Darien and Grace Oborn

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

November in the Books

On November 1, around 3AM as I sat feeding the babies I thought to myself: If I can just get through November ...

Well, here we are in the beginning of December with November in the rear-view mirror. The babies have done remarkably well in November. Each has gained almost 3 pounds from their birth weight. Darien is approaching 10 lbs. and Grace is gaining a little slower (which is good considering she is a little princess) at 8 lbs.





The twins are also starting to develop little personalities too. Grace is curious, and likes to stare at the ceiling with her gorgeous blue eyes. Just before she goes to sleep after a bottle, she'll smile - melting my heart. DP is also a sweet little boy (again, assuming he's not hungry, in which case he snorts and lets out a blood-curling shriek that let's you know without question that it's time to eat). They both make this funny 'beep' sound too - every time they do it Debbie and I laugh.

The real challenge thus far has been keeping their nostrils clean - with such dry Utah air their sinuses are constantly clogged. We purchased a humidifier and implemented some ideas from WebMD.com (love that site now more than ever). They are now breathing better (not perfect) and getting better sleep. Ah, sleep... the next challenge. Debbie and I have had to revert to sleep cycles, where one of us goes downstairs to a guest room (piece and quiet) to sleep while the other one looks after the twins. Right now, I'm sleeping from 7 PM to 2 AM, and Debbie sleeps from 2 AM to 9 AM. We've found that it's better to get some uninterrupted sleep than for both of us to toil with a child and get 3 2-hour naps during the night.

Hopefully, the twins will start sleeping longer than 2 hours after each bottle. Darien has already increased his capacity to 5 oz and Grace is up to 4 oz - which we hope will translate into longer naps. It hasn't happened yet, but everything we read and everyone we talk to says that after six weeks we should start to see the change.

Lastly, we hired a part-time babysitter - Meagan Smart - to help Debbie with the kids during the mornings so that she can actually run errands, do laundry, and maintain the house. Meagan used to baby sit Gale's kids when they lived up here a few years ago and she did (and continues to do) a fantastic job. I'm so grateful my sister gave us that recommendation because we don't know many people in day care here in Utah since we are so new, and we really needed the help.

Week 2 - Trying to Figure this Fatherhood Thing Out

Trying to 'figure out' your new children is an interesting and challenging experience for us rookies. However, now that we are through the first two weeks, we seem to have them somewhat figured out; Darien is all about his food - don't mess with this bottle and he'll be a good boy. Grace is more polite - she'll give you a fair amount of warning that her stomach is getting close to empty and that she'd appreciate it if you could get a new bottle for her soon. Grace's problem is that her little stomach can keep her milk down and requires constant burping so she doesn't spit up. Darien is a man about his food and isn't about to let any go to waste - he rarely spits up and is good with just one big burp. Both of them are eating around 3 oz. of Infamil and go through 8 diapers each per day. The real humor in this is that I know it's just going to get worse - more cans of Infamil and more diapers.

On October 30, Debbie's sister Joni came to visit us from New York. She brought with her some really cute 'New York' outfits that we adore. Here are pictures for Darien and Grace a la New York City: