Our sweet monkeys turned two months old this week! Plus, we’ve survived to tell the tale.

At their two month well check, Reid was 11 lbs. 7 oz. and Luke was 10 lbs 5 oz. They decided to graduate them from the premie chart and move them up to the ‘big boy’ measuring chart this month which is big news around here! That puts Reid in the 15th percentile and our little Luke at the 3rd percentile.  I am so proud of my boys!  Reid has always been such a good eater but I’m extra proud of Luke lately who seems to be going through a growth spurt and is even more excited than Reid to eat.

Developmentally, they are a little behind (which is expected at this point) but really not too much.  They are both smiling at us, holding their heads up for short periods, and tracking us with their eyes. It’s amazing to think about how much they have grown and changed already! I love this stage when they start to notice the world around them and start to interact with us.

They absolutely love their big brothers and truthfully they are loved right back. The other night, Luke took a little snooze on the floor while I was getting dinner ready and Caleb and Eli built a circle of super heroes around him to protect him while he slept.  My momma heart was proud.

I can definitely tell the difference in their cries now when I am in another room or during the night.  Luke is more easy going than his brother most of the time and really enjoys sitting in his bouncer or laying on the floor and taking in the world around him. Reid has some stronger opinions that he would like to make known.  He absolutely hates to yawn (which cracks me up) and knows and doesn’t like if Luke is being held and he isn’t or if Luke has his favorite caterpillar toy.

Josh and I have no problems telling them apart but anyone who comes to see them feels otherwise. When we send pictures to family members we always have to specify which baby it is!

Tandem nursing is going really well which is such a blessing. Nursing twins is not without challenges but we are doing great so far. We spend the majority of our afternoons cuddled up on the couch while Eli naps and Caleb has some quiet time. It’s truly my very favorite part of my day right now and I know with certainty that it’s these moments I will miss.

Overall, I think they are sleeping really good too.  They usually take a little cat nap around 7 and then are back down for the night around 11. They wake around 3 or 4 to eat and then sleep again until 6. We consider ourselves incredibly lucky at this point. They love their sleep sacks more than Caleb or Eli ever did. Right now they are still sleeping together (heads on opposite sides) of the pack and play but I can imagine that fairly soon they will outgrow it and move to a crib.

It’s funny because Josh and I already have a hard time remembering what we did with our ‘spare’ time before these little dudes.  They were absolutely the missing pieces of our family. Happy two months sweet boys!

We had newborn pictures taken of our sweet boys a couple weeks ago and I am beyond in love with them.

I feel like they already look bigger and different than they did just two weeks ago.  Our photographer is a teacher by day and patient, calm, talented photographer in her spare time. I didn’t know how newborn pictures would go with two babies, let alone ones that were almost a month old already but she was amazing.

I love how she got some of them individually and of course some of them sweet and cuddly together. I feel like they look so much alike in these pictures that I had to look closely to figure out which baby I was looking at!

The picture above is our little Luke. Right now he’s our calm, more go with the flow, smaller baby.

This sweet boy is Reid. Aren’t his cheeks the best? He’s our cuddly, more opinionated, lighter haired, bigger twin. I think Reid looks a lot like Caleb and Luke looks more like Eli.

I absolutely treasure our newborn pictures that we had taken of Caleb and Eli and I’m excited that these are the perfect companion to those. I know when you add a member (or members!) to your family, money can get a bit tight.  I’m all about cutting corners to make ends meet but in my opinion, newborn pictures are not on the list of things to skip!

I’ll be honest.  This month has been a total blur.  Ironically, today is actually my original due date! It feels like just yesterday I was still pregnant and yet I also feel like they have been here forever. We are totally and completely exhausted and I’m not sure I can form a coherent thought but I’m going to try! 😉 I’ve got a bunch of pictures to share so at least we have that.

Josh has been back at work for about two weeks right now.  My mom came to hang out with me during the mornings for the next week and it was such a blessing to have her. During the week she was here, it was kind of a trial run for me to have all four by myself. Packing up the babies twice a day to drop off and pick up Caleb and Eli from school while I was still recovering from the c-section was a challenge and I was glad she was here to help!

We are extremely lucky in the temperament of these sweet babies. So far, they are pretty easy going. I mean obviously they are newborns and don’t have a lot of chill in them when they want something, but so far no one cries just to cry. They are pretty easily comforted with a snuggle or a pacifier and after having a difficult first baby, I really know what a blessing that is!  They wake overnight about every 3 hours to eat and then thankfully almost always go right back to sleep. (As a side note: I’m super lucky in that I have always had a husband who was willing to help me with our babies overnight but with twins it is definitely ‘all hands on deck’ overnight and he jumped right in and never looked back!)

We are tandem nursing now and it’s going great. I’ve definitely had to grow extra arms to get everyone into position at the beginning but we’ve pretty much got it down now. I can’t believe how much time it saves and it also allows us to sit and snuggle together after they finish eating which I LOVE. Reid has consistently done a good job gaining weight and Luke has also gotten back on his growth curve in the last couple weeks which is an amazing relief.

Caleb and Eli are pretty obsessed with them and love ‘playing’ with them and getting things for them.  They have these adorably high and sweet voices when they talk to the babies and just cannot get enough. Caleb even offered to get up with them overnight for us and I’m seriously considering it? Haha!

So overall. We are doing great. They are doing really great. We are all pretty exhausted. Honestly though, I would take this exhausted phase over the third trimester any day. I’m getting way less sleep and yet have way more energy. Those pregnancy hormones are no joke!

I’m so determined to get monthly pictures with these guys like I did with our older two but I have to say- it is so much harder with two! They kept scooting down on the chair before I could take the picture so they are a little scrunched. Done is better than perfect!

I’m so thankful for these babies and I’m trying to treasure every minute. This time I really know how fast they grow.

I found out I was pregnant in the middle of February, right around Valentine’s Day.  Unlike with the boys, we chose to keep the news to ourselves for a little while this time instead of telling family right away.  This time more than the others, I felt very worried and concerned about losing the pregnancy early and it didn’t feel right to me to share the news until I was ready.  I didn’t have morning sickness as early as I did with Eli and I worried myself crazy that that fact was a bad sign.  Right when I started to really worry, the nausea hit me like a ton of bricks.  We told our immediate families at that point and our extended families a couple weeks later.

The morning sickness was SO intense and lasted for so long every day that it definitely had me wondering what was going on.  Was it because it was my third pregnancy and it gets worse every time?  Was it because I was carrying a girl and it was worse than my boys?  Around 9 weeks, I started noticing that I already felt pregnant.  My clothes still fit and I hadn’t gained any weight but I just felt…. like I was already growing at a much faster rate than it ever had with the boys.  In the back of my mind I thought could there be more than one baby?  But I didn’t say anything to anyone- not even Josh because I figured he would just laugh at me!                             

We saw my family doctor (who is also an OB) for my first check up at 10 weeks.  While she was listening for the heartbeat and examining me, she kept asking me if I was sure about my dates- if I could be farther along than I thought.  She said I definitely felt more like 15 weeks which could indicate we were a month further than we thought OR there was multiples.  As soon as she mentioned a possibility for more than one baby, I just knew.  She listened for two heartbeats but could only find one and ordered an ultrasound for 2 weeks later.  At that point, I knew of the real possibility that my feeling about having multiples was possible but was also concerned about the fact that she could only find one heartbeat.  Josh was definitely less sure there were two and less consumed by the possibility than I was.  That two week wait was really difficult for me. 

Ultrasound day arrived and I was SO nervous!  All our paperwork all only had ‘one fetus’ marked on it and the tech was unaware there was even a question of that until she put the probe on my stomach.  This is what we all saw:

“Uhhhhh….. did you know there were two??” she said.  I watched Josh’s face go into shock and I just remember feeling SO validated!  Watching the tech type Twin A and Twin B on the screen was completely surreal!  She said that they each had their own placenta and their own amniotic sac, making them di/di twins.  As far as medical danger with twins goes, di/di twins are the least risky which we were very happy to hear.  We also found out right away that they were fraternal twins (not identical).  The tech was able to see and show us that each baby came from their own egg which was amazing.  We told our families the news right away and everyone was SHOCKED.  SO happy but so shocked! 

Thankfully, we found out on a Friday morning so we had all weekend to kind of digest the new surprise blessing.  I was in such bliss after finding out and I don’t think it really hit me until around 4:00 Saturday morning when I woke up, started panicking, and couldn’t go back to sleep.  Don’t get me wrong- I was SO happy but I am a worrier by nature and was really caught off guard by our new financial situation that we were unprepared for and how we were going to have two babies at once!

Obviously, since then we have become well adjusted to this beautiful blessing and are absolutely overjoyed. I’d be completely lying if I said my financial and logistical worries were gone- we still have no idea how we are going to pull this off exactly but we have faith that we will figure it out.  We may be flying by the seat of our pants but we know that God blessed us with these babies for a reason and we know how very fortunate we are.  Looking forward to the adventure!