Riot 4 Austerity

Iris was so excited when I picked her up from preschool yesterday - she’d had her first day of doing “kindergarten work”. This turns out to mean that they take the older kids aside and do worksheets for a while right after circle time. Gah. She’s three.

Neil is playing with Duplo legos. He loves blocks, and I’m really surprised and impressed by how well he can put the legos together and stack wooden blocks. Iris wasn’t doing that until she was closer to 2. She still plays with legos in a “girly” way - she’ll make a long chain of blocks and a shorter one and then play mommy and baby snakes. Or make mommy and baby bats, frogs, bees, etc. (We’ve talked about how baby frogs are actually tadpoles, so baby frogs look a lot like baby snakes.) It’s just weird to me, because I’ve never identified very strongly as female, and I just assumed that my daughter would be a tomboy, rather than a girly-girl. But I seem to have a daughter who wants to wear dresses, pretend to cook and take care of her babies, and who asks me to do her hair in “pinktails” and paint her toenails. (That’s new - until a few weeks ago, she’d been unaware that some people paint their nails.)

Zinnia hasn’t been walking, but she sure loves to climb.

Night-weaning was a total bust. I’m too tired at night to figure out which baby is which (in the dark) some of the time. And, thus, I just nurse whichever one has crawled over and latched on.

We’re having salads from the garden with dinner almost every night. This is the first year I’ve managed to grow enough salad greens to do that. We’re also getting lots of green beans, zucchini, tomatoes (finally!), a few cucumbers, and there’s some pak choi, chard, and kale that’s about ready to eat and a couple of artichokes coming along. I’m going to try and get some more fruit stuff (an apple? tree and some berry vines) planted this fall.

Nights 2 and 3 went much better. Night 2 was right after Bab5, and all three kids fell asleep on the car ride home and were carried up to bed without really waking up. Neil and Zinnia both woke up only once that night, and I think Iris slept through, making that night one of the best I’ve had in the past 3+ years. Night 3, I think each baby woke up 2-3 times, and the nursing-not-quite-to-sleep thing was working pretty well.

Last night (night 4) was the first night of not nursing at all between 11 pm and 6 am. Zinnia did great with it! She woke up twice between 2 and 3 am and went back to sleep easily in my arms both times. She was awake and wanting nursing at 5:45 and kind of nursed sleepily until she was ready to get up at 6:30-ish. Neil, on the other hand, had a very rough night. He nursed at bedtime and again around 9:30 pm. Then he woke up at 12:30-ish and would not go back to sleep. Lots of screaming as I held him. I took him downstairs and rocked for a while, and he finally fell asleep around 1:30-ish. And then he woke right back up when I put him down on the mattress. At that point I woke Ben up to try for a while, and he changed Neil’s barely-peed diaper and then was downstairs holding and rocking Neil for over an hour (during which Zinnia woke up twice). Once I got Zinnia back down the second time, I traded off with Ben and rocked Neil again. He would start to drift off and then wake right back up, screaming. So I finally nursed him around 3 am, and he ate like a hungry guy on both sides, and then popped off with his eyes shut, sound asleep. He then slept through until 7 am or so.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to try tonight. It seems like Neil might still need to eat in the middle of the night, despite everything I’ve read saying something along the lines of babies should be able to sleep through with no food well before reaching 1 year and/or 20 lbs. Heck, Neil even did so sometimes when he was 2-4 months old. And I make sure he gets lots of food and milk during the day.

In other news, I got the front yard weeded while the babies napped this morning, and I made delicious nectarine jam while Ben and Iris napped this afternoon. I’m getting more used to canning, I guess. It used to be a major production, and now I can do it while watching two little ones.

First night of night-weaning sucked, as expected. The goal for the first 3 nights is to nurse a little, but not all the way to sleep whenever the babies wake between 11 pm and 6 am. Neil had crashed out from about 5-7 yesterday evening, which gave me a great block of time to sweep and mop with Zinnia in the carrier on my back and then cook dinner (stir-fried green beans with cashews and veggie fried rice). But he sure didn’t want to sleep much at night. Zinnia woke up a lot too, but she’s easy to get back to sleep - I just hold her on my chest and rub her back and she’s usually out in about 2-3 minutes. It was just a little trickier when Neil was also awake and upset. Iris woke up screaming at 10:30 because she needed to go to the bathroom, and she was drenched with sweat. Poor girl was pretty unhappy about me changing her into dry pajamas. Anyhow, I slept a little between 1 and 3 am, and then I was pretty much up until 6, when Ben got up and took Zinnia downstairs and dealt with Iris, who woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

Zinnia and Neil both went up the percentile charts in weight and in height (length). I was surprised to find out that Zinnia is over 20 lbs - 20 lbs and 12 oz! And Neil weighs 1 lb more. They’re 30.75″ (Zinnia) and 31.75″ (Neil) long. So, now that they’re finally gaining weight well, I feel comfortable going ahead with night-weaning. For now, the plan is to night-wean them while they’re still sleeping in our room (in the crib minus one side pushed up against our mattress). And once they’re walking well, we’ll put them in toddler beds in the same bedroom with Iris and get our room back to ourselves, at least until they come join us in the middle of the night.

