Playing with Daddy

Bath time with babies!

We've been bathing the girls in the kitchen sink, but we finally moved them into the tub. Unmitigated success!

Stacking everything!

Strawberry Festival

Every year there's a strawberry festival near us, and this year I decided to brave the crowds and take the girls for some fresh strawberry shortcake.

Ellie's a fan!:

Avy's.. not sure:

Random happiness

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

The macaws liked to say "hi"; the girls were uninterested.

Alpacas! Ellie was not amused.

...but Avy really wanted to pet them.

Afterwards we stopped for soft serve:

She's applauding being happy :)

My pensive little girl

Avy's my quiet one:

No filming while I'm eating!

Ellie's new trick

Swinging!

Didn't get my camera out until after Avy's turn, fail momma :/

Ellie groovin'

Baby Blues

Gamer Babies

I'm not sure the designers had "baby toy" in mind when they added sound to the power button...

Being a cost center

...that's basically what the girls and I are. Sure, sure, we're also "in development", but as any good PM can tell you, there's always a budget ;) Dave and I have had a budget for years, and are mostly following it, but there's two areas that we are sorely lacking: grocery and household. Those two are double in expenditure what we've (generously) budgeted for. Does a family of 4 really need $1,100/month on groceries? No.

The problem is we tend to buy on impulse: "oh man I really want to make X" and buy all the ingredients, on sale or not, and may or not use them all. I'll admit to being worse at this than Dave. Amazon also contributes to our soaring household spending - 2 taps on your phone in the bathroom, and your impulse buy is complete! (I'm also worse at this than Dave.)

I think the grocery budget is the more interesting one to fix - household is basically just "buy less stuff". Grocery requires shopping smart and cooking more (which I love to do anyway so this shouldn't be a problem). Internet research says that a frugal, healthy meal plan can be accomplished for ~$600/month (without getting too extreme); conveniently, this is also what we have as our original budget. The goal is to stay at that through the next 6 months, then revisit.

My expectation is we'll eat a lot more of the foods we already have in our pantry/freezer, and start making bulk meals again. We'd stopped for a while because the freezer was full, but didn't actually eat any of the foods there - whoops. I'm going to bump up the % of vegetables too - we already eat a good amount of fruit/protein but incorporating veggies will simultaneously help with the diet (-cough-) and the cost per meal.

Also, it'll be important for me to shop more on the basis of what's on sale. I briefly considered becoming a crazy couponing lady, and I will be keeping an eye out more for applicable coupons. Ultimately though, the meal plan should pivot on what we already have on hand and/or what's on sale. Weekly mailers, here I come!

I'll post an update per month at least, it'll be good peer pressure to stay on track :) For the record, April (most recent month fully updated) came in at a whopping $1,400! Ouch.

Baby Learnin'

Now that we've hit the one year mark, I'm going to braindump what we did for baby troubleshooting to have on hand for future babies (and of course, you're welcome to, as well!). It may be that we're just tremendously lucky in our girls, but we do seem to have missed most of the issues that caused us to lose sleep in baby planning. For instance - the girls both started sleeping through the night (8 hours) by 4 months, 12 hours by 6 months, and neither suck their thumbs or require a pacifier. Indeed, Avy was inclined towards a pacifier briefly ... but we'll get to that :)

Books:

• Baby 411 (and corollary Toddler 411) - this book is the ultimate troubleshooter. It's packed with information, very little filler, and was hugely helpful, especially to the metrics-driven momma.
• The Happiest Baby on the Block - in the first few months, this saved our bacon so many times... it turns out, getting babies to sleep is easy, using the 5 S's: suck, swaddle, side (sleep on), "shh", and sway. Worked every time.

