Sunday, October 10, 2010

Airplane pictures, part 2

On this flight we were both fortunate enough to have spare seats next to us, giving the girls each their own seat. This hardly ever happened but when it did it was GREAT (they were flying as lap babies).





Airplane pictures, part 1

From our flight out of Toronto:





Pictures from Toronto, part 5

Bracha gets a pedicure from Dodah Esther:


Pictures from Toronto, part 4

Dodah Esther painting Eliana's nails, and Eli rewarding her with a kiss!





Pictures from Toronto, part 3





Pictures from Toronto, part 2





Pictures from Toronto, part 1

Zaide takes the girls out to play for a bit:




Friday, October 8, 2010

Sleep (or lack thereof)

Well, it didn't work as well as hoped. They slept for about an hour and then began four hours of on and off again sleeping, including several dirty diapers (very unusual this time of night) and a chance to run around and play by a very not tired Eliana. However, it did not include a chance to snuggle in our bed. Sleep is now for cribs only, that's the lesson of the evening.

Anyhow, it's 1 am and they're both asleep. Let's hope this lasts.

Meanwhile, here's a video of the girls at Doda Leah and Uncle Rafi's house, dancing on their dining room table that Uncle Mark made, with Aunty Barbara and Uncle bill in the "audience."

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Operation make-babies-sleep-in-their-own-bed is a go!

For most of the girls' lives we have co-slept part of or the whole night. It started out of convenience, because we were constantly feeding one or the other (or, more often, both) all night long and the easiest place to do so was on our bed with the babies between our legs. So it felt natural to keep them with us the whole night. Eventually we worked on getting them into their cribs but after many sleepless nights, and Shawn needing to go to school and me needing to go to work so both of us needing some actual rest, we started bringing them to bed halfway through the night when they'd wake up. This whole time they were falling asleep in bed with us and we'd transfer them to their cribs once asleep. They never were able to fall asleep on their own, and no method worked or felt right.

But a while ago we decided that enough is enough and when we got back from our trip, before Shawn started school again, we were going to train them to spend the whole night in their cribs. They could fall asleep with us, we love our nighttime bedtime ritual and don't want to give up on that quite yet, but wanted them to spend the rest of the night in their cribs. It's time for the adults to have their bed back.

So last night was the first night and it was HARD. We had a late start due to jet lag, and it was 2 1/2 hours before the girls finally both fell asleep/ Bracja woke up again at about 4:45am but was soothed back to sleep fairly easily, and Eli needed to be soothed back to bed herself closer to 6. It was a bit harder than her sister, but we managed and both then slept till about 8am. Success!

Tonight it happened MUCH quicker, taking only about an hour and both girls were asleep by 8pm. We'll see how the rest of the night goes.

How are we doing it, you might ask? Well, I am really not comfortable with the CIO method (Cry It Out). And I don't mean just leaving the kid to cry, I mean I dislike even Ferberizing (basically, soothing the baby in longer and longer intervals, letting them cry in between). Yes, part of what we did with the girls was once or twice letting them cry for no more than five minutes, just to help them wear themselves out, but otherwise what we did was abide by one golden rule: no leaving the crib. They could have bottles, back rubs, kisses, hugs, songs, anything as long as they stayed in the crib the whole time. With any luck, eventually they'll come to realize that bedtime is bedtime, and we mean business, and they'll just give in more easily to their own exhaustion once they learn we really won't take them out.

Videos to come!

CD love

Cloth diapering my wonderful twin daughters isn't always easy, but it's definitely worth it! Nearly our entire stash is made up of BumGenius onesize pockets, which just came our with new amazing prints! Now they're giving away some of these awesome new diapers and I am making this post to share my BG love and hope and pray for a chance to win one of my own (or two?? One for each baby?) Cottonbabies you rock!