Oh No, The Boys are Mobile

Note: This post was actually from 11/22, I must have forgotten to hit Publish.

It was a crazy couple of weeks. About 2 weeks ago Kevin was able to stay sitting up when you sat him up and Alex probably could have, but he was always to excited to try and get any nearby toy. The most that either one of them could move around was to roll. Then one day it must have clicked that rolling could actually move them around the room and that was the start of our two week journey toward mobility.

At first it was really easy. With the new found ability to roll the boys could get to their toys on without needing help from us. Of course like everything new it was more fun to just roll then to play with any toys. They went from just being able to roll over to rolling around the room so fast that we had to scramble to baby proof the living room.( which as you'll see in a little bit we still don't have done )

Alex was rolling around much sooner than Kevin, but at the time that Alex was rolling everywhere Kevin was sitting up really good. Kevin couldn't get himself up, but if you sat him up he stayed up really good. Alex on the other hand knew that he could get to toys so as soon as you sat him up he would purposely go down so that he could get to his toys. He probably could have sat up sooner, if he wanted to.

Soon after Alex had figured out that he could army crawl where he wanted to go. This was really the end of the peace while they were sitting on the floor. Once Alex figured this out he was into everything. As Alex started to army crawl Kevin finally really started his rolling everywhere.

Once day Alex went from a crawling around and just sat right up like it was nothing. It was quite weird because he never really struggled trying to figure out how to do it. For a week or so leading up to the first sit up he was kinda half sitting up holding himself up with is arm. Then he was just up. From that point on he would sit up just to sit up, but once he got up he really didn't like it so he would go down right away again so that he could cruise around the floor.

Once Alex started sitting up it was within a couple of days that he suddenly started real crawling. He's fast. We thought he was getting into stuff rolling & army crawling, but wow, once he started crawling it was amazing how much he tried to get into. When he wasn't real mobile he never tried to get the Playstation or Wii, but once he could move quick he seamed to want to go right for it. So we put the toy bucket in front of the TV so that they couldn't get to the TV.

Shortly after Alex got up real crawling Kevin decided that he was ready to start army crawling. Although he can't move around nearly as well as Alex could when he was army crawling Kevin is able to get going. He still hadn't mastered the art of sitting up. If we sat him up we would need to lay him down when he was ready to crawl around cause he couldn't get himself down. As of now Kevin is still just army crawling around the house, but he is getting around pretty well now.

More than just an average cold

For the last few days Kevin has had a little bit of a cold, the typical runny nose and coughing. Then at the lunch feeding yesterday things got a little bit worse(not terrible just a little bit). When I changed their diapers Kevin's head felt a little warm, and his cheeks looked a little rosy.

Alex ate up the peas like he was starving to death, but Kevin didn't seam to interested in eating. Although not too unusual, Alex always eats like a mad man, peas are one of the few things that Kevin tends to like more than Alex.

Then after eating their food I passed Kevin off to Jamie to give him his bottle. When she felt his head it was even warmer than it was when I changed him. So right away we took his helmet off, which the doctor said to do anytime they run a higher than normal temperature.

Although not real happy about it, Kevin ate most of the bottle. This is pretty average for the boys right now. They rarely eat their bottles good right after eating solids. What was a little odd is that Alex finished his bottle before Kevin.

While Jamie was still finishing up feeding Kevin his bottle I was able to put Alex in his bouncy toy and take Kevin's temperature. His temp was 100.3. So we gave him some Infant Tylenol. The feeding was a little earlier than normal, but both boys were starting to get pretty sleepy so we laid them down early for their afternoon naps.

Alex took his normal nap in the crib, and Kevin laid in our bed with Jamie for a nap. They ended up taking a really good 2.5-3 hour nap. When they got up though you could tell that Kevin did not feel very good. All he wanted to do was lay on us, or if he was on the floor he just wanted to sit and have a toy in front of him. He definitely was not his normal playful self.

We had planned to go out to dinner with my parent for Jamie's birthday last night. When they got to our house Kevin was a little bit more smiley and happy to see Grandma and Papa, but still not his playful self. Grandma was the one that pointed out to us just how raspy his breathing was(well me at least, Jamie might have noticed it earlier but I didn't).

We decided to give it a try and see how he would do going to Buffalo Wild Wings. BWW has some really cool high chairs. The seats just flip over and they become holders for car seats. Now normally the boys would not have had any interest in being in the carseats the whole time we ate. And just like usual Alex started getting cranky about 5 seconds before the waitress brought us our food. So I flipped the seat back up and he was happy the rest of the meal sitting up at the table with us, well maybe not happy but really really interested in trying to devise an evil plot to get our food. Kevin on the other hand just laid in his carseat, and watched all the TVs, for pretty much the whole meal. As we were finishing up eating Kevin started to get a little cranky so Jamie took him out and held him. He just wanted to lay down on Jamie shoulder and when Grandma took him he wasn't very happy and just wanted to be back on Jamie's shoulder.

When we got home he was still pretty raspy. When you put your hand on his back you could feel his chest vibrate as he breathed. And he still felt pretty warm at this point. We were considering taking him down to the emergency room to have him checked out. So we decided to call Prevea's on call nurse first.

The Prevea nurse was super helpful. She walked me through all kinds of questions about how Kevin was doing. After answering all the questions she suggested that we bring Kevin in the bathroom and run the shower for 20 minutes to get some warm mist in him, and that she would call us back in a half hour to see how that went.

When we went to go in the bathroom Jamie noticed that he had a pretty wet diaper, so we decided to change him first. Then while he was all undressed we thought we might as well go ahead and take his temperature again, since he now was feeling really hot to us. His temp was now 103.5, which got us just that much more nervous about it all. But hearing all the stuff about how bad Infant medicine can be we decided to just go sit in the bathroom and see if that helped. Kevin really liked it because it gave him a chance to just lay down on Jamie's shoulder and relax. I sat with him the last few minutes in the bathroom so that Jamie could get out, I figured she must have been really hot by then.

When we got out of the bathroom it did seam like his breathing was at least a little bit less raspy and there was a little bit less vibration in his chest. The nurse called us back shortly after that. She said we really needed to give him the Tylenol for the fever, but that she didn't feel it was something that we would need to go to the emergency room for. She explained how a fever is actually good because it means that the body is fighting off the virus/infection. According to the nurse the big reason we didn't need to go the ER was that he was alert, not having trouble breathing, and generally eating all of his bottles. She did then set up an appointment for early this morning so that we could bring him in to see our normal doctor.

So we went about the nightly routine as best we could. Of course this all had to happen when I had to work last night (we do a production release of our code once every 2-3 months and last night was release night). So Jamie feed Alex while Kevin sat on my lap while I worked. Then we let Alex play a bit while Jamie started feeding Kevin. Luckily the release went really smooth, so I was able to go put Alex to bed when he started getting cranky so that Jamie didn't have to disturb Kevin.

At first Kevin only ate about half of his bottle. When my release was done I sat and rocked him on the chair while Jamie got started on her homework. It took about half an hour for him to calm down and pretty much fall alseep on me. So I laid him down on the couch by Jamie while I took out the garbage, and he didn't much like that. So I got back in as quick as I could so that we could rock on the chair again. After rocking him for a while he still did not calm down. Luckily Jamie does not have a terrible memory like I do, so she suggested trying to feed him. And that was exactly what he wanted. He drank the rest of his bottle, and went to bed in his crib with the normal minute or two of whining then falling right asleep.

Wow was that a long night then. Alex actually went to bed really early. So both boys woke up quite a few times and shuffled around and cried a little. But since they are our awesome little sleepers they got themselves back to sleep pretty quick each time. Of course ever time I heard them wake up it woke me up thinking it was Kevin not feeling good again. And everytime I'd wake up and not hear him crying I would worry about that too. In the end I think Kevin slept much better than I did.

We are taking him to the doctor at 10, so hopefully its something we can just give him a little medicine for becasue I really hate not being able to help him feel better.

Advanced Feeding Techniques

Wow this has been sitting here as a draft for three months. I'd like to first apologize to all of our loyal readers, yes that would be Grandma JoJo and Nana Squirrels. So I'm morphing this post into a trip through the first three months of the boys eating solid foods...

3 Months Old:
No food yet. Kevin sucks down bottles like he has never eaten before. Alex takes his sweet time to eat his bottles. But most of the time they eat full bottles good.

4 Months Old:
We started out by doing Rice Cereal at the night feeding. As anticipated the first couple of feedings were rough while the boys tried to figure out what the heck to do with the food. Both boys cry a lot while trying to feed them, but Kevin a lot more so than Alex. Crying actually makes feeding easier because they are not fighting the spoon while they cry.

4 Months 2 Weeks:
Alex has been eating good for a week or two now. After the first few days with Alex figured out that food was good. By this point he is just inhaling the food. Kevin on the other hand just cries when we try to feed him. He refuses to eat any solid food. We are feeding the boys in the bouncy chairs on the floor in the living room.

4 Months 3 Weeks:
Giving up on Solids for a little while. This was a tough decision. Kevin just cries too much, and is really really against eating food. Thought about keeping Alex going on solids, but we wanted to keep them at the same place.

5 Months 1 Week:
Started on food again. Kevin still isn't too thrilled about eating solids. He still cries a little bit, but not nearly as bad as before. Alex was excited to get some food again. Alex really likes to suck on his fingers while we feed him, which makes it really tough.

5 Months 3 Weeks:
Well apparently Grandma JoJo had the magic touch. Grandma JoJo was here to feed the boys two nights in a row, and ever since then Kevin no longer cries when he eats. We still can't feed Alex fast enough, he just inhales food.

