Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We opened a few presents on Christmas Eve and planned on all seven of us going on our first adventure as a whole family. Over night, Teresa started running a fever, so we sent O and MC with Grandma and Grandpa to Mass and kept everyone else back. We were borderline about taking the twins out as it was and with Teresa sick, no go.

Christmas was lovely with a nice breakfast, present opening, a nice lunch and playing outside on their new bikes (you’d think I would have a picture of their bikes…). Catalina seems to be catching whatever Teresa has. I hope it is bacterial and the amoxicillin that O is taking for an ear infection will serve double-duty on her.

After getting them all down, V, the twins, and I sang Christmas carols and prayed the Office of Readings since we all ended up missing church on Christmas.

The Internal Clock

Life moves forward toward Christmas. The twins have matured to being released from their required every-three-hour feeding schedule, allowing them to sleep in and eat-on-demand. Generally, this has been nice. Direct breastfeeding (DBF in my acquired NICU language) has replaced EBM (expressed breast milk, e.g. pumped and “nippled” to them in a bottle) as their primary source of food with V pumping to keep her supply up.

Our fridge is full of milk and we may actually use all of the space in our deep freezer for once.

The twins have also shifted their schedule a bit. Before, we’d wake them every three hours to eat and they would generally sleep between feedings. Now, they have their own schedule of being awake for a decent amount of time, which happens so far to be in the middle of the night.

V has been handling this like a champ, taking a nap from, roughly, 8 am to 11 am, to make it through the rest of the day. While I hate sleep and will fight it until the end of time, once I’m asleep, I want to stay asleep. I’ve been trying to get 4-5 hours a night, but it has been broken up by moments of everyone (seemingly, older girls included) being up multiple times in the night. The waking up for a bit every hour or so has been hard on me, personally.

Lastly, they’re on the borderline between premie clothes and diapers and newborn sizes. We’re finding some of the premie outfits are too small for them! At first, they swam inside all of them.

With the older girls, we gave them their primary present from us this weekend—tickets to Disney Live at the Frank Erwin Center. Grandpa and I took Olivia, Catalina, and Teresa to see Sophia, Jake and the Never Land Pirates, and the rest of the Disney gang this weekend.

For the first time since the twins were born, I joined Grandma and Grandpa with the girls at Kerbey Lane, our usual after Mass breakfast stop. Prior, I’d take the girls to Mass to help keep the peace and let the in-laws take the girls since they’d do anything to get those pancakes.

We haven’t taken the twins out of the house, save a doctor’s appointment and lab tests yet. As much as Vanessa would like to have them make Christmas Mass, we’re hesitant to have them around the expected larger crowd. Perhaps the Sunday following for the Feast of the Holy Family.

Until next time, thanks as always for your continued prayers and support. It really does take a village and we live in a great one.

Day 11: Eviction

Home.

Plenty I could say, none of it matters at this exact moment. We’re home and beginning the second half of the marathon, as Marion put it, tackling premies at home without a NICU nurse bedside all night and able to take care of the 2 am feedings.