Monday, August 09, 2010

Update with photos. Feel free to skip to the photos.

So graduation was Saturday. I totally didn't go though. I meant to attend in SecondLife, but didn't end up doing that either. Instead I played with Nicky and we cleaned his room.

But I finally got around to checking my grades Monday. For the two classes I just finished, the two classes I took while in the last weeks of a twin pregnancy, had twins and have been completely sleep deprived ... I received A's.

Yeah, I'm a little proud of that.

So my final GPA for this Master's degree is a 3.97. Not the 4.0 I got for my Master's in Special Education, but still, pretty good! Especially considering this time I worked full time, had a young child and gave birth to twins. Last time it was just Tom and I, and he worked so that I could focus on just attending school.

But I'm so happy to be DONE. So happy in fact, that I hadn't even bothered to check my grades till Monday. Every other semester I was checking for final grades every day in anticipation.

Anyway, other than me being ecstatic to have NO HOMEWORK, I've been busy. I've started working mostly from the office and only working from home after a particularly rough night.

The girls are getting good at sleeping through the night, although that just means from the last bottle till around 7ish, and they don't usually go down from the last bottle till around 2-3am. But still, progress! In fact, last night, the last bottle started at 11:30. They were finally settled in at 1am and slept till almost 8am! I think we can't ask for any better than that.

I have uploaded photos from July into photobucket. A few of my favorites are:

Nicky and Lily cuddling on his bed
Nicky and Lily

Nicky in his new bunk bed
Nicky's new bunk bed

And our set up for the bouncy chairs in the other crib
bouncy time

I'll get around to uploading the August photos soon. JM actually came over the other day and took photos of the girls with her fancy camera. I got them this week and they are gorgeous! I couldn't resist, so I had to upload some for you now. Hope you don't mind more photos.

Lily
Lily

Gabi
Gabi

Gabi and Lily with Daddy (Gabi on the left)
Gabi left

Gabi and Lily (Gabi on the left)
Gabi left

There are sooo many more! But those will have to wait. Plus it gives you guys a reason to come visit so you can see them all! She gave me a disk with nearly 200 photos on it!

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Done, done and DONE!

That's it folks. I turned in my last paper, attended my last class. I am finished with my second and LAST masters degree. Thank goodness! I find it incredible that I managed to finish this degree during my pregnancy with the girls, through giving birth and their first two and a half months. Phew!

So now that I won't have homework all the time, I should be able to keep up with the blog better. That means more posts and pics for YOU!

So anyway, the latest thing with the girls is getting them to sleep through the night. The girls are 10 weeks old now. At 8 weeks we were still doing more of a baby led schedule and feeding just whenever they were hungry although when we fed one we fed the other to keep them eating together.

But they were sleeping a lot during the day and NOT sleeping most of the night. 10pm-4am was hell.

So to make things easier for us we started waking them every 2-3 hours during the day to feed them. They ate less at a feeding, but ever since starting this they have been sleeping from their last bottle (around 1-2am) till after 7am! It's been awesome.

We still feed them if hungry, but we'll wake them up if they're going too long during the day. I know by 8 weeks they would sleep up to 5 hours at a time about twice a day, so a good 6 hours or more between feedings, but they were doing it during the day instead of at night.

I was just trying to write out a schedule the other day for us to follow. We're not exactly on with these times, but approximately there. We do aim for 8 bottles a day as they take about 100ml average per bottle.

7am feeding, then nap (drive mommy to work time around 8am)
10am feeding, then tummy time if they can stay awake
12pm feeding, then nap
3pm feeding, then nap (pick up mommy at work time around 5pm)
6pm feeding, then sit with us at dinner
8pm feeding, then bath
10pm feeding, then nap
12am feeding, then down for the night

What we have found really important is that from 6pm on they eat every 2 hours. It makes evenings kind of hard with our Nicky too, but it's worth it to get a night's sleep! We usually end up letting them sleep too long a few times and so their last bottle is sometimes at 1-2am, but this is the goal anyway.

I've been back at work since July 16th, when they were 8 weeks old. I'm still not getting a lot of sleep at night, I mean 2-7am is only 5 hours after all, but I'm managing. It helps that I've been working some from home and some from work so far. But soon I think I'll have to go back to working only from the office. The good thing about that: daily showers.

I'll work on getting photos ready and up soon. Maybe even tomorrow!