6 Months:
Alex continues to eat good, but he still insists that he needs to stick his fingers in his mouth and makes a mess while eating. Kevin no longer cries at all when we feed him, he sits there and eats good. Not as fast as Alex, but very little mess relatively speaking. Alex will eat anything that you put in front of him. Kevin on the other hand much prefers veggies over fruit. He'll eat most fruit, but he isn't as happy about it as when he eats veggies. The other thing that we have discovered is that the boys much prefer to eat at the table. So now we are feeding them in the bouncy chairs onto the table instead of on the living room floor.

7 Months:
A bit of changing in eating styles. Alex now sits relativly still while you feed him. He still sometimes goes after the spoon or sticks his fingers in his mouth, but not too bad. Kevin now likes to bang at the bowl while we feed him, as well as sticking his fingers in his mouth and grabbing the spoons. Makes feeding him a little difficult. We did now get out the high chair and they seam like sitting up in there while eating. Both of the high chairs we got from people were in need of some serious cleaning, so we only have one cleaned up and ready right now, and hopefully getting the other one ready today. When sitting up in the high chair they seam more calm about eating versus when they are in the bouncy chair.

Last Night:
We went to Red Robin for dinner. To give the boys something to do while we were there we brought some of those little melting baby snacks that looks kinda like star shapped cherrios. Supprisingly the boys did not really like them much. Alex was never able to get any into his mouth, and when Kevin did ( I think Jamie actually got it in his mouth ) he made a pretty unhappy face. The boys started to get a little cranky while we were eating cause they wanted to eat. So we brought along some Chicken dinner baby food. This was the first time we have tried anything other than fruits and veggies. Alex really did not like it at all. He made a disgusted face and simply spit out most of the few spoonfuls I tried to get into him. Kevin did not really like it either, but at least he ate a little bit of it without spitting out too much.

Wow that was a lot of catching up. Hopefully soon I will have enough time to get the other 3 partially written entries done and posted.

A couple of afternoons of just me, the boys, and helmets

So far the boys don't seam too upset about the helmets. They had a pretty cranky day yesterday, but they were cranky all day, even during the times when the helmets were off. I think the crankiness is more from the teething than it is from the helmets. Kevin still is not eating very good On a side note I need to do some more research on this because the feeding schedule we have the boys on does not appear to be anything like the one that came from some company( Gerber or Good Start) . And Alex has gotten really stuff today.

Jamie works noon-4ish Wed-Fri this week. Since we wanted to keep the boys home I am attempting to work from home this week. Yesterday I literally did not have any time while Jamie was at work to get any work done. The only time there wasn't at least one boy crying was during Alex's first feeding, and that was just because Kevin was sleeping and Alex loves food. Since Kevin is not such a big fan of food right now he cries through his feedings.

Today went much better. The boys napped good. Then they played good. Then they ate. The eating still didn't go great, in fact the first feeding was mostly just the food then they refused to eat the bottles. Then the second feeding went pretty well. They actually played in their bouncy toys and on the playmat for quite a while by themselves today. I still had to go and occupy them for a while, but its always fun to get a little alone time with the boys. There was minimal crying but boy when Kevin cries he doesn't just cry he screams.

Tomorrow we are up to 6 hours at a time with the helmets on. That is actually a good thing. The only time the boys really get mad at the helmets is when we have to take them off or put them on. So the less we have to do that the better. Hopefully the next 2.5 months keep going like this.

Plagiocephaly Helmets

The boys got their helmets on on Tuesday. It was a very long appointment.

The doctor started out by measuring their heads again. This time both boy's heads had a circumference of 435mm. For Kevin this was good. It represented 4mm of growth, which is on the high side, but perfectly good. For Alex though, it was 10mm of growth, and the inside of the helmet was made to be 435mm, which means that the helmet is way small.

The helmets look like a wrestler's helmet, open on the top, circles around the head, obviously not covering the face, and cut outs for the ears. ( ) I'll add pictures of the boys to here very soon. Kevin has a dark blue helmet, and Alex's is light blue. The outside is a hard plastic shell, and the inside is hard Styrofoam.

The doctor spent quite a bit of time on Alex's helmet. When the helmet's come in they are purposely made to cover more of the face, ears, and neck than what they should. The doctor then puts the helmet on and draws some lines on the helmet for where he wants cut out for the face. He then used a grinder to trim down the size of the helmet. Because of how much Alex's head had grown he had to do quite a bit of grinding. Then he had to do some extra grinding on the inside of the helmet, due to the growth. We have to follow up with several appointments where the doctor will grind out the inside of the helmet to allow for growth of the skull. Well because Alex's head grew so much he had to grind out the inside already at delivery. We have a follow up on Monday, and then the doctor is going to rescan Alex's head and possibly make Alex a new helmet.

Kevin's head didn't grow quite as much so it didn't take nearly as long to grind out his helmet. But the one nice thing about the length of time sitting around and waiting was that the boys needed to eat shortly after the appointment started so we got a chance to feed them and let them take a nap.

We were surprised to find out that there is a ramp up period to wearing the helmets. We kinda thought it was just a go and put it on thing. But as it turns out there is a schedule to follow:

Day 1: 1 hour on 1 hour off
Day 2: 2 hour on 1 hour off
Day 3: 4 hour on 1 hour off
Day 4: 6 hour on 1 hour off
Day 5: 6-8 hour on 1 hour off
( not sure exactly why there is such a big range here )
Day 6: 8 hours during the day and then overnight
( this is the first time they have to sleep with the helmets on )
Day 7 on: 23 hours a day

Its kinda nice cause they get to gradually get used to the helmets. Of course Jamie has to work Wed, Thur, Fri this week. We don't want to stick that on my parents so I'm gonna work from home the rest of the week so that I can handle the schedule. At the doctor's office the boys didn't really mind having the helmets on too much, but they really were not big fans of the putting them on and taking them off process.

The bigger, better surprise was the length of time that they are likely going to have to wear the helmets. According to all the research I was doing; typically kids get helmets on around 6-7 months old and wear them for 10-14 months. And if its caught early and the helmets go on around 4-6 months ( the boys are right in that range now ) then the average time that they have to wear the helmets is 4-5 months. Well based on how the boys have grown up until now the doctor estimates that the boys might be able to get the helmets off in 2.5 months. That would mean end of October/beginning of November. Our hope was that they would get them off by Christmas time, but really we were thinking more like early January, so this is way better then we thought. Hopefully the next 2.5 months are just as good.

Kevin's First tooth

We think that both of the boys have been teething for the last few days.

Alex has not been sleeping through the night lately. He wakes up crying a couple times a night. Usually worst case is that we go pick him up for a few seconds to calm down and give him his Nuk and he will go back to sleep. His cheeks have been really rosy the last few days. Still no teeth though.

Kevin on the other hand has just refused to eat the last few days. He has not been real cranky or anything. However it does make him want food faster because he does not eat enough at any feeding.

Yesterday we were at the doctor's office waiting for the doctor to come in with the boy's helmet and we were sitting there holding the boys. We have been sticking our fingers in the boy's mouths a lot lately to see if there are any teeth in there. And this time Jamie found one little tooth starting to poke through in Kevin's mouth. I was at work the first time the boys rolled over so it was nice to be there with Jamie for the first tooth. We were hoping that Kevin would be back to normal now that he tooth came through, but no luck. He was still refused to eat yesterday and this morning. Maybe there is another tooth coming.

Plagiocephaly Measurements

Getting the boys all measured up for their helmets was actually kinda interesting.

At the first appointment they did all the using rulers and stuff to get numbers. Then at the second appointment it was all electronic. They use a little scanner to make a digital image of their heads so they can make a mold out of it.

However the scanner only picks up white. So they take a white stocking and put it over the boys' heads. Then the cut out holes in the stocking for the face and the ears. Makes them look like robbers. Then to ensure that the scanner doesn't pick up anything around the head they take a black cape and drape it around their neck. Well I guess its not really a cape because it hangs down all the way around, not just on the back. Then they take a strap and wrap it around their head, under the nose in front and circles around the back of their head. On the back of the strap is some Velcro that a sensor gets attached to. The sensor tracks head movement so that as the boys wiggle their head around the scanner adjusts to the movement.

The boys did not especially like the process, but they were not too bad. The part that made them real mad was putting the sock over their head the first time to figure out where to cut out holes for their face and ears. Then the doctor had a little plastic train that made some noises and that kept the boys occupied pretty well while he did the scans.

Once the scans were complete they got a little cranky again. The scan produces a wire frame image of the skull. So the doctor had to go through the image and clean up little spots and make sure that everything was good. It only took him a couple of minutes after each boy was done, but while he was looking at the image the boy that just got scanned had to sit on my lap with the stocking still over their head and wires still attached.

The doctor said that with kids this young he tries to deliver the helmets in 10 days instead of the standard 14 days. But due to the doctor's schedule we had to wait the full 14 days to get the helmets...

10 Years ago Today

(Well 10 years ago yesterday actually, cause I forgot to hit publish)

On July 29th 1998 I was talking to a friend online. She asked me if I'd like to go hang out with her and some of her friends. I had no plans that night so I said sure, but I had to work. I was kind of a dork and really not good with girls back then so I had no idea that she was asking me to hang out cause she liked me.

