There's Been Lots of This...

This has been my favorite position as of late: on the floor, hugging the carpet and being hugged by the munchkins. Elise calls it the "Daddy Junglegym." So cool.

We're so grateful for all of your prayers and care. Many of you have asked how we're doing and I want to say thanks for allowing the blog to be our primary way of responding. To understand why, again, I refer you to the picture.

As for our days...Bri wakes at 6:30, she's changed, fed...then Mia wakes up. She's changed, fed, and then they both play together for 45 minutes before Bri is fed and goes back down. Mia follows an hour later and then Elise and I get a total of 9 minutes of down-time before Bri stirs. Then Bri is up, changed, fed, and then Mia wakes up and is changed, fed and then they play for a total of 30 minutes together before Bri gets her bath, a bottle, a burp, and then she's down. Mia follows immediately: bath, bottle, burp, bed. The 4 B's are a beautiful thing.

We bought a white board for the fridge to keep track and log all their activities. So glad I married a project manager.

The goal of survival is to have them both down by 7:30 - in a staggered fashion. Then, Elise and I prep for the next day by doing laundry, dishes, and cleaning up the toy creep about the house. My personal calling for these two weeks is to help Elise get at least an hour to herself in the morning. A shower, a cup of joe, maybe even a devotional...before the first darling dawns.

Mia is adjusting to her Mommy, I think, really well. She's beginning to smile and laugh with Elise and is starting to look at us interchangeably with a need. Last night, Mia woke up just as we were about to turn out the lights. We fed her another bottle - thinking it was gonna do the trick. Not so much. It was as if she discovered her room for the first time. I gave her the ol' "bounce to sleep" bounce but she was a wild-eyed-wonder...I could just see her brain clicking, "Hey, look at those butterflies hanging from the ceiling! And the flower on the crib bumbers, and the basket of toys, and what's that thing hanging in my crib??? Is that for me?" The little Fisher Price crib thingamajig had her up for another 45, easy.

Turns out it took her two whole bottles and some Tylenol (ear ache still in effect) and a bouncing, holding tag-team among Elise and me to get her down. This was unusual for her and we're wondering (hoping) if jet lag is still lingering a bit.

Brianna is adjusting fairly well too. At times, she laughs at Mia and reaches out with a toy to share. At other times, she'll look at Mia with this confused stare that says, "You're still here???"

As for Keiffer and Bower, just as high maitnenance as ever.