Grunt 'n' Squeak

Holy Crap, You're Cute!

So when my sister Jenny was in town after the boys were born, she heard Amy say to one of the boys "Holy crap you're cute!"  It made Jenny laugh to hear her put it that way, but it's true, and here's the proof:

 

We took the boys to get pictures taken of their Halloween costumes.  For the first half an hour, it was fun, but then it just got tedious for all involved.  Six-week old children are not easy to photograph.  They don't smile on command, if at all, and they can't sit up.  Mostly they cry, and must be heavily manipulated by their persistant mothers to get something decent.  And it doesn't help that there are two of them.  If one isn't crying and is looking in the right direction, it is inevitable that the other one is doing something to ruin the shot.  We got a few decent ones, though, and are so excited about their cute costumes. 

Happy Halloween!

Red or not?

**edited to note that this post was really written on the 9th, but it took me this long to upload the picture for it.  I'm a dork, and I'm busy, what can I say.

Every day I look at the boys I try to decide what color their hair will be.  I am bouncing back and forth between red and blonde, though the truth will probably lie somewhere inbetween those two.  I'm pretty sure in most of their pictures what little hair they have looks fairly blonde, but then a picture like this creeps in, and there is no denying how red those little tufts look.

We took the boys to Costco yesterday.  That was a fun adventure.  They behaved well...stayed asleep the whole time, but it was a fun little exercise in "guess who's the mommy".  I was pushing the cart, and Amy was pushing the stroller.  Twins just naturally attract a little extra attention, and it was  fascinating watching women approach Amy to take a peek in the stroller and ask her all about her beautiful babies.  It's a little bit strange taking that back seat as far as the role of "mom" goes, when I have been the focus of all the mom attention up until now, just by default.  I have to admit that there is some internal struggle when you want your partner to truly be embraced and a full-fledged mommy by herself and others, but you also want to jump in and get that credit for having carried those twins, gone through the birth, and now are the one with the nipples that look like ground hamburger.  I did my best to let her field the baby questions, to let her be the mom, and to bask in the pride that I have in our family.  She did a wonderful job showing off our children and 

Two cute for words....

...which is good, because I haven't had enough sleep to put together a post that makes a bit of sense.  The boys are not sleeping regularly at night.  It's possible they've hit some sort of growth spurt that is making them hungry pretty much every fifteen minutes, and all that nursing is taking its toll on my sleep and on my already-sensitive baby-feeding girly parts.  It also doesn't help that poor Amy still has to go to work and function behind the wheel of a very big truck most days.  So I do my very best to let her get sleep while I work on feeding and settling the boys.  I still have to get her up to help me when one or the other of them starts wailing while I'm glued to his brother, trying to get a feeding done.  She's pretty good at popping a binky in their mouths and cuddling them in bed until they both fall asleep again.  Then when I get the first one settled, I'm able to steal the second one away from her to start the process all over again. I can't imagine the monumental amount of sleep mothers of singletons must get!

I've had to give in and feed them a bit more formula the last couple of days, either because they seem to be starving despite my best breastfeeding efforts, or because I'm so sore and exhausted that I just need a fast and easy way to get them what they need.  This tends to work well with Ben who seems to go back and forth fairly seemlessly between the bottle and the breast.  Grayson, on the other hand, seems to have a hard time with the switch.  If I get a good latch with him a couple of times on the breast, he can't seem to figure out how to suck the stuff out of the bottle.  And once he catches on to the bottle well, he seems to have a hard time getting latched on the next time I breastfeed him.  I'm hoping this will improve with age and size, because it really is a big help to be able to pass them off to someone else to get them fed once in a while. But I don't want to give up on the breastfeeding just yet, either. 

In other news, we are shopping for health insurance for me and the boys.  Amy already has a private insurance plan, but of course we can't be added to her plan as family members, what with the no marriage business.  This wouldn't be a big deal, except that this means we have one deductible for her, one for me, and one for the boys if we buy another private family plan for me and the boys.  I added the boys to my Cobra coverage, and the premium went up to $825 a month!  So there is pretty much no way that we will be able to afford that for any length of time.  Not to mention the fact that Cobra is only a short-term solution, for it will run out eventually.  So we are shopping for a plan, and hopefully will be able to find coverage and not have to change doctors once we make the switch.  I think I've found a network that has the boy's doc and my OB/GYN, both of whom I love love love.  The boys doc is the main concern right now.  I don't want to switch from the pediatrician we chose, because he really is great.  So hopefully I will have good news about the insurance front soon.  Not that forking over hundreds of dollars a month is good news, but I want coverage, ya know?