I got done with my shift as a, cashier at Cub Foods, and walked out to my car. I saw this girl standing by a car...blond hair with a streak died blue that hung down on either side of her face, wearing an Unwritten Law hoodie. All I could think was "wow". I wasn't really into the whole Punk scene at the time...I had started to listen to some Punk music (well a very little actually and mostly popular stuff like Green Day, Rancid and The Offspring ) and was just getting familiar with what it was all about, but I knew there was something special about this girl. I just had to meet her. Then to my surprise as I walked closer, the friend I was going to meet turned out the be standing along side the same car.

She introduced Jamie to me along with a couple of other friends that were there. I was so happy that I was going to get to hang out with this beautiful girl. As I said I was a bit of a dork and really bad around girls so it wasn't until well into the night that I finally admitted to Jamie that I liked her.

We went and dropped my car off at my house, and I just rode with them for the rest of the night. I have a terrible memory, but one thing I'll never forget is spending the whole time trying to figure out how I was going to talk to Jamie. I remember asking her who Unwritten Law was, and when she said it was Punk band that she really liked, that just got me more interested. Beyond that I was having trouble getting up the courage to talk to her more.

Later we decided to go cruising that night. Apparently that group was too cool to cruise Main so we headed to Appleton to cruise College Ave. instead. I was already growing out of the cruising main phase, but it was a chance to spend some more time with Jamie so I jumped at the opportunity. We had too many people there to take one car so I made sure that I was in the same car as Jamie.

We listened to a lot of random different music. All the girls were taking turns controlling the radio. There was the dance music radio channel, that sucked. There was the Classic Rock channel, that was not terrible. There was the hard rock channel, getting better. There was the weird Nine Inch Nails sound a like band, I think they were called Stabbing Westward. Then there was this crazy music like nothing I had ever. To this day I don't even know how to explain the band other than maybe as a funk ska band. It was Jamie's choice to pop in that CD, so it gave me a chance to ask her what in the heck we were listening too...it was The Little Blue Crunchy Things ( http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=78629623 ). The song was called Wasp( http://pownce.com/edvedafi/notes/2954110/ ). What a fascinating taste in music...more drive to learn more about this girl. On the way back to the Party ( which was the original plan for the night ) Jamie got to play some music again and this time she put in Unwritten Law. They were more of a typical punk band. Good but not quite as intriguing as LBCT.

( Note: I do not approve of underage drinking, and if you are a parent of somebody else that would be upset that we might have done some underage drinking please substitute all instances of Apple Pucker, Beer, drinks, and Captain and Coke with your favorite soda in the following paragraphs )
We got back to the party and all I wanted to do was get to talk to Jamie a little bit more. But first somebody asked if I wanted a beer. I couldn't say no so I went inside to get one. I ended up talking to a few people in there, and wondering where Jamie had went. So I grabbed a Captain and Coke and went looking for her. It took a little while but eventually I found her. It wasn't that big of a party and not at that big of a house, so I got a little worried that maybe she was trying to avoid me ( I did come to find out later that she was actually looking for me ). At this point I had a couple of drinks in me so I was able to talk to her, but being the dork that I was, it was still hard. I had no idea what to when I actually did find her. So when she asked me if I liked Apple Pucker I was excited because, yeah who doesn't like Apple Pucker, and it meant that she was going to talk to me. We made our way out onto the porch, where we sat and talked the rest of the night and shared the bottle of Apple Pucker. I can't for the life of me remember what we talked about that night. It took us a long time to drink that whole bottle of pucker so we must have talked a lot. I just remember being so excited that a beautiful girl would actually want to talk to me that it didn't really matter what we talked about.

I just kept thinking the whole time we drank the bottle, "boy I hope she's not all drunk and just talking to me because she is drunk." But then the next day she paged me ( yeah I was one of those kids that thought pagers were cool ). I called her back right away, and the rest is history.

How to pick weeds with Crabby Babies

I NEEDED to pick weeds today. But the boys were pretty cranky today, in fact I think that Kevin may have a bit of a tummy ache. So how was I going to pick weeds. I couldn't just let the boys cry out in the back yard. So I developed a system, employing my own newly coined system of efficiency through inefficiency.

1. Pack stroller with boys & Gatorade
2. Locate the part of your weed picking duties that is the most concentrated, or if that doesn't exist then just the part of your yard that is going to take you the longest.
3. Place weed deposit bin there. ( bonus tip: recycling bin works well for this )
4. Find shaded area very near to this location to put the stroller
5. Pick weeds
6. Wait for crying to commence...if you have children this will happen
7. When crying starts:
1. Roll stroller to weeds that are in a distant part of the yard ( for me weed bin was in back yard and we rolled up to the front yard )
2. Pick a single large weed
• Note: never pick more then one weed at a time, you may likely need that weed later
3. Roll back to bin
4. Deposit large weed in bin
5. If Crying continues go back and pick another large weed.
8. When crying stops continue picking weeds in the heavily concentrated area
9. Repeat step 7 whenever the crying starts again
   

This may not be the most efficient way of picking weeds...I'm sure if it would be faster to just go ahead and pick all of the front yard and then all of the back yard. However when you have crying children you cannot work as well, so by being less efficient and taking the periodic walks to get big weeds you will actually get the whole of the job done faster.

Rolling boys everywhere

Today was the day that the boys really figured out that they could roll over.

Alex had rolled over a few times before. He has been getting up on his side for a couple of weeks now. On Wednesday when Jamie took them over to Grandma and Papa's, when she was going to work, Alex rolled over. Luckily for her it was before she left their house. She wasn't watching him at the time, so she didn't actually see him roll but she saw him on his tummy, then he flipped back onto his back. I think Jamie said he has rolled over a couple of times here and there since then.

Kevin has never rolled over completely on his own before today. Yesterday when the boys were home with Jamie, while I was working, Kevin rolled over by grabbing the blanket that he was laying on and pulling himself over. So I missed the first time that both of the boys rolled over.

This morning Alex really realized that he could roll over. I was working downstairs and Jamie called me up cause he had rolled over. Then he rolled over a couple of more times before Jamie left for work.

This afternoon I took the boys over to my Nana and Papa's. And there Kevin realized that rolling over looked fun. The first time he rolled over from his back to his tummy he couldn't quite pull his arm out from underneath him. Then he used the arm that was stuck underneath him to flip himself back over. And I mean flip, like you flip a pancake, not rolled back over. Then when I went in my Grandpa's office to help him with his computer he rolled over several more times for Nana.

The rest of the afternoon the boys both just keep rolling over. From back to tummy, and sometimes they figure out how to get back onto their backs. Alex is a little bit better at going from his tummy back onto his back. Kevin will sit there for a while on his tummy thinking about it, and eventually trying to roll back to his back. But if he doesn't get it quick enough he gets really mad, because he never has liked being on his stomach. So I have spent a lot of time this afternoon rolling Kevin back over.

Time to go do some baby proofing of the living room floor.

Plagiocephaly - Good Insurance Man

Well it turns out that our insurance is going to cover the helmets for the boys. After doing some research and talking to our doctor's more it just so happens that our case is one of the few where insurance is most likely going to cover you. The one case that insurance will pretty much always cover is if it can be linked to a problem from birth. Since a multiple birth is a very common cause of Plagiocephaly the doctor was able to code it as being due to the fact that they are twins. Looking around at quite a few blogs about this topic I have seen lots and lots of people that have insurance not cover the costs for them. The biggest thing that I keep seeing is that insurance often doesn't cover it because they say that the parents don't do enough to prevent it, so therefore it is the parents fault and something that insurance won't cover. I think the biggest thing to remember in all of this is to catch it early...First that helps with the recovery and treatment, and secondly it helps with the insurance because the younger they are the easier it is to code it as a problem from birth.

Plagiocephaly ( ie. Helemts For Boys )

We had the appointment today to get the boys all measured up to see if they would need helmets. And finally get word on what the X-Rays looked like that they took last week.

It turns out that both boys have do Plagiocephaly, aka Flat Head. Although they are very different types of Plagiocephaly, neither one has anything more severe. It turns out there are all kinds of Cephalic Disorders. Of the ones that actually require treatment Positional Plagiocephaly is the least dangerous of them. The reason that they took the X-Rays was to look for all of the other problems that come along with it, like...the brain not growing correctly or skull bones fusing to each other or the neck. The X-Rays showed that none of these are a problem with Kevin or Alex, both just have Positional Plagiocephaly.

They do 2 measurements to see if a baby has Positional Plagiocephaly.

The first is a measurement compares the diagonal length difference from the back right to front left versus the back left to front right of the head. Anything under a 6mm difference is considered fine. From 6 to 10 mm they suggest treatment, but it is the parents choice. Any thing over 10mm and they say its pretty much necessary.

The second measurement is a percentage based on the difference between the width and the depth of their heads. The "normal" range for this measurement is 80%-90%.

Alex's percentage is 91%, which the doctor said he would not normally recommend treatment for. However his diagonal measurement is 14mm which is well into the range that needs a helmet.

Kevin's diagonal measurement is 8mm so he is in that gray area where he would not really need treatment for it if we didn't want to. However is width to depth ( or is it depth to width, I don't remember...I was always good at math and there were too many numbers for even me to keep up with them all ) ratio is 96%. So he needs a helmet to help correct that.

The Doctor said that they cannot say ahead of time how long they will need to wear the helmets. Although he did say that it is very good that they got checked now. The skull grows very fast at this young of an age. The doctor offered a guess that they might be in the helmets for as little as 2-4 months. On the other hand in most cases parents don't bring in their kids to check them out until they are 6 months old, and then the average is to wear the helmet until they are 14-16 months old. So many thanks to our regular doctor for having us get the boys checked out this young.

