Merry Christmas!

December 25th, 2008 by Seth

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Love,
Seth, Jaclyn and the Chislets

tags: 4th month, holiday, photo | Comments (2)

A day in the life

December 22nd, 2008 by Jaclyn

One of the most common questions that I get is “How do you do it?”. So, to quench everyone’s curiosity, I thought that I would share a typical day’s schedule. Right now, we are following a three hour feeding/napping schedule. Once the babies start sleeping through the night, I will move them to a four hour schedule. Below is the schedule for when I am alone with the kids. When I have help in town, I try to either get out of the house, take a nap, or hit the treadmill during the babies naps. (Usually, I am either so tired or so stir crazy that the nap or shopping wins out. Running on the treadmill is really just wishful thinking.)

8:00 – 9:00 am – Bottles/Diapers/Dress babies for the day

9:00 – 9:30 am – Play Time (usually tummy time, play mat time and picture time)

9:30 – 11:00 am – Nap Time for babies (Mom does laundry, empties dishwasher, checks email, brushes teeth, gets dressed, sucks down as much coffee as possible)

11:00 – 11:30 am - Bottles/Diapers

11:30 – 12:30 pm - Play Time (to include at least 5-10 minutes of tummy time, lots of play mat time, story time and, if everyone will cooperate, some individual time with each of the babies while the other two have independent play time)

12:30 – 2:00 pm – Nap Time for babies (Mom eats lunch then washes bottles, makes formula and preps bottles for the next 7 feedings. Right now, we are going through 21 bottles per day and 84 ounces of formula.)

2:00 – 2:30 pm – Bottles/Diapers

2:30 – 3:15 pm – Play Time (to include at least 5-10 minutes of tummy time, play mat time and more story time)

3:15 – 5:00 pm - Walk (Babies nap while Mom gets her workout in – We don’t actually walk for an hour and 45 minutes, but it takes a long time to get everyone dressed for walk, into their carseats, and then into the stroller/bjorn)

5:00 – 5:30 pm – Bottles

5:30 – 6:15 pm – Bath Time and Play Time (Mom does baths while Dad plays)

6:15 – 8:00 pm - Nap Time (This is the witching hour – Everyone is cranky and no one ever wants to sleep, so we pop pacis, pat bellies, rock babies, do our best to soothe them and when all else fails – we put them in the swings)

8:00 – 9:00 pm – Bottles/Diapers/Dress babies for bed

9:00 pm – Mom and Dad finally get dinner (A big thank you to everyone who has given us take out gift certificates or given us prepared meals for our freezer! This is all we eat. In the last 14 weeks, I have only actually cooked dinner for Seth and myself 1 time! The take out meals/prepared meals have been a huge help!)

9:00 pm – 2:00 am – Bed Time for babies

2:00 – 3:00 am – Bottles (Dream Feed)

3:00 – 5:00 am – Bed Time

5:00 – 6:00 am – Bottles/Diapers

6:00 – 8:00 am – Bed Time

So far, this schedule has been working very well for us.

tags: 4th month, musings | Comments (5)

Pic of the Week: Brothers

December 14th, 2008 by Seth

This week’s pic is a rare glimpses at the special bond that forms between siblings. It also seems the boys have found a great way to spend time together and share in their favorite activities: Jake likes to stand…and Ben likes to lounge!