Baby Gear: The Crib

Everytime we travel with Lucie and Ryan, the blog goes unattended. You can imagine the backlog that awaits our return with a load of laundry being generated for every day we're gone. But we'll get everyone caught up on the all latest developments quickly.

Back to the business at hand, Lucie and Ryan are now enjoying long nights and naps in their brand-new Sorelle Lana Crib. After some false starts and flat tires, we bought the crib a few weeks ago at our local USA Baby store. After a mere four hours and several curses later (why or why must everything require a 2'' long Allen wrench?), I had the crib at home and assembled.

Crib selection is largely a function of individual taste, but we recommend buying one with a sliding drawer underneath. The drawer can be opened and closed with one foot and is remarkably convenient. For multiples, the ability to lower one side is effectively useless since it makes too much noise. Of course, being parents of twins, we bought two cribs but we'll get to that challenge in a later post.

Just Like Uncle AJ

For quite some time, Ryan has been looking for a fashion role model (or so I like to think). He admires the button-down shirts and slacks his Dad wears for work, but that look is a little too dressy for spit-up episodes or trips to the park.

Ryan may have found inspiration in college student, Uncle AJ. Casual and comfortable, striped polos are perfect for a 5 month old's busy lifestyle of eating, sleeping and playing (luckily no studying or homework required yet).

Here Ryan is fascinated by his uncle, who unfortunately was unable to hold his fashion prodigy due to a lingering cold...

Night #167

For 166 nights, Lucie and Ryan have been our alarm clocks. Well technically, it was IV machines the first four nights, and breast-pumps the next seven, but basically crying babies have kept us from getting more than 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep over the last six months. During the dark days of November, we were lucky to get 7 hours in two nights.

But not last night. Ryan slept solidly from 10:30pm to 7am with Lucie sacked out from 8pm until 5am. And for almost 7 hours in between Megan and I enjoyed the sustained peace and quiet that people without kids take for granted.

Of course, since Lucie recently decided she wants to sleep on her stomach, I did have to get up three times to make sure she was breathing...

Twenty Clean Toes

Lucie and Ryan are really starting to enjoy bath time. Both have discovered the joy of splashing and wiggling in water. Post-bath, Megan takes over with her weekly nail salon, baby lotion, hair combing, and massage service. While we still haven't managed to increase the frequency of baths beyond every Saturday, Lucie and Ryan don't seem to mind.

Here they show off their twenty fresh-from-the-bath toes.

Mr. Sleeper

Ta-Da! Presenting the little boy who slept through the night!

Last night Ryan snoozed from 8 pm to 5 am, an all-time record in our house. We usually follow the sanity-saving rule of parenting twins -- when one wakes to feed, we wake the other (if necessary) and feed them together. Though it doesn't always seem fair to the sleeping baby, it helps us all get some zzz's by reducing the number of nighttime feedings. And, most of the time when one wakes, the other will be up in a few minutes anyway. However, last night when Lucie woke at 2 am, Ryan was sleeping so soundly that we gambled and let him stay in dreamland. What a pay-off!