Next step is the insurance. Since this problem is pretty common now days (some numbers suggest that 40% of children should have helmets at some point) insurance companies often deny it, saying that the parents keeping the children on their backs is the cause of the problem. However it turns out that multiples are also a really big cause of Plagiocephaly ( some numbers I have seen suggest that up to 60% of multiple births require a helmet ) . This is because there is not enough room in the womb for the skulls to grow normally. Since their heads have always been a little flat the doctor said the reason for them developing Plagiocephaly is likely the fact that they are twins. Apparently insurance companies are more likely to cover Plagiocephaly helmets when the problems are caused by birth, so my fingers are crossed.

The Cereal Wars

Its been a week now since we have started the boys on cereal. Overall its going pretty good. This has been like a week long experiment. When we started we were giving them plain cereal for breakfast, before giving them their bottle.

The first couple of feedings they seamed way too hunger to eat at the slower pace of the cereal.
So we started giving them half of the bottle first and then giving them the cereal and finishing up with what ever remained in the bottle.

In the middle of the week we switched from the regular cereal to banana cereal. They really like banana cereal better.

Once we knew they were OK with the cereal we switched from the morning feeding to the night feeding. This way they sleep really good at night ( almost too good, they have been sleeping until 8, and I'm supposed to be at work at 8).

Since we don't want them sleeping until 8 in the morning we have decided we are going to start trying to feed them a little earlier at night. Starting last night we started the process of changing them and making the food right at 7. Then give them the Cereal first followed bye the bottle as a "good night" feeding. This seamed to work pretty well, but the boys still slept until close to 8 this morning since we didn't get started right at 7 like we were planing.

So now with banana flavored cereal at night before getting a bottle...

Alex LOVEs his cereal. When you are feeding him you just can't shovel it into his mouth fast enough. He is so good about keeping the food all in his mouth too. Of course he does not keep it all in his mouth by any means, but rarely does it get all over his face.

Kevin on the other hand is not so fond of the cereal. When I feed him the cereal he cries ( oddly doesn't cry for Jamie ). And he spits a lot of his cereal back out of his mouth. When he is done eating his cereal you practically need to change his cloths cause he has so much of it everywhere. Although a bonus of him crying for me last night is that I could just keep pouring it in his mouth and almost none ended up on his face and/or cloths.

Xrays

We took the boys in this week to get the X-Rays on their heads. That was quite the experience, and one that hopefully we never have to go through again.

When we got there they took us right away. I followed the nurse carrying Kevin, and Jamie followed me carrying Alex. The next thing I know the nurse is closing the door behind me and Jamie isn't there anymore. Apparently there was a nurse behind Jamie and they took Alex into a different room. Not a big deal, but I would have liked to say good luck to Jamie and Alex before we parted ways.

The nurse got the table all ready for use and had me lay Kevin down on his back looking up at the X-Ray machine. She put a lead sheet over him, and had me wear a lead vest. Then she had me hold these foam pads on the side of Kevin's head so that he wouldn't turn while she took the X-Ray. Then she repositioned the X-Ray machine and had me keep Kevin looking straight up. So far this was seaming pretty darn easy. I thought we were going to end up being in and out in a matter of just a couple of minutes.

And then came the fun pictures. They had to get side shots of the head. So I had to turn Kevin's head to the right and hold the foam on each side. Well since he is laying on his back and looking to the right, that means one foam mat is on the back of his head and the other is pressed up against his face. As you can probably imagine he did not like having that foam pressed against his face. After a few attempts I decided that instead of holding the foam in front of his face I grabbed his toy off of the car seat and crunched the wings along side of him so that he would look at me. The nurse and I thought it was working well so she snapped the picture, and then had me go to the other side of the table and do the same thing.

Then the nurse went back to look at the pictures and saw that both of the pictures of the sides of his head were bad. So she had me lay him on his stomach and see if we could get the shots that way. Of course that did not work well, because Kevin HATES being on his stomach. So we tried for a few times, with no success. Finally I thought that I had him in the right position so the nurse ran behind the wall to the controls and snapped the X-Ray. And as I expected these were also bad. After taking 2 bad pictures of each side of his head the nurse finally went to get another nurse to help. He stood behind the wall ready to hit the button as soon as we had Kevin in a good position. So we left Kevin on his tummy and I stood in front of him with his toy, held slightly higher than his head to force him to really turn his head that way good, and the original nurse stood on the other side of the table and held his head down as best she could with the foam thing. After those set of pictures, the nurses said they were not quite perfect, but good enough so we were finally done. For all the wiggling and refusing to turn the right way at least he never cried the whole time.

Alex's went much easier for Jamie. Apparently she got two nurses right from the start. So all she had to do was go behind the wall and watch the nurses hold Alex down to take the pictures.

Now we get to go next week to the specialist and have them read the X-Rays, to tell us if the boys have to get helmets to try to straighten them out.

Getting Better Already

The first cereal feeding was a mess...The second one was much better, at least for Alex.

First off, thanks for this idea Grandma JoJo. This morning we decided to start out by giving the boys about half of their bottle first before giving them the cereal. Then after the cereal giving them the bottles again to finish topping off their bellies.

Kevin didn't necessarily take to this idea so well. He didn't do any worse than yesterday's feeding, but he really wasn't much better. Jamie feed him this time, and he still cried almost the whole time that he was eating the cereal. Then he did not want to eat the bottle at all after the cereal. But he did eat enough cereal and formula that we just called him done.

Alex on the other hand really got into eating the cereal this morning. It was like I couldn't shove it in his mouth fast enough. Until we got towards the end of the bowl he never cried the whole time. Of course I did make quite the mess out of him. I had to wash his face and hands, as expected, but I also had to wash his clothes cause they were all crusty from the cereal. It was so cute how he learned so quickly that he needs to open his mouth as I put the spoon up to it. Hopefully he continues to eat this good now.

Instead of sitting in front of him, like Jamie did yesterday, I sat along side of him. And I think we know from now on that we need to sit alongside of the boys when we are feeding them instead of in front of them. If I would have sat in front of him them I would have ended up with cereal all over me just like Jamie did.

Moving onto Cereal

The boys have been slowly doing better now every day since getting their shots so we decided that we would give the boys their first cereal this morning. We sat on the floor in the living room and put the boys in their bouncy seats to feed them.

The boys really did not get as excited as we did. Both boys cried quite a bit while we tried to feed them.

Alex seamed to be eating OK ( in between crying ) for Jamie. But then he got fussy and kicked the bowl of cereal right out of Jamie's hands. I think Jamie got even more covered in goo than we normally would by Alex's spit up. She cleaned up and although he wasn't too happy about it Alex finished what was left in the bowl.

Kevin cried the whole time I feed him. Luckily for me he never got wiggly enough to kick the bowl out of my hand. He kept spitting out the cereal as fast as I could put it in his mouth. Once he really started crying good it actually went better. While he was crying he wasn't able to spit the food back out so he started to swallow it. He never seamed too happy about it, but he finished his whole bowl. Although I'm not really sure if that is accurate, because I think there was quite a bit more cereal on his bib than in his mouth.

I'm thinking its just going to take a few feedings before they start to like it...at least I hope they start to like it at some point.

4 Month Checkup

We had the boys 4 month check ups yesterday. The boys are pretty healthy. They are both growing very well. Alex is now 14 pounds 2 ounces, which puts him in the 32nd percentile. He is 24.75 inches long which is the 43rd percentile. Kevin is 16 pounds 4 ounces (75th percentile) and 25.5 inches long ( 71st percentile). Its crazy that only 0.5 inches seperates them but that jumps from percentile from 43 to 71 and 2 pounds causes a jump from 32 to 75. All of the percentiles for both boys actually went up since the last visit, except for Alex's weight, which dropped from 35 to 32, but that is basically just staying the same. The doctor said that is perfectly healthy growth for both.

The only thing that the doctor did say we need to get checked out is their flat heads. The boys hate being on their tummies, so we tend to not give them enough tummy time. Especially Kevin, because he will just lay there with his face buried in the floor screaming until you roll him over. He won't even attempt to turn his head. So first off I think we are going to have to start living with the screaming for a little while each day and put him on his tummy even though he doesn't like it. And it sounds like we might have to get them little helmets to wear when they sleep. Hopefully tomorrow I remember to bring the phone number with so that I can make an appointment for next week.

There was speculation that Kevin had a hernia so we made sure to ask the doctor about it. The doctor checked him and couldn't find anything.

The only other thing we asked the doctor about was feeding. He suggested that we can start giving them Cereal now. I think we are probably going to wait until the weekend and start them on it then. We wanted to start right away, but the boys reacted to the shots a little bit more this time. They both were running a little fever and just generally acting like they didn't feel so good. They are also spitting up quite a bit now ( well Alex is anyway ), so as soon as they are back to being themselves again we are going to get the cereal started. Its always exciting when you get to experience a first.

Baby Time

Definition: When something happens on "Baby Time", it is happening at the most odd time, and likely at a time when it should not happen.

Example1:
Baby's eat at 3pm:
Parent Time says they should eat again at 7PM.
Baby Time says cry ( kind of hysterically at times ) from 5:30PM to 6:50 PM and then fall asleep until at least 7:30.

Example2:
The next morning:
Parent time says get up at 7AM and eat.
Baby Time says get up at 5:50AM and cry. Proceed with crying on and off ( mostly when loosing nuk ) until parents get sick of listening to the crying and decide to make you a bottle.
Parent Time then says at abut 6:45 is close enough, so go ahead and make the bottle.
Baby Time says fall asleep while parent makes bottle....
The next logical step ( and hopefully Alex doesn't take it ) is wait for brother to wake up and then start crying again so parent has two crying-hungry babies instead of one.

Update:
Alex woke up perfectly just after seven and Kevin stayed sleeping until after Alex ate...I like Parent Time

The Boys' First Football Game

I know its the middle of summer, but to me its always football season. Is there really any better way to spend a Sunday afternoon?

This past Sunday was their Cousin Ethan's last flag football game of the season. Since it was the first time any of our nephews was old enough to be in a football league we thought it would be nice to go see him play.

So we packed up the boys...short sentence, but boy does that actually require a lot of work. It was new park that we have never been to before, so of course I got lost. It was kinda goofy, Kelly told us it was on Jordaine St., but what I didn't know is that it was literally in the middle of Jordaine St. and where we turned onto the street we couldn't get to the park because the street went to a dead end before the park. So we turned around and got back on Jordaine St. on the other side of the park and all was good. Then we weren't sure exactly which field it was on ( they had 3 games going ), so we decided the best choice was to pick the one all the way at the other end of the parking lot. This might sound like an odd idea, but they boys had been kinda cranky during the day so this field provided the best opportunity to take the boys on a little calm down walk. Of course that was not the right field, so we walked around a bit and found the field we were looking for. By that point the boys had gotten a nice little walk, so it worked out good that we walked around for a little bit as they were now starting to fall a sleep.

But they didn't stay sleeping for too long. Emersyn wanted to talk to they boys ( just like any little girl does ) so that got them up. The boys are not quite as excited to hear Emersyn talk as Alexis, but they do love talking to any little kid that comes to talk to them. So they woke up and were all smiley while Emersyn and Kelly talked to them. Jamie and Joe's friend Adam was there, and I didn't realize that he had never seen the boys before. He was helping Jamie be an assistant coach so he didn't get long to see the boys, but it was a nice chance for him to meet them.

Then we started to feel a couple of sprinkles. No big deal, but I hate having the boys out in the rain. So we grabbed thier blankets and started to drap them over the stroller. Then we could see it coming...on the other end of the park you could see this massive down pour. It was kinda neat to see, and if the boys weren't there I probably would have just sat and watched it coming. But we really needed to make sure the boys weren't caught in that, and I'm not sure how well our little baby blankets would have held up to that. Luckily Kelly's mom was also there and she had a big thick blanket that Emersyn was using to sit on. So we quickly grabbed that and threw it over the stroller.

By the time we got the blanket over the stroller the down pour had hit us. I grabbed the stroller and started pushing as fast as I could. The football field was set up right past the infield dirt of a baseball diamond. So we pushed as fast as I could towards the dugout. Kelly was trying to help hold the blanket on the front of the stroller as I pushed. Then about half way there we realized that Emersyn wasn't running under the blanket anymore. So Jamie ran back and got her. The dug out is just chain link fencing with a roof over it, but for the most part we weren't getting rained on too bad. We kept the blanket half drapped over the boys, so they stayed pretty dry.

One of of the games had already started before the rain so those kids kept playing. Thinking back to when I was a kid, that must have been a lot of fun for those boys. What probably wasn't a lot of fun was that Kelly remembered she had left thier camera on the chair, so she made Jamie(brother) run back to the chair and get it. It was sitting in a pretty big puddle so hopefully it dries out ok for them.

Once the rain slowed down a bit the referees decided to start Ethan's game. We watched the game for a little bit from the dug out. After about 10-15 minutes the rain stopped, and most of the people left the dug outs to go back and watch from the sidelines. We decided that we didn't want to risk having the boys caught in that again, so we decided to head home. In the end the boys didn't even get to watch any football.

The walk back to the car required us to walk quite a ways through the grass and mud. By the time we got back to the sidewalk the tires had accumulated a pretty good collection of mud on them...its a good thing we have an awesome stroller because it wasn't too hard to walk though all the junk with it. Me and the boys took a few laps through the large puddles that had formed on the walk ways and that cleaned off the tires pretty good.

On the way home it started raining again, and talking to Jamie(brother) later they kids played through the rain when it came again. So its a good thing that we did decide to leave early. Sounds like Ethan is playing again in fall so we'll try to take the boys to a game again then.

Picking Names

I'd like to start by apologizing to all you die-hard Kevin and Alex fans out there, its been a while since we've written a full blog entry. Most of what we have wanted to say can be said through twitter and its so much easier to post there. With that said I thought I would share the story of how Kevin and Alex came to be the twins names, since we never put it up here....

We went back and forth on lots of names when trying to think of what the names of the boys would be. Lots of names got thrown out there, like Brett and Peyton ( from Grandma JoJo ), but nothing ever sounded good to us. After a lot of digging through baby name books/websites we were still stuck with nothing. Then one day Jamie said she always liked the name Kevin. Right when she said that I knew that was a good name and we had one of our names. Then for the first time it having twins proved to me more work than a single baby ( many more of these times have come and gone since ), because we still had to come up with a second name. After pondering the options again for a short time I thought about Diggnation, which is one of my favorite shows ( side note: if you like to laugh and like news or technology go check out www.diggnation.com ). The hosts of the show are Kevin and Alex, so naturally since we had already decided on Kevin I threw out Alex as the other name. Jamie said that she liked the name too, but quickly realized that DiggNation is where I had come up with the name. So she made a point that she liked the name, but we agreed that they are not "named after" the hosts of DiggNation.

So the next natural step is deciding which baby would be Kevin and which would be Alex. Looking at ultra-sound pictures neither baby really looked like they were a Kevin or an Alex. So we decideded that we would wait until the boys were born to decide which one was which. So for the rest of the pregnancy we stuck with "Baby A" and "Baby B" as thier names ( and yes I did consider using those as there permenant names, but my better judgement took over real quickly when that thought popped into my head ).

All the way up to thier birthday we thought about how we would choose which baby would be which. We considered everything, from the first one born would be Kevin/Alex, to just seeing which one looked more like a Kevin or an Alex. Then the day came and we still had no idea how we were going to choose which one would be which. So as we sat in the room waiting for the delivery we kept thinking about it, as if we didn't have enough other things to think about. Then we got into the delivery room and I saw Jamie laying on the operating table and amongst all the other thoughts of happiness, joy, fear, and anticipation ( mabye I'll get around to writing an entry about that one day ) I thought oh boy, how are we going to decide which one is which. Then I saw they take out "baby A" and all the thoughts of names left my mind and were replaced with all the thoughts that come along with "holy crap I'm a father". Then "baby b" was born and I was still just stuck on "holy crap I'm a father of two". Then after basking the joy of our boys for a few minutes one of us, and I don't remeber which one, ask "who is who". For some reason I said "Well baby A has hair, we should name him Kevin". To this day we still have no idea why, but at the time that made total sense to both us and Baby A became Kevin Joseph Burich, and Baby B became Alex James Burich. I guess its one of those special parenting things that you just instinctvly know your children.

First Night without the boys

Yesterday we went to dinner with Grandma and Papa. When we were done eating Grandma insisted that Kevin and Alex should spend the night at her house.

It was a really tough decision to let them go for the night, but after thinking about it for a while we decided it would be nice to get a little sleep. And boy were we right. Now that the boys are sleeping through the night I've been feeling a little less sleep deprived every day. Last night might have been the last little bit that I needed to get back to being a non-sleep deprived parent. Notice I said non-sleep deprived parent, as I know there is no such thing as a fully rested parent.

I thought I was going to have a lot of trouble sleeping last night, but it turned out that I was so in need of catching up on sleep that I fell asleep at 9 and didn't get up until 6:30. Jamie on the other hand did wake up a few times wondering about the boys, but I think she also got enough sleep to re-energize herself as well.

Grandma wasn't so lucky. Jamie and I have become so used the little noises the boys make at night that it doesn't phase us anymore. When they start making noises we just listen to the monitor for a couple minutes and we know right away whether or not they are going to fall back asleep. Of course Grandma isn't used to those noises. She heard Kevin sucking his thumb at 3:30, so she got up and made the boys bottles. By the time she was done making the bottles Kevin had fallen back asleep. Then at 4:45 Alex started making some noises, so she got up and did it again. And, yup you guessed it, Alex was back asleep by the time the bottles were ready. The boys finally got up them at 6:20. I never realized just how helpful it is to know the sounds the boys make. Now that the boys are sleeping through the night, if we didn't know the boys sounds we would be just like Grandma: not sleeping through the night even though the boys did.

Sleeping through the night

Well I never thought I would be so excited to sleep as I have been the last few days. This ranks right up there as one of the happiest days of my life. The boys have finally started to sleep through the night. Of course I'm sure this is not yet a permanent thing. Its only been too nights in a row now, but boy how nice it feels to get 8 hours of sleep. Although it does kind of mess with your body. I'm really tired today and I think its cause I'm not used to getting this much sleep.

For any new parents out there reading this...I never thought this day would come either, but it does.

Happy Memorial Day ( a bit late )

The boys had a nice first memorial day weekend.

We headed out to townline with Grandma JoJo on Saturday....have I ever mentioned how good a burger with kielbasa on it is?

Then on Sunday the boys got to finally get over to visit with Nana and Papa Madsen. This was only the third time the boys have gotten to see them. We gotta make more of an effort to get them over there, I think they missed the Nana and Papa.

After visiting Nana and Papa we headed home to grill out. Now those of you who have eaten my grilled foods know just how dangerous that idea can be. Grilled out some corn on the cob and brats for me and Grandma JoJo, and some chicken and turkey burgers for Jamie. For the first time ever my food actually turned out good, well mostly at least. Grandma JoJo even said the brats and corn were very good. Jamie liked the turkey burger. However, to stay true to my grilling legacy, the chicken was so over done and dried out that Jamie couldn't even eat it. Well for me 3 out of 4 is doing great.

