A day in the life
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
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!
It’s been exciting for us to watch the Chislets become more aware of each other, things should get real interesting once they all become mobile!
tags: 4th month, musings, photo, pic of the week | Comment (0)Two out of Three ain’t bad…
…except when only 2 of the 3 Chislets are asleep at 3 am! All joking aside, the kids are really starting to sleep well. They aren’t quite eating, sleeping and pooping exactly according the schedule that Mom has established, but overall they are doing extremely well.
We had the Chislets’ 8 week appointment this past Tuesday and everyone is doing well. It was quite an affair as all five of us received shots (Mom & Dad had to get that yearly flu shot)! It was hard watching the kids get their first round of vaccinations but everyone survived with flying colors.
- Jake is weighing in at 9 lb 4 oz and is measuring 21.5″
- Ben is weighing in at 10 lb 9 oz and is measuring 21.75″
- Grace is weighing in at 8 lb 1 oz and is measuring 20.5″
33 weeks down … just 22 days to go!!!
Sorry for the delay in posting updates but the last weeks have been pretty exciting around here. Well – it may only be considered exciting by someone who has been stuck at the house for the past 13 weeks…but we’ll stick with the term exciting!
The best part of the past week has been that my Mom has been in town taking care of me and getting the house ready for the babies. She cooked some great meals for Seth and I and spent much of the rest of the time washing and organizing the babies’ clothes, blankets, and nursery. Thanks to all of her hard work (I can’t even hazard a guess at how many loads of laundry she must have done), our nursery is now officially ready for the Chislets!
Unfortunately, she also had to spend quite a bit of time driving back and forth to the hospital and hanging out with me there. I blew my contraction threshold last Tuesday morning and had to go back into the hospital for monitoring. Unlike my last trip to the hospital, I had to stay for 2 nights this time — so I was stuck there from Tuesday morning until Thursday afternoon!
On Friday afternoon, Mom and I went to the doctor for my bi-weekly growth ultrasound. The babies have been growing like crazy since their last measurement. Baby A measured 4 lbs 14 oz, Baby B measured 3 lbs 15 oz and Baby C measured 4 lbs 8 oz. Average fetal weight for a singleton at this gestation is right around 4 lbs, so all of the babies are measuring on target or larger. In addition to great measurements, we were also able to see that Baby A had the hiccups and we could see some hair on Baby B’s head! Poor Baby C – we were able to see that both Baby A and C have their feet pointed at him. I hope that he isn’t getting kicked around too much in there!
Mom took me out for a mini-makeover on Saturday morning – I got a new haircut and a pedicure! I haven’t felt this cute in weeks! Above is a picture of my new haircut and my huge belly.
tags: musings, pregnancy, ultrasound | Comments (8)
Things in Threes…revisited
Yesterday, Seth and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary. As a followup to our previous “Things in Threes” post we were reminiscing about the past three years made me think about all the “threes” in our life right now. When I woke up yesterday, I asked him:
“Did you ever think that I would be pregnant with three babies on our third anniversary? Or that on July 30th, I would be 30 weeks pregnant with three, 3lb babies ?!?”
To celebrate our anniversary, we went to the Cheesecake Factory to take advantage of the special that they were running for their 30th anniversary – $1.50 Cheesecake (yes that’s 2 for $3.00).
tags: memories, musings | Comment (0)
