Six Months Old

Hi
Well today 21st July, our boys are 6 months old !
Time has flown and all the stress and upset of them
being in Hospital seems years ago.

I was going to write more but we've just put them to
bed and Harry is not a happy bunny. So I better go check
on him.

Cya.

Bournemouth and witty replies

Hi
Earlier this year our Midwife Lynne put us in touch with a really nice couple called Kirsty and Richard. They live just round the corner from us and they have twins as well, their boys are identical and are very cute. Well Carol, Kirsty and I all went for a day out in Bournemouth last Thursday and we had a lovely walk all along the sea front . We walked from Bournemouth all the way to Poole and back and it was boiling hot but a really nice day out.

We were talking about the dumb things people say to parents of twins (see last post below) and Kirsty said that there was a whole section on the 'Twins and Multiple Births Association' (Tamba for short) website full of witty come backs to these people that pester you. Kirstys favourite was:

Q) Oh are they twins ?

A) No they're triplets - Shit - Where's the other one gone !!!!

That has us in fits, (ok, I guess you have to be a parent of twins to appreciate it :-)

Weaning is coming along, Ben managed to get the whole of his hand in his mouth just as I was trying to spoon sweet potato and cinnamon in there as well. He then had it all over his fingers and gleefully rammed a food covered finger up his nose. Now I don't know how we're going to get it free of food, I guess he will sneeze it out shortly ! At least it is only one nostral and he can still breath freely so there is no health risk.

We are making our own baby food at present, this is because the food has to have sufficient protein in it and all the baby food you find ready made doesn't have the recommended amounts. So we have a book all about weaning and healthy recipies for babies and we make up food at the weekend and freeze it in ice cube trays and defrost what we need as and when.

The mess they make is unreal and is very funny.

Below is a picture I took about 5 minutes ago. Ben has been dribbling and his top has a large soggy patch, so now you can tell which one is which.

People say to us that they look so alike. Harry & Ben are not identical and Carol and I think they look very different, but some people have a hard time telling them apart.

Well that's all for now.
Cheers Si.

It's a new world record !

What a morning I had yesterday, Harry filled 4 nappies in the space of 10 minutes !
I was not amused, but how can you get mad a little baby, he is just doing what all babies do. But 4 nappies in 10 minutes, what's that about !!!!

This is the funny thing about becoming a parent, you no longer have mature adult conversations. Your sole topics of discussion revolve around nappies, feeding/weening, how much your babies weigh and their development and of course the major topic of - sleep and how much or little you are getting.

Every two weeks there is a local twins group called Twingos and we try and get along to each meeting. Here we meet and socialize with other parents of twins and their (mostly) lovely babies and toddlers. Obviously there are some that are not so well behaved, but it is nice to be able to talk to parents in similar positions. We have learnt that actually our boys are pretty well behaved and are doing ok where the sleep patterns are concerned. They are sleeping from about 7pm through to about 4.30am. So this is not too bad. Both Harry and Ben are put to bed when they are slightly dozy and they get themselves off to sleep without us having to rock them etc as some parents do.

One of the things that we all complain about as parents of twins is the fact that you can't go shopping or anything without some brain dead individual saying one of the following witty comments:

Oh are they twins ?
Oh are they identical ?
Oh double trouble (this one really pisses me off)
Oh twins, you've got your hands full there
Oh how old are they (ok all parents get this one)

Or a combination of the above. Also I don't know why but they all start of the 'oh'
trust me I am not making this up.

The problem is that this happens dozens of times during any outing and it gets really boring very quickly.

What is also really annoying is that people think they have the right to just butt into any conversation you might be having and start talking to you about your babies. No excuse me or anything. It's so rude.

Luckily our pram, a Jane Power Twin is an inline pram with one baby behind the other, so if you are quick you can be past the casual observer before they have spotted that it is not just one baby and you prevent the predicable catch phrases !

Just as well as you'd never get any shopping done

Mini Me

Carol has now nick named Harry - 'Mini Me' because he has started to suck on his bottom lip. This was something I used to do all the time when I was a baby/child (and still do when I am asleep and when I am concentrating hard on something).

He also snores loudly and looks like me, whilst Ben looks more like Carols brother Robert.

Anyway Mini Me and Ben are doing fine and are growing rapidly. They were weighed again this week and are both around the 12lb mark.

Harry is smiling all the time now and Ben is catching up with him in the smiling stakes as well.

Sleep wise they are getting better, we bath and feed them around the 6pm mark and they are in bed by 6.30pm. They then sleep through to around 2.30am and are fed again. Between 5am and 5.30am they wake up and want to be entertained and play, which is a bit of a bugger as we'd like to still be asleep, so we take it in turns to go downstairs with them and play with them until the breakfast time which is around 6.30am to 7am.

Having said that we put them to bed in their nursery at 6.30pm last night and they slept through to 3.30am which was lovely :-)

We have recently taking part in some testing for Tamba (Twins and multiple birth association). They sent us a pram to test and write a review of it. The 'beastie' arrived the other day and it was huge and weighs a bloody tonne. It weighs in at approx 3 stone ! and that is just the pram, not including the extra weight of the twins.

In short my review read, the pram is beautifully built, will last a lifetime and would probably be around for your childrens children, because it is built like a tank, unfortunately is weighs similar to one as well.

This is the pram

Luxtwin

It is a pretty sweet deal testing for Tamba and their magazine. You get to keep the products for as long as you like ! When you are finished with them they are sent out to families that can't afford stuff themselves, so needless to say no one really hangs on to the items being tested and they get sent out to the needy asap.

The manufacturers donate all the equipment for free, so it is a very good charity type thing.

I pity whoever gets this pram though, they will need to have a big garage & car boot and be built like the Hulk in order to lift the damn thing :-)

Live 8

Well, my sister rang in to Radio Nortampton re a competition they were running and she won !!! - She won two tickets to go to Live 8, which was excellent as it was her daughters (Hannah)birthday.

So my sister Anita and my neice Hannah went down to Hyde Park for Live 8

She had to take a digital camera with her and then do a report/article for Radio Northampton.

Here is the link:

Live 8 Review

We went to visit my Mum on Sunday and my sister and Hannah raved all day about how good it was. :-)