).
At their last check-up (at four months and one week), Julianne weighed 12 lbs. 12 oz. (5.75 kg) and was 23.25 inches tall (59 cm). Henry weighed 14 lbs. (6.35 kg) and was 24.75 inches tall (63 cm). They’re both healthy and doing well, and (knock on wood!) haven’t been sick yet.
They’ve both grown out of the Kirkland Size 1-2 diapers, and are now both in Huggies Size 2 diapers. Henry will probably be graduating to Kirkland Size 3 pretty soon, though.
The other day Matt and I went to a Carter’s store in Queens and kind of accidentally had a Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman-style baby clothes shopping spree. We bought 6-month sizes, all warmer stuff for the cool autumn weather that’s creeping in. When we were picking the clothes out I was thinking to myself, “What are these, toddler clothes? They’re huge! They won’t fit the kids until Christmas!” And then we got home, tried them on the kids, and they pretty much fit. My heart broke a little bit. The clothes are cute, and the kids are happy and warm, but they’re getting so big.
I know. We’re going to be saying that a lot, I’m sure. I’ll try not to sound like a broken record.
Other than that, things are going pretty well. More soon! I’ll try not to let time slip away from me like that again. But, you know, things have been a little busy. 😉
—Josh
New Dads on the Block 