The Twinkies

Dyson is offering a free vacuum over at 5 Minutes for Mom. Go. Enter. Who doesn’t want a new vacuum.

Does the fact that I care about this even the tiniest little bit show that I am old and lame?

A.P. is under house arrest, otherwise known as “stop working you crazy woman and relax – you’re pregnant with twins for goodness sakes!”

Shannon at Stream of Consciousness has more gorgeous photos up.

Melanie at Our Lady of Tuscany Springs has survived the first 6 months.

Have you ever noticed that (some) men seem to get sick whenever anyone else is indisposed? Swistle has found the perfect loophole in her marriage vows after dealing with a sick husband while pregnant. How DO people manage to care for twins while being pregnant? When I was pregnant I could barely drag my tired self from the bed to the bathroom.

This one has nothing to do with multiples, but I thought everyone would enjoy these 75 Reasons to Have a Child.

Yucky, F., yucky. We don’t eat poopy.

I cannot remember who asked what the current daily routine is like because I suck. No, really, my brain is like a sieve. Or, to continue the original metaphor, my brain is a vacuum. Sure, it may collect all sorts of crap, but it all gets jumbled together into a mess so you can’t find what you want, such as who asked what the daily routine is like these days.

This is, of course, a paradigm, a model, a sample. No day is ever actually like this. Something goes kaflooey (a technical term) somewhere along the line. That that changes from day to day is what provides variety in my life.

8:00 – Kids get up. I change their diapers, nurse them, and change them out of their PJs.

8:45 – I leave them in the childproofed-within-an-inch-of-their-lives-nursery and go downstairs to get breakfast. After I eat I go back upstairs and play with the kids, read my email, take photos, make the bed, fold the laundry, clean anything upstairs that has been bugging me and check my rss feeds.

10:30 – Naptime. I change diapers again, nurse again and hope. Generally I get one good, meaning longer than 1 hour, nap per child per day at this point. Whether that will be the morning nap or the afternoon nap is a daily mystery. Once the kids are both down I start the laundry load of diapers. I wait until naptime because the morning poop is usually out of the way by then. If both kids actually take a nap, so do I. I remind myself “this works when you aren’t sleep deprived, which means sleeping when they sleep, no matter what.”

12:00 – Kids get up, right as I am thinking “I would really like to have lunch.” I bring them downstairs and they destroy the fairly well child-proofed living room. If we are going out on an “adventure” this is the time of day I try to schedule it. “Adventures” so far include shopping trips and walks. Or local library branch is closed for expansion all this year which will be good in the long run but is a trifle irritating now.

3:00 – Nap time. If there was a long morning nap, this one will be short or nonexistent. If the morning nap was brief, this one will be long. Again, if they both nap, I nap. More often I sit in a tired heap and stare at the one baby who won’t sleep and think, “I should do something about dinner.” It is far more common for one to take a good nap in the morning and one to take a good nap in the afternoon than I would like. In fact, I have been trying to push back the morning nap until noon, when both are tired and cranky, and orchestrating a one nap day in which everyone naps at the same time for at least 2 hours. Some days it works.

5:00 – Cranky time. By this point I am fixing dinner. Tonight it’s going to be leftovers and roasted potatoes. Why do I have so many potatos? I think I must go “Oh, potatoes, those are good” EVERY time I go to the store. If the weather is nice and we go for a walk this afternoon I’ll get some more greens and add a salad. Maybe Whole Foods will have some more of those cookies to which I am addicted; they were out the last two times I was there.

6:00 – B. comes home. We eat dinner.

7:00 – B. takes the kids upstairs and plays with them and I get a “break” during which I tidy the living room and clean up dinner.

8:00 – Bath time. Both kids can now sit in the tub rather than bathing one kid per night in the baby bath tub. They both love the water and splash most vigorously. Rubber duckies that light up when they touch the water are a huge hit.

8:15 – Bedtime. We change them into PJs and I nurse them down.

Night wakings remain random and unpredictable.

I plan to do what is called “child-led weaning” in which you allow the child to nurse until they don’t want to anymore. I suspect this is going to weird people out. I’ve already gotten two “you’re STILL breastfeeding” comments, and it hasn’t even been a year yet. The woman in this video, who nursed her first for five years and is still nursing her second at seven, has, I suspect, heard more than two comments.

The American Academy of Pediatrics advises nursing until at least a year, and as long thereafter as is mutually desired. The World Health Organization recommends two years. The US Surgeon General has said it is a lucky baby who gets to nurse two years.

There are a lot of benefits to extended nursing.

1. Extended breastfeeding has been linked to higher IQs.
2. The immunological benefits of breastmilk continue; there is no magic age at which it “expires”. Available data shows that breastfeeding continues to be a source of nutrition and disease protection for as long as it continues. Nursing toddlers have fewer allergies and are less likely to develop asthma.
3. Extended breastfeeding decreases the mother’s risk of breast, ovarian, uterine and endometrial cancer as well as protecting against rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis.
4. Nothing comforts an unhappy or sick toddler like nursing, and I like that extended breastfeeding teaches that we should turn to human beings, not stuff, for comfort when we’re upset. Interestingly, there is a statistically significant link between extended breastfeeding and social adjustment in 6 – 8 year olds.

You can find the references for all of these claims at Kelly Mom.

Boston Globe Article on extended nursing. I particulary liked the bit that notes that extended breastfeeders tend to be highly educated.