Baby Sleeping Gear:

• Swaddler - this. This this this this this. Most amazing invention ever. This is now my go-to baby gift for any future nieces/nephews/grandchildren/friends/etc. The idea is you swaddle the baby arms down so they can't move, much like they're being held. Keeps them from flailing about and waking themselves up. There are a range of options, based on size and how restrictive your baby needs, and having now tested most/all of them at one more or another I can tell you that the idea behind it is absolutely sound. Use these!
• Swaddle blanket - these are great for the first month or so before they get strong enough to break out of the swaddle and you need the velcro/zip ones. The blankets are great in warm or cool weather and very soft.
• Pacifier - we used these briefly, as I mentioned. Ellie never wanted a pacifier, but Avy needed them to fall asleep during her nap. Never at night though, because we would swaddle her and those swaddlers are crazy soporifics. Soon as I started swaddling Avy during her naps, the pacifier was completely discarded cold turkey.
• Swing - Ellie slept like ... well, a baby in this. Avy really didn't care, the swaddler was her trick. However, I wouldn't get these again - the girls could have just slept in their cribs (and that's what I'll do with future kiddos). We had to use the cry-it-out method briefly with Ellie: one night she decided she wasn't going to sleep without being held, swaddler or no, and would wake up every hour crying to be held. Normally I would have felt terrible about making my baby cry, but an evening of sleeplessness gave me fortitude! We put her down, and after 5 minutes of crying went in and soothed her briefly, then left, then after 10 minutes repeated, 15, and so forth. We only had to go as far as 15 minutes before she finally went to sleep, and we only had to do the soothing process for ~1.5 days before we reached the point where she just went to sleep when we put her down. I did a little dance when that happened ;)
• Mamaroo - we tried this briefly, but ultimately had to return it. The swaying was too smooth, and wouldn't put either baby to sleep. Ellie just really liked the violent swinging that the other swing did.
• Baby Monitor - initially, we kinda felt silly, buying the ultimate Big Brother (Big Mother?) baby monitor. We became inseparable from it though immediately, as it would allow us to go downstairs to watch tv, and just peek with the video if we heard any noises. We could see if their eyes were opened or if they were just mumbling in their sleep. Even as I write this I have it with me by the keyboard. There is something extremely relaxing about knowing that you can check on your baby at 4am without getting out of bed.
• Sleep Monitor - silly waste of money, never again. The girls were preemie, and we were still very afraid of sleep apnea when they came home from the hospital. The idea was that these things were supposed to track movement, and sound an alarm if movement stopped. Unfortunately, there's no way to guarantee that they'll stay touching your baby, so the only time they did alarm was when they had become dislodged. That one time, ironically, Dave and I slept right through it - useful!

Random:

• Baby Seat - the girls used these before they could sit up on their own, and loved them. I believe they started at ~3 months, and even now crawl all over them and play with the toys, so a good relatively long-term investment, all things considered.
• Vitamins - we would add these to the babies' milk while they were still bottle-feeding. Some people say their baby hated the taste, but we never had problems. As to efficacy, who can say really :) The girls were never anemic though!
• Wet Bag - the way to stash wet diapers when you're out of the house, without any smells/liquids escaping. Wonderful thing :) Trust me on this, you don't need a huge size - I have twins and thought: "well, hey, I'm going to need the biggest bag!!"... I could have easily survived on something 1/4th the size.
• Baby Jail - you're gonna need one, it's inevitable. Since we're just using it for time-outs, and not for play/sleeping, all we needed was something cheap that wouldn't collapse on the girls. This fit the bill and with high reviews to boot!
• Jumper - this is turning out to be more useful now than when we first bought it, but I'm still iffy on whether it was worth it - I'm leaning towards not. Don't get me wrong, they love it, but with Ellie taller than Avy, I have to keep adjusting it when I'm putting them in it. Adjusting it is not the easiest thing to do. Also, inevitably the twin out of it will crawl under the twin it in, and much hilarity will ensue.
• Burp Cloths - these. Don't bother with the crazy organic cotton or linen with giraffes on it ones. Those suck. Buy a bunch of cheap, big, trifolds. They're super absorbent, very soft, and cheap enough that you can buy a bunch of them - you're gonna need them.
• Nose Vac - heh. Just as it says, it's a tube that you plug into the vacuum then vacuum out the baby's nose. Works like a charm. We were using the vacuum as an occasional white noise for the girls' naps, so they were used to it, and the amount of snot we got out of the girls during their rare colds was astounding. They were always so happy after too: "hey Mom, I can breathe!"
• High Chairs - there are some ludicrous options out there, with the high end being a $200 rocket-like hunk of plastic that was a blast from the 60s. We don't really have the space for dedicated chairs, and we liked that these travel easily. Plus, $25 each! They've been great, clean up quickly and we just dedicate two of our dining room chairs to them. 
• Bibs - we tried a few types: from the hard plastic type to the soft linen kind. These were the best. The hard plastic the girls just rebelled on and they would get stuck in the high chair. The soft linen looked nice, but had no pockets so food would fall right into the girls' laps. Plus you couldn't really reuse them on a 3x daily basis as they had to be laundered.
• Wipe Warmer - no idea if this actually made a difference but other parents have sworn by them. 
• Clothes - thrift shop thrift shop thrift shop!!! Children's clothes are incredibly expensive brand new, but babies especially wear them for 2 seconds and do nothing in them. My favorite story is finding the most adorable dress for a 3 month old that I paid 50 cents for. When looking it up online I found the same dress brand new for $30.

