This Year’s 411 so far….

I’ve been dedicating most of my blogging time to Davis and haven’t updated anything with the twins since the holidays.

Jemma and Zoe are growing up so fast right before our eyes-they melt my heart, make me laugh and drive me crazy all at the same time! Both girls are so sweet on Davis, they love to give him kisses, show him things they are playing with and make sure that they sing to him or give him a lovey if he’s crying. They are wonderful big sisters and I hope that they will continue to be. They haven’t shown any jealousy towards him, and tend to pick on each other instead. We hear a lot of “so and so pushed me”, “so and so took my toy”, etc.

The girls are so funny, they say and do the funniest things. When I have to pump in front of them, they love to chime in “Mommy’s boobies are moving”. My reply, “Yes, yes they are!” They are so observant and point out everything. Sometimes I think I’m doing something without them noticing (shoving that cookie into my mouth in the corner of the kitchen), but nothing escapes them, they see everything. They are starting to “read” book themselves, Jemma especially remembers all of the details from each page and almost says it verbatim. Zoe tends to make up more of the story, but it is amazing to see them sit quietly and flip through books. They are also getting more into music. We listen to a lot of music at home and in the car. Jemma’s song right now is “Don’t Wanna Know” by Maroon 5 and Zoe’s jam is “I Feel It Coming” by The Weeknd. They love to sing along, I know it won’t be for long that I can enjoy the music I like and not have them picking up on inappropriate lyrics, haha! We also have an Amazon Echo Dot in our house and the girls love to yell things at Alexa. “Alexa-how old is Pooh?”, “Alexa-stop the timer!”

I think the tantrums hit a peak in the weeks following Davis’ birth and I’m hoping they won’t come back like that again. However, Jemma has been having more lately, but hoping they are related to irritability. In early January we noticed small raised bumps on her torso and back, soon after it was widespread over her whole body and starting to get raised and red. At that time she wasn’t complaining of any itching. We took her into the pediatrician on call and he said that it was likely from a virus and would pass in five to seven days. The redness and widespread location of the rash dissipated, but it soon got itchy and she was scratching her scalp, neck and upper back and chest like crazy. At this time she was so irritable and fussy and having almost daily tantrums (but I could hardly blame her since I’m sure she was going crazy with the itchiness!). Since this was past the five to seven days since her Dr. visit, we started to think that it could be a food allergy. My MIL and the acupuncturist I see both said that kids tend to love what they are allergic to. So, our first food to eliminate was berries. Jemma LOVES berries and will eat them for every meal if she can. We eliminated all berries but didn’t see much improvement, I was worried we’d be onto wheat next! Since it appeared to be isolated to her head and neck we started thinking more about a contact dermatitis from shampoo and soap. I also started doing the family laundry all together and switched the kids’ detergent from Honest to Tide. Just last week I switched all of the kid’s laundry back to Honest and we started using only Dr. Bronner’s castille soap for baths. I also bought some calendula ointment and started rubbing it on her affected areas. Low and behold-the itching has decreased dramatically and the rashes are almost totally gone. We did have her regular pediatrician take a look when we took Davis in for his four month check and he agreed that it could be from soap and detergent. He took a vaginal swab to check for Strep but it came back normal and he also though a food allergy would have presented itself much sooner that at age 2 1/2.

With all of her irritability, she was waking up a lot at night due to the itching, we’d usually have to fix her snap on her jammies, rub her back, give her water, etc and were getting up a few times a night. Sad that our toddler and not our newborn was keeping us up at night. On Monday night she cried out “Daddy water!” for almost an hour and after he went in and said that we took her cup downstairs she then cried out “Mommy water!” We knew this behavior could not go on, so we prepared them all day yesterday saying that Mommy and Daddy are very tired and need to get a good night’s sleep. We told the girls they can have a drink of water right before bed, but that we can’t drink in the middle of the night so that we don’t have to go potty and everyone can sleep peacefully. It seemed to work and Jemma only woke up once last night to go potty. I’m hoping for our usual restFUL nights soon! Especially since Davis is such a great sleeper already.

We’ve been having lots of fun playdates with friends. My girlfriend who has twin girls who are about six months older than Jemma and Zoe came over last weekend and we drank wine and ate food while the girls all played together. We joked that we knew we’d be at this place at some point!

The girls got into the preschool that we were hoping they’d be accepted into. Starting in September they will go three days a week from 9 AM until 12 noon. We will need to get Zoe potty trained by then, I think she is capable, but prefers the convenience of a diaper right now.

We had the first week of February off, it was a great week to be off, we had a big snowstorm the Monday of that week (which we would have had to cancel work most likely), so we stayed home and had a snow day! The girls had so much fun playing in the snow and building a snowman. The girls also got hair cuts that week and we had fun catching up with lots of friends!

Hanging out at home on our staycation

Z ready for her haircut!

J ready for her haircut!

Post hair cut doughnuts!

The girls loving the snow!

Family snow day!

D bundled up for the snow

Valentine cookies

Day at the Zoo with Mommy!

I really must stop and say “Life is good!”. The other night when we were up listening to constant whining, having to get up to rub backs and missing out on some much-needed sleep, my husband says “Four years ago we would have agreed to staying up all night listening to crying and whining because it would mean that we have children.” And that is so true, our three children are truly blessings and blessings we weren’t sure we’d ever receive, so with all the good comes the bad and it means we get to be parents to these amazing miracle babies!

xoxo