Then memorial day was kinda sad. Jamie had to work 3-7, so she was not able to go over to Grandma and Papa's with us. It was the the boy's first holiday without mommy. I'm sure that the boys really missed mommy cause they were quite cranky for the first hour or so that we had them outside. Of course they calmed down pretty good because there were so many people there that wanted to see the boys that they rarely had to sit in the strollers without anybody holding them. Around 6 it suddenly cooled off like 10 degrees in 5 minutes, so I brought the boys in the house. Alex fell asleep in his bouncy chair, but Kevin would not. So his cousin Alexus came in and talked to him. Kevin had the biggest smiles on his face that I have ever seen. He really really loved talking to Lexie. She was kneeling in front of him saying aboo and he would just smile and laugh. Of course as I have a habit of doing I forgot my camera at home. Hopefully Jamie/Kelly send me the pics soon and I'll post them.

Hopefully this is the last holiday that the boys have to be away from mommy, but until she finishes school I'm guessing there will be a couple more, and me and the boys will just have to accept that.

6 ounces!?!?

Both boys have been eating really poorly the last week or so. They eat the first couple of ounces really good by want to stop. After fighting with them for a while we can usually get 3.5-4 ounces in them. On rare occasions we can even get them to eat 4.5-5, but that is not often. Its a whole lot more out of the ordinary for Kevin, as he was eating 6 ounces at a time before his shots a couple of weeks ago. A lot of times Kevin will actually start crying, very loudly, while eating.

They went to grandma and papa's today. At 8 and noon they both ate 6 ounces, and at 4 they both at 5 ounces before they wanted to stop. I'm not sure at all what's going...The one feeding yesterday that Kevin at his full bottle quickly was when Grandma JoJo was here feeding him. Its like they just don't want to eat for mommy and daddy...hope they get over this soon.

twitter

I know I try to stick to just some news about the boys here, but I just had to give a little love to twitter ( www.twitter.com ).

Twitter is a free "microblogging" service. Its easier than writing a full scale blog as posts are limited to 140 characters. So you post just short sentences about what you are up to. The reason that it is limited to 140 characters is because on of the most common ways to interact with twitter is through a cell phone, and 140 characters is the limit for standard text messages. Twitter will also hook up to your instant message client ( works with pretty much all IM services ). If you hook up both your phone and IM then you can post to twitter by sending an IM to twitter, a text message to twitter or by going to www.twitter.com, or if you want it on your computer desktop without using IM you can also use any one of hundreds of desktop clients that all look similar to an IM client, but only interact with twitter. My favorite is www.twhirl.org.

In order to get updates from a person you just go to their profile and choose follow ( and if you want updates on your phone/IM make sure to turn device updates on ). Then every time anybody you are following posts an update you will get an IM/Text Message depending on what you have set up. If you set up both it will send IMs while you are signed into your IM client, and text messages while you are signed out of your IM client. You can also tell your text messages to "sleep" at night so that you don't get updates throughout the night.

Me and Jamie are both set up on twitter now ( www.twitter.com/edvedafi and www.twitter.com/jamieburich respectively ). Of course if you don't want to set up a twitter account you can simply check the blog page and you will see our updates at the top right of the page. However it is much more fun to keep up with twitter if you actually set up an account and are also posting. After setting up a twitter account simply click the links above for both jamie and my accounts and choose follow. We'll get emails saying that you are following us and then I'll follow you back.

I'm looking forward to seeing all the blog readers on twitter.

Almost a Full Night Sleep.

Well as anticipated Sunday and Monday night were too good to be true. Sunday we put the boys to bed a little after 8PM. They had quite the long Mother's Day ( Including Kevin peeing through his cloths all over me at Great Nana and Papas, at least it was when we were getting ready to leave ). Then it was also bath night and Jamie tried out the "sleeping gel" on them, which I will continue to think is just a bunch of voodoo until I have time to study and understand the science behind it. Well all that combined led to the longest sleep we have gotten since the boys were born. They did not get up until almost 4AM.

Then Monday night they slept really good again from 9PM to 3AM. A little less than the night before but still really good.

Then, as we were warned by everybody, they went back to their good old ways of only sleeping 4-5 hours at a time last night. They just did not want to eat at the 8 O'Clock feeding so we finally gave up at 9 and put them to bed. Then cause they didn't eat much at 8 they woke up at 1:30 to eat again. And since that feeding was so early compared to the last couple of nights, they woke up to eat again at 6AM. Still not as bad as it was a couple weeks ago, but tough after being spoiled the last couple of nights.

Happy First Mother's Day

Dear Mom,

We just wanted to wish you a happy first mother's day. Now I know you had that big furry black thing before, but we consider this your first real mother's day.

We know its only been a couple of months in this world, but in this short time we have realized that you are the very bestest person in the whole world. Of course that guy with goatee is a pretty close second. But you are there for us every day, all day. We hunger and you feed us. We poop and you change us. We spit up and you clean us. We especially like the baths, I know we cry a lot but its nice to feel good and clean, and since daddy is too much of a big baby to bathe us you get to deal with it every time.

We don't really do anything except eat, poop, and spit up while we are awake yet, but the days are coming where we can have some more fun with you. Already we are starting smile when you talk to us, yeah we are greedy we want all the attention. And when you sit and talk to us we love to try to talk back to you. We both are trying to suck our thumbs, and we know that comes from you not daddy. All just signs that soon we will be more fun and do things other than eat, sleep, spit-up, and poop.

Happy Mothers Day.
Love,
Kevin and Alex

Happy Mother's Day

Its Jamie's first true mother's day. Of course we have had Phoenix for 8 years now ( I think she's 8 anyway ), so we have celebrated mother's day every year, but this is the first time that we get to celebrate as a true mother.

I hope Jamie likes here mother's day presents. The boys each got here a Stepping Stone Kit. You pour in the cement ( and you can put some shiny stones and stuff in them ) and then put the imprints of the kids feet in the stone. Really I wanted to get the stones all made ahead of time but it turns out that I never had the boys by myself while Jamie wasn't here.

I'm sure that will change soon though. Jamie starts back to work this week. It going to be quite the change for all of us. Jamie does such a good job with the boys all day. I'm sure there will be a little bit of an adjustment period for the boys as they have to learn to be away from mommy for a bit more than they have up until now...we have been brining them to visit grandma and papa every Wednesday so that Jamie could do some shopping, but that was just one day a week. And I'm sure that I'll get a lot more time to spend with boys as Jamie will be working an occasional evening or weekend shift. I'm sure I can't do as good of a job as super mom, but hopefully the boys will be happy spending some time with daddy.

Happy 2 Month Birthday

Happy Birthday Kevin and Alex. They are 2 months old today. I just don't know how they got to be 2 months old this quickly. It seriously feels like its only been a couple of weeks since they came home.

These 2 months have been the most difficult time in my life, but more importantly the most wonderful. For every time I think "WTF why won't you just stop crying" there are at least 5 times that I think "wow there is no way a boy that cute/funny/smart/etc. could be my son."

Like yesterday morning...Kevin just wouldn't stop crying (we think the shots just took a couple of days to catch up with him, cause he also wouldn't eat much). So I knelt over him to talk to him and he instantly went from crying to the biggest smiles I have ever seen out of them. Then we sat there for 10 minutes just talking to each other(he was making the cutes little grunting sounds at me) and smiling.

Or Alex and his mobile. He just loves his mobile. At night sometimes he'll get a little fussy in the couple minutes between when he finishes his bottle and we get him to the crib. But he knows as soon as we get into the nursery at night that the mobile is coming. As soon as we cross through the doorway into the nursery his head immediately flops backwards trying to see the mobile. And he will just stare at that thing until he falls asleep, most of the time his now sleeping without any crying before the mobile even shuts off.

The first round of shots

The boys got a bunch of vaccinations, 3 shots and one oral, at the doctor appointment on Friday. They both took the shots OK. It was really hard to hold them down while the nurses poked their legs. Kevin got his shots first, and as soon as the shots were done he calmed right down when I handed him to Jamie. Then after Alex got his shots I held him for a minute and he calmed right down. That was nice cause when they went from silent to shrill cries I thought that they were "hurt" pretty bad. It made us feel a lot better when they calmed down so much.

We kept hearing stories about how babies get so crabby and run fevers and stuff. However both of the boys have done very well. They have been a little bit crabbier than usual, but not too bad. Neither one ran a fever at all. The only thing that they have been doing is eating less. Hopefully they can keep up like this for all of their shots.

In fact I think that the shots somehow reversed their eating personalities. Alex recovered his appetite really quickly. Kevin still has not. Now Alex chugs down his full 5 ounces very quickly and it takes Kevin forever to eat and he is only finishing 3-4 ounces.

2 Month Check-Up

The boys had their 2 month check up on Friday. Everything went very well. Both boys are growing very good( could have told you that without the doctor's help). I said before the appointment that I thought the boys were going to be about 11 lbs each, and Jamie thought I was crazy. So who was closer...

As expected Kevin is still the heavier of the two. Kevin is 12 lbs 1 oz. That puts him at the 65th percentile for his age. So not only has he caught up to the "average" baby, but he has out paced the average. No surprise there, because the boy sucks down every bottle like he has never eaten before. Alex is a little bit smaller at 10 lbs 13oz. That puts him in the 35th percentile, which is a pretty big jump from the 8th percentile where he was at the last appointment. So I was just a couple ounces over Alex's weight and a little bit under on Kevin's.

Interestingly Alex is the longer of the two. Alex is 22.25 inches and Kevin is 22 inches, so the difference is very small. In fact that in the doctor's words this measurement is "wildly inaccurate." So who knows we could be right, we think that Kevin is actually the longer of the two. While the nurse was measuring them Kevin didn't want to stretch and Alex gave a very good stretch, so the measurements might not be totally accurate.

Kevin also has the larger head. His head is 39.25 cm and Alex's is 39 cm. That puts them in the 39th and 32nd percentile. And of course just to stay true to themselves Alex got measured first and while Kevin was getting measured Alex spit up a bunch all over the floor in the measuring room.

We asked the doctor again about them spitting up. He said that since they both are growing so well it is nothing to worry about. Unfortunately the spit up is still so much that it is hard for us to keep up with wiping their mouths. The doctor said that, because of the good growth, he would not recommend any medication or formula change. However he did say that we could try them on a different brand of the same kind of formula. He said that a part of the problem could be that Similac tends to have a lot of bubbles in it compared to some of the other brands. So we are going to use up the Isomil that we have and then give them a try on the Carnation GoodStart, or the doctor suggested Parents Choice, and see if that helps at all.

So Tired

Both boys have been waking up between 4;30 and 5:30 every morning lately. After getting up that early the last few days sleep has been pretty minimal. I think a big part of the problem is that they are awake all day now, and only taking couple of short naps. So then by the time they eat around supper time they are out for the night then. And then they get up early cause they have been sleeping for so long.

Last night they were cranky all evening and didn't actually fall asleep until after we feed them at 9. We fell asleep out on the couch ( like usual ), and woke up and went into the bedroom at 2 when we heard the boys crying. After a few minutes we decided to get up and feed them. Then the amazing part was that Alex slept until 6AM this morning. When he woke I thought that we had fed them at 2AM last night so it had been 4 hours. Alex was cranky and I couldn't get him to fall back asleep so I decided at about 6:15 that I had held him off long enough and was going to go ahead and feed him. This way Alex would hopefully finish eating before Kevin got up. Well Kevin woke up at 6:45 and Alex had only eating 2 ounces! So I got Kevin up and let Alex sleep a little while I fed Kevin. It took Kevin almost half an hour to eat his whole bottle. Then I went back to Alex and he was so tired he wouldn't open his mouth to eat. Eventually I just gave up and let him go back to sleep after eating less than half the bottle.

After I finally gave up and let Alex go back to sleep Jamie got up. And she informed me that we went bed at 2AM, then that few minutes minutes that we waited before feeding them wasn't really a few minutes. It turns out that I was so tired I had fallen asleep for a full hour and we had really fed them at a little after 3AM. So when I tried to feed Alex it had really only been 3 hours since he last ate...no wonder he only at half the bottle.

Jason

Sleep is good

What a week this has been for sleep. The boys have started to really sleep good at night. They are still not close to sleeping through the night, but sleeping much better. Most nights they are going to bed between 8 and 9 at night. They they don't get up until some time between 2 and 4 in the morning for their one night feeding. Its so nice to only have to get up and feed them once in the middle of the night. In reality we are still not getting much sleep at night, but it sure feels like are getting tons of sleep.

The only problem is that they refuse to sleep in the morning. Even if they eat at 4 they still wake up early. Sometimes as early as 5:30, and if we are really lucky we might get them to sleep until 6:15. During the week this isn't too bad because I would normally get up at 6:30ish so its not too early for me. Its the weekends when it sucks. I try to be nice to Jamie and take care of the boys that early in the morning on the weekends, but sometimes, when they are both really cranky like this morning, Jamie ends up waking up to the crying and helping me feed them. Once they start sleeping through the night it won't be such a big deal to get up at 5:30, but right now its really tiring to have to wake up that early and have to jump right in to "calm the baby down" mode. Usually its Alex that wakes up, so like yesterday, I can rock him in the chair and give Kevin his nuk in the crib and they will both eventually fall back asleep until 7 or so. Hopefully not more than a couple of months and they will be sleeping through the night.

Chuggy is getting fuzzy

Its official Kevin has his first nickname...Chuggy. We don't really call him that all too often, but that's what I call him when he eats. He can down a 5 ounce bottle in about 10 minutes. When he finishes it he cries like he is still starving. So last night we tried upping his food to 6 ounces, and he was less of an angry baby when he finished 6 ounces, but he still seamed like he could have eaten more. Look at the recommendations you should start giving 6 ounces at 2 months, so we are about a week or so early on that, so we don't really want to go any more than 6 ounces right now. This morning I swear he spit up the whole 6th ounce so we are thinking that even if we started giving him more then he would just spit it up anyway.

Alex is still eating 5 ounces at a time, and that's a struggle to get him to eat it all sometimes. They are spitting up a lot less at random times now, but more seams to be coming up with the burps. At few of the last feedings Alex has spit up some much that there will be a puddle of partially digested formula in the burp rag, and if you don't get the burp rag there fast enough to catch the puddle then you get your entire shirt & pants covered in spit up (yes...I have done that a few times now ). Sometime he will spit up like that as much as 3 times per feeding. I'd say that I need to change MY clothes at least once every 3 feedings. But I guess the good part of the mass projectile spit up is that it rarely gets his clothes, and its much easier to change myself than it is to change him.

We have a doctor's appointment this Friday and we are going to talk to the doctor's about the spitting up. Hopefully the doctor's can tell us something that might help with it. Other than the spitting up they both are very healthy little boys. They are both growing very well. No idea how much they weigh now, but I can say that its enough that your arms start to get tired now when you hold them for too long ( especially Kevin ). Kevin is still the bigger of the two, but Alex is definitely catching up a little bit. As Alex grows and fills out he looks more like Kevin every day. In fact they are starting to look so similar that there are times that I need to look closely to tell which one is which.

In the last couple of days there is finally a good way to tell them apart with out too much work. Their hair is really starting to come back in. Kevin doesn't look like an old man anymore ( he had the bald top of the head with the hair going around the sides and back ). His dark hair is coming in and making the top of his head really fuzzy. Alex on the other hand is not looking quite as much like Lex Luther ( with his bald head ) as his blond hair is starting to come in. Since Alex's hair is so light you need to look real close to see it, but even from a distance his head doesn't look shiny anymore.

Going out again

We went out for the first time last night since we had the boys, well actually pretty much since we found out Jamie was pregnant. Everybody kept saying that it was strange that I did not want to drink even though we were going out for my birthday. Boy I sure am glad I didn't drink at all. We had a good time...at some good food ( lineman's lunchbox ) and hung out and shot darts for awhile. By the time it got close to 11 PM we were both sooo tired that we had to go home or we were going to fall asleep at the bar. We missed the boys sooo much that even if we weren't that tired we may have called it an early night anyway. That was quite a long time past our bedtime so if I would have been drinking I don't think I could have made it that late, and I really don't think I would have been able to get up with the boys at night.

Jamie's SuperMom

Jamie has been pretty sick, running a fever and stuff, since yesterday afternoon. So that has left me as solo dad. I honestly don't know how she does it all day. Things are fine when the boys are sleeping, or when they are happy to just sit in your lap and talk to you. But I've only been doing the solo dad thing for one day and I'm ready to pull my hair out ( and that's not good cause I don't have that much to pull out ).

I guess the only time that it really got frustrating enough to pull my hair out was supper time last night. Kevin and Alex had decided that they wanted to get cranky at the same time. So it had been just 3 hours since their last feeding ( we are trying to go 4 hours between feedings now ), so I wanted to try to hold them off for a little while. Well they were going to have nothing to do with that. Its tough enough when one gets crabby at night, and nothing you do will calm them down. But you really feel bad when you got 2 that aren't happy and won't be no matter what you do. Normally when one gets crabby I can hold them ( laying on their side along my arm with their head in my elbow, and lightly patting their butt with my other hand ) and walk around for a minute or two and they will calm down. Then we rock on the chair and all is good. But I discovered rather quickly last night that with 2 of them in your arms their is just no way that you can hold them like that. And they don't especially like sharing the space on my chest when I try to hold them both while rocking. So I had to fall back to the one solution I knew would work and feed them early.

Really other than that one time it hasn't been too bad. But just the overall amount of work that you need to do when your by yourself is tiring. Alex is a pretty slow eater so from the time that one wakes up until the time you lay the second one back down is usually an hour and a half at night and two hours during the day. Then once they are laying down you have to watch them for a little while because they spit up so much. And with Alex insisting on eating every 3 hours by the time you get them all calmed back down and resting your lucky to get an hour before the process starts again. And Jamie does it well. Somehow she still manages to find time to do things around the house, like dishes and laundry and all the other stuff. She even got the bassinets all ready to go into storage yesterday. I don't know how she can do that. I'm gonna be lucky if can manage to get the dishes done today.

Edit: Now I know what keeps her going. Getting the boys up this morning was one of the greatest feelings. First there is that joyous feeling that you made it through the night ( or day in Jamie's case ) and the boys are still doing good. Then there is the smiles from Alex after you get him all changed and cleaned up for the day.

First Graduation

The boys made their first big graduation over the weekend. They have moved out of their bassinets and into the Cribs in the nursery.

We figured Alex would make the transition OK, but we were worried about how Kevin would do. Since Kevin would only sleep in the swing I was afraid I was going to have to put the swing in crib or something. But both of them are doing really good. We put them in the crib and of course they cry for a minute or two, but then its right to sleep.