Veggie buttons

This recipe is an amazing substitution for Cheerios as a snack, and is excellent on the go. Unfortunately the blog I pulled it from is now defunct :( but kudos to you, original poster, this has saved my bacon many times.

I make a huge batch and freeze it in bags, and grab what I need for trips. It carries easily and defrosts quickly, and the girls love the chewy texture. The original recipe uses sweet potatos but I've since made both squash and carrot versions and the girls have been fans of all.

Veggie buttons:

3/4 c. mashed sweet potato (or carrots or squash, etc, precooked and puréed)

3 tbsp. vegetable oil

3 tbsp. water

1 tbsp. brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 c. baby cereal

1/2 c. almond flour

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Mix mashed sweet potatoes, oil and water in a medium size bowl or measuring cup.  (To make my mashed sweet potatoes, I boiled sweet potato chunks until tender and mashed with a little bit of the water they were boiled in until very smooth.)

3. Stir in brown sugar and cinnamon.  If your baby is sensitive to cinnamon, you can omit it.

4. Stir in remaining dry ingredients.  (The baby cereal I used was baby oatmeal but I believe rice cereal should work just as well.)  The dough should begin pulling away from the side of your mixing bowl.  Add more cereal or flour if your dough seems too wet; however, it should be a little sticky.

5. Pipe small ‘dots’ of dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet using a piping tip with a large opening (or a ziplock bag with a tip cut off).  Bake for 15 min.  Bake longer if you would like a crispier result or shorten the bake time if you would rather a softer, chewier result.

Babies swimming again!

The Aunties and I took the girls swimming again! Avy is a natural floater - just look at those thighs:

Ellie...less faith in her floating abilities:

The girls' birthday party!

The girls are now one, and we threw a big party for them... well, no really, it was for us adults, they were just the excuse. Adorable excuses they were though! Dave and Olivia each spent several days on their respective projects (24 hr smoked brisket, and a two tiered birthday cake) and the wonderful Aunties Rachel and Maureen distracted the babies during the process.

Dave wrapping up the food with roasted veggies and smoked salmon:

Birthday cake! Banana for our two little monkeys, with Ellie on top offering Avy a banana ;)

Auntie Maureen being wonderful! Auntie Rachel was behind the camera for most of the party, thank you!!

We are now prepared for people! 

A montage of babies eating! They were pretty shocked by the number of people watching them eat, but cake quickly made everything all better:

Psst, Dave, that's not one of your babies....

A couple of mommas being amused at the babies' cake eating skills.

Auntie Rachel with a cake-free Avy!

Avy with Auntie Maureen in the bounce house:

"Do we like this, Avy?" "Not sure yet..."

"Ok, yes I'm a fan"

Ellie stalking the aunties!