Neil is now standing up on his own more and more. Zinnia hasn’t taken many steps beyond her initial proof-of-concept. But every day, I find that their climbing abilities have developed to new extents. Today, Neil showed that he could climb up on top of the toilet (with the lid closed), and both babies were able to climb up into the garden window in the kitchen and get at the cat food. Zinnia helpfully announces every new summit by standing up on top, clapping, and shouting, “Hey there!” It’s nerve-wracking. So far, no injuries; they’re surprisingly good at getting down.

B: “Did you have a good sleep?”
I: “Yeah, and I had dreams!”
B: “What did you dream about?”
I: “There were elephants trunking along, and horses jumping in the hay, and little fishies in a big family all snuggled up together.”
B: “A big family of fish?”
I: “Yes, and frogs too!”
B: “How many fish are in a big family?”
I: “Um, twelve.”
B: “How many frogs are in a big family?”
I: “Six.”
B: “How many people are in a big family?”
I: “Nine.”
B: “Do we have a big family?”
I: “Yeah - there’s me and you and Ben and Stefan and Neil and Zinnia and Silence and Guido and the garden.”

The garden is going well - we’re finally getting some tomatoes! And I just planted a lemon tree and a couple of blueberry bushes yesterday. I can’t wait until the fruit trees, blueberries, etc. are mature. This patience thing….

Just for fun, I counted how many times Zinnia and Neil ate in about 24 hours on Saturday.

Way-too-early AM: both nursed
Downstairs with Ben: a little breakfast (toast, I think)
8 am-ish: both nursed
Second breakfast (some egg and nectarine)
Both nursed again right before the morning nap
We went out to a parents of twins picnic, and they both had fruit, fruit, and more fruit
Neil also nursed at the picnic
Then we came home and had burritos (2nd lunch - we’d gotten to the picnic too late for most of the food)
Neil nursed again, in my attempt to get him to nap.
Both babies nursed again before I started dinner prep.
Dinner was eggplant parmesan and salad.
Both nursed before bed, although Neil bit me and then got to fall asleep while not nursing.
More nursing when they woke up sometime before midnight.
Probably more nursing in the middle of the night, but who knows?

So that adds up to 5 meals of food and at least 6 nursings for Zinnia, at least 8 for Neil. Sometimes we give them cow milk in sippy cups, but we’re still not really in the habit of remembering to do that. Their 1-year pediatrician appointment is this week, so we’ll see if they’ve stopped dropping percentiles on the weight curves. We got into a pattern of frequent meals/snacks when I was pregnant and started needing to eat for 3-4 (Iris was still nursing). It turns out that Iris and I both do much better with very frequent food; there’s much less cranky this way. I’m hoping that now that I know this it’ll be helpful for gradually weaning N & Z.

In the past week:
Zinnia walked for the first time. She did this the day after my mom flew back home after a visit, which was reminiscent of how she was born the evening after my MIL flew back home after a visit.
Zinnia learned to take off her diaper (only the velcro type).
Zinnia climbed to the top of Iris’s play structure.
Neil and Zinnia learned to climb up onto Iris’s twin bed, which is on a bed frame.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been working part-time from home doing some proofreading and editing of scientific papers. It’s somewhat interesting work, and I can do it while nursing a sleepy baby. (I can’t do much typing while nursing two babies or even one if s/he is awake and squirmy.) The amount of money I have made doing this is a little less than Iris’s preschool tuition, and significantly less once I factor in that taxes need to come out of it. At first, this didn’t matter; we can afford the preschool, and I could not manage to do many fun and interesting things with Iris while taking care of two newborns. Now though, I have two almost-toddlers, and Iris has the month of August off from preschool. We’re getting out and doing things almost every day. I’m not doing any editing work this month.

So now we need to think through whether it’s a good idea to keep Iris in preschool and for me to keep doing the editing work.

Benefits of the status quo:
+ I have some work experience, which would be very good if Ben is ever unable to work or if we decide to become a two-income family as the children get older.
+ I have some quiet time with the twins while Iris is at her school.
+ Iris gets regular interactions with a particular group of children.
+ Iris spends some time each day doing things that are appropriate for 2-5 year olds, but not for babies (especially activities involving small choking hazards).
+ We have a bit more structure to our day when Iris goes to school.

Benefits of me stopping work and Iris stopping preschool:
+ Somewhat lower expenses.
+ There’s more time that all three kids spend together.
+ We have more flexibility to do fun things as a family.

Possibly to be continued when I have a bit more time….(hah!)