I think they like being able to sleep next to each other. Instead of putting them each in their own crib, for now, we are letting them sleep together in one crib. We just put the little block that prevent them from rolling around in the crib and let them lie next to each other. Its pretty amusing because somehow Kevin always gets himself moved up above the block and turned on an angle. So his head is always nearly touching Alex's head.

EDIT: here's the promised picture...



They had been stretching out feedings from 4 hours to closer to 5 hours most of the time last week. Now that we put them in the crib they are only sleeping 3-4 hours at a time. Its only been a few days so I'm thinking this is just a transition period that they are going through.

It must be more light in the nursery than it was in our room though. As soon as the sun comes up in the morning Alex wakes up and crys until we get him up. Yesterday morning he at at 4:30 and by 6 he had decided it was time to get up. So we are going to have to make sure we get to bed a little bit earlier cause it seams like we are going to become "morning people" whether we like it or not.

Its shopping Day

Jamie's gonna go shopping today during the day. This will be the first time that the boys have stayed at someone else's house. They are going to go stay with Papa. I wonder how many scary memories it will bring back for him, taking care of twins again for the first time in 20 some years. Hopefully they like Nana and Papas house since this is where they will be going when Jamie goes back to work.

Brycen's Birthday Party

The boys got to experience Happy Joes for the first time today. Both boys just happily got passed around from person to person today. And they slept the whole time. Of course we've been home for a couple hours and they have been awake and fussy ever since. http://flickr.com/photos/edvedafi/tags/birthdaybrcyen3/

Happy First (Month) Birthday

Kevin and Alex are 1 month old today. I just can't believe that they are a month old already. It really feels like we have only had them for a week or two. I guess time really flies when your having fun. We'll post some 1 month old pictures later today (its also their cousin's birthday party today so we'll get some good pictures there ).

4 Weeks

Wow I can't believe its been 4 weeks already. It really feels like its been a few days.

Both boys are doing very good. We still go through stretches where they spit up a bit more than normal, but we also go through stretches where they don't spit up for a couple of days. Kevin is pretty consistently been eating about 4.5 ounces now. We were thinking of upping it to 5, but he seams content with 4 most of time, so I think we'll hold off just a little bit longer. Alex on the other hand is a picky little eater. It seams like the last couple of days he eats better for daddy than he does for mommy ( finally something that they like me more than mommy, usually when they are cranky they calm down a lot better for Jamie than they do for me ) . During the day the last few days, Jamie said Alex eats about 1-2 ounces for a lot of his feedings. But at night when I feed him he always eats at least 3 ounces, and most of the time he eats the full 4 ounce bottle.

Alex went through a little stretch last week where for a couple of days his poop was very dark green and the worst smell that I have ever smelt in my life. He was a little cranky during that time so I think he might have had a bit of a tummy ache, but all is back to normal with them now.

Kevin has started to occasionally pee through his diapers. They are still in newborn size, and we tried to go to 1s with Kevin, but they are still a little too big. It does seam like it is always either the generic brand or Luvs that he is peeing through, so until he gets just a little bit bigger we are going to make sure we keep using the Huggies on him.

Its amazing now to talk to the boys. In the last few days they have started to be a bit more awake and pay a little more attention to you. Up till now you could talk to them all you want, but never knew they were actually paying attention to you. Now you can sit and talk to them and actually hold their attention for a minute or two.

Well time to wrap this up so I can go to work...boy I hate going to work. I feel bad for Jamie having to stay home and take care of both all day, and I miss the boys so much every day.

2 Week Checkup

Today was the 2 week check up for the boys. Not much to report...I guess that's a good thing. Both of the boys are healthy in every aspect. We were concerned a little bit about the fact that Kevin was sleeping in the swing instead of sleeping of in his bassinet. So that was about the only question we had for the doctor. She gave us the whole speech about babies laying on flat hard mattresses. Then said that the only way she could get one of her kids to sleep was in a car seat. So that made us feel a lot better about having him sleeping in the swing.

The doctor did say that although you can't spoil babies this young, it is possible for them to learn. She suggested letting them try to cry themselves to sleep in the bassinet, as a way to learn how to sooth themselves. So I think we will give it a try and see how that goes.

Both boys are growing good. They are both now 20 inches long. Surprisingly Alex has the bigger head now, even though its only by .3 cm. Alex is also catching up to Kevin in weight. Alex is 7 pounds 3 ounces, and Alex is 7 pounds and 14 ounces. They are in the 8th & 19th percentile respectively. I was kinda surprised to see that 11 ouces makes that big of a difference in the percentile. Of course like the doctor said, twins are expected to be low on the percentile like they are and that the important thing is that both are growing well.

Nipples

I guess this post is about a week late, but as expected there has not been time to write many posts...

Well it took a week or so, but we finally discovered last week why Kevin refused to eat out of the Avent bottles that we were using. For the first few days he was home when we tried to give him a Avent bottle he would just shake his head and refuse to drink from it. Luckily we had 1 Gerber bottle sitting around. It was a big bottle for an older kid, that we only had because we used it for the Jelly Bean counting contest at the baby shower. Kevin would drink just fine out of that bottle so we just had to keep cleaning and reusing that bottle for the first few days. Alex would eat of of some nipples and not others, but we could not figure out why. So we just kept putting the ones that he wouldn't eat from off to the side, and cleaned and reused the few that he seamed OK with.

When we got out of the house for the first time we went to Target we decided to take a look at the Avent nipples to see if we could find other ones that might work better since all of our bottles were Avent. Looking at the nipples at the store we discovered that on the back of them there is a number ( 1- 5 ). The #1 nipples come with the newborn sized bottles and the #2s came with bigger bottles . For some reason the boys just hate the #1s. So we bought a few more #2s and skipped over the #1s all together. Now they eat great.

Sleeping

Its nice to have Alex off of the Oxygen monitors now. Its made for much better sleeping the last few nights. Instead of waking up to check on the boys every 15-20 minutes we can get a couple hours of sleep at a time. We get up and feed them around 10, 2, and 6, but outside of that they have not been waking up too much. Of course there is still the occasional poopy diaper in the middle of the night that will wake them up.

Alex sleeps so good. He really just wakes up to eat and poop. Occasionally he will wake up just and just look around for a while, but never does he get too fussy when he wakes up. The only time he really gets mad is bath time and when there are a bunch of people around. When our nieces and nephews ( most are 4 and under ) come over they all want to talk to and try to hold the kids, and Alex really doesn't like that. He gets a little upset at all of the commotion and noise.

Kevin on the other hand seams like if he's awake he thinks that means he needs food or at the very least some attention. Since Kevin is a little attention lover he does pretty well when other people are around. Of course they both still spit up a bit so when they are moved around a lot during the day when there is company around they both spit up a bit in the evening then. At night he won't sleep in the bassinet at all. We have started putting the swing in the bedroom and letting him sleep there, without turning it on.

Spoke too soon

I guess I spoke too soon about the spitting up. From the feeding after the last post(where I said they stopped spitting up), until today they spit up at nearly every feeding. Now today they have been doing better again. But I'm not going to make the mistake of saying that the spitting up has stopped again.

Spitting Up

Well things have gotten much better recently with the spit up. Over the last couple of days both of the boys were very good when it comes to spitting up. The first few days it seamed like they were spitting up all of the time. The first couple of nights we had to change out the pads and sheets in the bassinets because they were so soaked through with spit up. The last 2 nights they did not spit up at all. We are starting to think that the problem was just that their stomaches were not quite ready when they were born. I'm sure I've jinxed it now, but I think we are over the days of big spit ups.

Of course Kevin still refuses to sleep in his bassinet. After the first feeding when going to bed last night he was really crabby. I ended up taking him in the living room and sleeping with him on the recliner until the next feeding. Then after the second feeding the only way we could get him to sleep was to move the swing into our bedroom and let him swing instead of laying in the bassinet.

And daddy was very sassy last night. Alex started to get real whinny last at about 5:30 this morning and we had just feed them a little after 4AM. So I walked with him for a while and then ended up sitting up on the chair and that was the only way he would sleep. If I tried to recline then he would start crying. Then at 8AM it was time for their next feeding. So I went to change Alex's diaper. It turned out that he had filled his pants pretty good. And it was starting to get crusty on his leg. I felt so bad because I'm sure that was why he woke up crying at 5:30...not that he was fussy, but rather that he needed to be changed. You would think I would have learned by now to check that when they wake up crying in the middle of the night...I'll try to remember that next time.

Kevin doesn't like to sleep...at night that is

Kevin seams to have his days and nights really mixed up. He is sound asleep now, but every night from about 10 or 11 until 6 or so in the morning he just doesn't want to sleep. Last night I tried everything: I rocked him, I walked with him, I put him in the swing. Finally Jamie let him sleep on her chest out in our recliner and he seamed to like that, but I'm sure Jamie was not too comfortable. Then we got up for their first feeding this morning, and it was hard to get him to stay awake long enough to eat the whole bottle. And he has been sleeping good ever since. I guess this is why people say you should sleep when the kids sleep. Maybe I should stop playing WoW and get some sleep.

The Swing

Kevin has been really fussy the last couple of days. It seams like the only way to get him to sleep was to hold him tight. Even that didn't work sometimes, many times it required swaying him. So Jamie's mom got the boys an easter present a little bit early. She bought the boys a swing. Kevin loves the swing. When he gets fussy we can just put him in and let him swing, and after only a couple of minutes he will be sleeping. Alex just loves to sit in the bouncy seat ( without it bouncing that is ) and he will fall asleep. A week old and already they have distinct personalities.