Goodbye grandparents, back to twin parent reality!

We said goodbye to my parents this morning, they drove back to Montreal after being here for 3 weeks. It's been so wonderful having them here, we had a lot of fun, and really appreciated their tremendous help with the babies, and also doing things around the house. My dad fixed a lot of things for us, painted a bathroom, bought a lot of household items we didn't have, he was a huge help! It will be rough being back to just the two of us with the babies again.. especially since I've started taking dogs in again. It was nice having my parents here for the back-to-work transition. Now let's see how this working-from-home thing really works with twin babies.

More fun times with grand-papa and grand-maman

Grand-papa and Anjali

Grand-maman hanging up clothes on my brand new clothes line!

Grand-maman and grand-papa celebrating their 44th wedding anniversary with their grand-daughters

Girlies having fun

Chaya and grand-papa

Grand-maman and Anjali

44th wedding anniversary dinner made by me: squash-mushroom risotto, broccoli, lentil spread and eggplant spread on crostini

Anjali (left) and Chaya (right) playing

Silly Chaya

YEAH!

Mommy and Chaya in the baby bjorn

Dinner at mexican restaurant

Proud grand-papa!

Anjali's beautiful smile

Mommy at mexican restaurant (babies behind)

Vaccinations make very fussy babies

Our girls had their 2 month pediatrician check-up today, including their first round of vaccinations. Oh boy. I'm all for vaccinating my babies to protect them against dangerous diseases... but I wasn't ready for the side effects! Anjali especially seemed so miserable that evening, she cried and screamed almost nonstop for many hours. We had to hold them, or have them in slings the whole evening. If we'd find a comfortable position for them, they'd stop crying, but if we'd move even the slightest, they'd start screaming again. Poor things. It was definitely hard for mommy to see her babies suffering like that. They didn't have any fever though, I guess they just felt crappy in general.

Girls taking a nap after coming home from pediatrician

Grand-Papa with Chaya in a sling, trying to calm her (it worked!)

Mommy with Anjali, and Grand-papa with Chaya

Anyway, their checkup went very well. Chaya weighed 10 lbs 2.5 ounces, and Anjali was 10 lbs 4 ounces. Chaya is quickly catching up to her sister! This puts them at the 25th percentile for weights, which is quite normal since they were born almost a month early. Both their heights were also at 50th percentile. Their head measurements were both in the 50th percentile also. Anjali's head is still a bit uneven, but doc said to keep doing her neck stretches (oops!) and it should correct itself on its own. It's barely noticeable, and definitely no need for a helmet or anything like that. Chaya's foot is all better now. When I asked the pediatrician about it, she said if I hadn't mentioned it she wouldn't even have noticed it. Her foot is fine, and her ankle also is completely normal. Yay!

We spoke about my dairy-free diet, and to keep being diligent about it. Chaya still has had little tiny amounts of blood in her stool over the past few days, we're hoping it goes away totally. She wanted to do a blood test to see if she's anemic, and check her health in general. Turns out she's slightly anemic, which the doctor expected. They are both going on infant vitamins with added fluoride (no fluoride in Baton Rouge water) and iron. Babies generally go on vitamins and iron supplements at this age anyway, it's not anything out of the ordinary. They could also tell from the blood test that she shows an allergic reaction to my breastmilk, so it's pretty certain that this milk protein intolerance thing is for real. Boo. Was hoping to be told otherwise, but oh well, I'll keep drinking my soymilk and reading all the labels on the stuff we buy. Eating out is a bit more complicated, sure, waiters may tell you there's no dairy in a dish, but they might not be aware of all the dairy derivatives (like casein for example) that might be present in some foods. It's almost impossible to eat out without getting some dairy in there once in a while. Even a small amount will have an effect, and the protein can stay present in her little body for many weeks.

First night solo with the babies

Prosanta is away at a conference in Minneapolis for almost a week. My parents are still here visiting. I was going to have my mom sleep in bed with me to help me with the nighttime feedings, but then I wanted to give it a try on my own.. I could always go get her if I needed her help. I fed them around 10:40pm and 11:00pm before going to bed. Anjali woke up first, around 1:35am, fed her. Then, woke up Chaya to feed her right after. Chaya was a good girl and went right back to sleep after she was done. But Anjali decided to stay up until 3:20am. Fun times. I rocked her, sang to her, had the lights down very low, tried the pacifier, had her nice and swaddled,.. nothing worked. She just wanted to be wide awake. So I went online on Prosanta's laptop for a bit, with her on my lap, with her eyes wide open looking around. Thankfully she was calm and happy the whole time. After I finally got her to go down, Chaya decided to wake up 10 minutes later, around 3:30am. You can imagine my good mood by then. I didn't feed Chaya then though, I gave her back the pacifier, held her for a few minutes, and she went back to sleep. Alleluia! They both slept until 4:35am, fed both of them, and they both went back to sleep after. Chaya got up around 6:30am. I fed her, and then fed Anjali a few minutes later when she also woke up. Oh, forgot to mention, during Anjali's marathon awake time, she threw up twice all over herself (and mommy). We're not talking about fresh milk spit-up here, we're talking smelly deep down old rotten cottage cheese stuff. Yuck. All in all, I was able to handle both of them at once pretty well, they didn't both start crying at the same time or anything.. Just wish Anjali was a better sleeper. Hoping tonight little miss Not-Sleepy-Head decides to go back to sleep after feeding!

More beautiful smiles

Taking lots of pictures of our girlies smiling! It's so cute to see them react to us smiling and talking at them. They've also started making cute little cooing noises.

Anjali waking up from a nap in a very good mood

Anjali's shy little smile

No, she's not drunk

Chaya and her beautiful smile

Chaya's excited!

Chaya's cute little smile

Chaya smiling

Chaya

Nightswimming

Brought both girls in the pool tonight! We all went swimming, mommy, daddy, grand-papa and grand-maman. The pool is nice and warm during the summer. Anjali enjoyed it (despite the spit-up!), but Chaya was hungry, so she was a little cranky.

Daddy and Chaya

Daddy and Chaya

Daddy and Chaya

Grand-papa and grand-maman

Uh oh.. Chaya's not having fun anymore!

Grand-maman and Anjali

Daddy and crying Chaya

Mommy and Chaya

Grand-maman with Anjali, mommy with Chaya

Playmat fun together!

More fun on the playmat, together this time! The girls still don't really seem to notice or care about each other.. I guess they've been together for so long that it isn't anything exciting or surprising for them. ;)