Fun at Home

Well, it has now been over a week that Tyler has been home, and 4 weeks that Kayla has been home. They are 8 weeks old (by what is called "actual age") or 5 days past their due date of Oct 16th (their "corrected age" would be 5 days old). You will probably hear us use these terms a lot moving forward, as it helps to determine where they are on a developmental scale. Since they were preemies, you can't expect the same things from them as you would a full-term 8 week old baby.

It has been an interesting week, but we are doing well. Believe it or not...we seem to have both babies on the same, 4 hour feeding schedule. Everyone says this is so great to have them on a 4 hour schedule so early...but I can't imagine having it any other way. It is very interesting how they make a lot of the same noises and faces, just like twins. They are very different babies though...and definitely have their own personalities.

Kayla is calm and quiet. She sleeps the day and night away mostly, with some random awake time usually in the evenings. She is happy anywhere, whether it be in the bath, in her crib, in the swing, in the carseat or stroller, on the floor, on her boppy pillow, or in the pack n play. Her favorite place to sleep seems to be in Grandma's arms...where we often need to wake her up to force her to eat! She sleeps well at night, rarely fussing. When she does fuss, she typically soothes herself back to sleep, unless she is within 20 minutes of her feeding time, in which case she will progressively get fussier. She rarely actually cries though...mostly just whining from Kayla.

TJ is a very different baby! He sleeps, but he has a LOT of awake time over the course of the day. He will just lay on the floor and look around, and quite often when you think he is napping in his pack n play, you will peek in only to see his big eyes looking back at you. He does NOT like his bassinet...nor does he like the swing, the carseat, and he isn't crazy about the stroller. He does like to lay on his boppy pillow on the floor, and he loves to lay on his playmat. He also prefers to be in someone's arms...Mommy, Daddy, or Grandma will generally do. He also has a "witching hour" from about 5am-7:30am where he fusses and cries, only to be consoled by Mommy or Daddy's arms.

At 8 weeks old and almost 1 week corrected age, here is our schedule:

8am: First bottle of the day. Kayla takes between 4 & 5 oz, and TJ takes 3 oz. Mommy feeds Kayla & Daddy feeds TJ usually...as Mommy is tired from being up with TJ all night by this time!

8:45am - 12pm: Nap time for the twins. Daddy starts work. Mommy starts the laundry, cleans the kitchen, does the dishes and cleans bottles from the overnight. Mommy also cooks breakfast and has her coffee at this time. Mommy, who has always been a coffee drinker, now understands how it is that people can drink an entire pot of coffee by themselves...

12pm: Bottle time. Kayla again takes 4-5 oz, TJ takes 3. TJ also takes .5ml of his vitamin & iron supplement at this time.

12:45-4pm Kayla goes back down for a nap, TJ stays up to play for a while (and by play I mean look around the room). He will usually last for about an hour before going back in for sleep. They will typically have some random awake time and fussiness during this stretch.

4pm:bottle time again. Same amounts for both babies...

4pm-6pm: Babies will nap while Mommy cooks dinner & Daddy finishes up his work day.

6pm-8pm: Babies will have some awake time. Mommy cleans up after dinner and prepares all bottles for the next day. TJ typically gets 6 bottles of ready to drink Similac NeoSure (a special formula for preemies). He gets 2 oz of formula mixed with 1 oz of breastmilk per feeding. Kayla takes 6 bottles of Similac Advance with Immune Support, mixed from powder. Kayla takes about 1-2 oz of breastmilk per bottle, mixed with 3-4 oz of formula. Kayla does not need an iron supplement (and therefore finds it MUCH easier to poop than her brother does). I use a convenient system of colored rubberbands to determine which bottles are Kayla's and which are TJ's. TJ has blue rubberbands around his bottles, Kayla has red.

8pm - 10pm: Awake playtime with Mommy & Daddy for both twins. This is their most alert time of day.

10pm Bathtime, every-other day. Kayla goes first, TJ second.

11pm-Midnight: Winding down for the night...

12am: Final bottle before bedtime.

12:45am-4am: Sleeping time. Both babies now sleep pretty well during this time. Mom & Dad get to bed by 1ish, and get up again around 3:45am.

4am-8am: Bottle time at 4. Kayla will then sleep until 8am, and not really stir until maybe 7:30am. TJ sleeps until about 5:30am, and then starts to fuss. Mommy tends to him until about 7am, when she kicks him out of the room when Daddy goes downstairs to start his work day.

Now that I have their earliest schedule in place...here are some cute pictures of the babies spending time together...





Kayla & Tyler were so excited this week to have visits from 2 of their Grandfathers--Grandpa Khoury & PopPop Alan. Unfortunately, the twins are still a little too small for Pop Pop Alan to feel comfortable holding them, but we snapped a quick pic of Grandpa & TJ spending some awake time together.



The Twins send their love!!!