Look out Tate

So Ellie is rolling. She rolls regardless of if she actually wants to or not. She also wants to sleep on her side but she is pretty… round… so that results in sleep rolling. She forgot how to roll back as soon as she learned how to roll onto her tummy. She gets really mad about this throughout the night and we have to get up and flip her over.

Don't know if you can tell but in this picture she is screaming and desperately trying to stay asleep with her head "stuck" upright.

She and Tate have been sleeping in the same bed. They sometimes calm each other so it has been nice but recently, with the rolling, we have encountered a problem.

 

Sometimes he doesn't mind...

Sometimes he does. (Dont' know why blogger kept rotating this image.)

 

 

I think I have mentioned that Tate is not good with transitions. He is much happier if you talk him through changes and looks totally freaked out when he falls asleep in the buggy and wakes up in a new place. He particularly hates the transition between being asleep and waking up. He screams almost every time he wakes up and if something external wakes him up, look out buddy.

The other night Trey and I heard a sharp scream come from the baby monitor. We hesitate because it stops almost immediately but it was that freaked out something is wrong cry so I couldn’t help myself but to go in. I look down and what do I see but a whimpering Tate and Ellie asleep. The only problem is that Ellie is face down with her head on her left arm and the entire right side of her body is on top of Tate. I go to flip her off of him only to find she has a death grip on Tate’s bodysuit. I unclench her and roll her back over while she screws up her face and frantically waves her left had at me; her whole body language screaming “don’t move me, don’t wake me up, don’t wake me up.” When I told Trey he just laughed and said that is TOTALLY your daughter. You do the exact same thing. Sleep wherever you want and I just have to find whatever space I can get. Sadly, it’s true. To my daughter’s future husband: I apologize, she can’t help it. It’s genetic.

It was at this point that Trey and I decided that it is definitely time for separate beds. They are still in pack’n’plays (travel cots) until we find a flat for next year so now their beds are side by side so they can see but not touch.  These kind of experiences make me so glad to have twins.

The Boltons

We are in walking distance of some of the most expensive homes in London. For my Birmingham people, much like Mtn. Brook and for my Houston people, much like River Oaks. There are rows of "single bell" homes with brick privacy walls that retract into the ground so you can park your McLaren within the confines of your grounds above your underground swimming pool. (You can tell how big the homes are by how many bells are on the front of a house signifying how many flats a property has been broken into. One bell means the house is still intact.) I don't need all of that but one thing I am envious of are the private gardens. I miss having land around me. Having lived in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama I am used to the concept of a yard. Anyway, this is a shot of a garden I often walk by and ponder how I might be able to throw my twin buggy over and climb the brick wall surrounding this gate.

How to Parent Twins When Your Back Is Out

So my Mother is probably going to kill me for posting this. My husband even said as he was taking the picture “this is just for our own personal memories right?” I agreed and had no intentions of sharing it with anyone. It was just a private record of a difficult time that I would whip out when I needed to run a guilt trip on our beautiful children but, it is just too honest and too telling of a moment in parenting twins that I couldn’t help but share it.

A couple of weeks ago I threw my back out. I literally could not even sit without being in excruciating pain. This is not a new thing; I hurt my lower back when I was 14 and at inopportune times the injury rears its head. It is kind of like an annoying relative (not that I would know anything about those… oh stink, if I can’t think of any maybe I’m the annoying relative…) that pops in unannounced. You don’t like it and you don’t know how long it will stick around but you know how to work it. I immediately began taking Advil (thanks to my sister-in-law Sam’s Beth who had just sent me an enormous bottle of it) and doing physical therapy exercises.

After three days, Trey sent me out to the doctor where they gave me some amazing muscle relaxers that are also prescribed for anxiety (as the Pharmacist was handing them to me she said “oh you’re gonna loves these”) which gave me not only some relief from the muscle spasms but also a much needed respite from freaking out about the fact that the four of us are living in one room with nowhere to live when we return to London after an 8 week trip home to the States coming up when we will have no income and I could keep going but if I do I will need more muscle relaxers.

Without further delay I give you this:

I do have to say, it makes me quite proud that when I am quite literally laid out, the multi-tasking continues.  Notice the twins are getting tummy time, I am getting to watch So You Think You Can Dance and that towel on the bed says that I still got a shower that day.  Even with the room that messy, I still feel accomplished.

Rolling Over

A couple of weeks ago Ellie figured out how to roll over from her back to her tummy.  When she accomplished this task she immediately forgot how to roll from her tummy to her back which both she and Tate have been able to do since the first time they were placed on their tummy when they were two weeks old and we got them home from the hospital.  She doesn't like to be on her tummy, especially when she is tired.  She drops her pacifier in her sleep and thinks that if she gets on her tummy she will get her pacifier.  This is probably my fault due to the fact that her pacifier was such a good motivator for her movement I would let her struggle to get to her pacifier and once she either reached the point of total frustration or made it to her tummy I would reward her (or pacify her.)

The point: She now wakes herself up stuck on her tummy, gets mad, screams, wakes Tate up and the whole family is anxiously awaiting for her to remember how to roll back over... or get her pacifier to her mouth.  Either one.  :-)

Here are some pics, they aren't great but there have been complaints so take whatcha get.