Visit from Braden and Cole

We got to spend some time with Catherine, Braden and Cole last week!  They live in Texas so we don't get to see them as often as we'd like.  Tori and Braden always have so much fun together, and now Cole is getting big enough to get in the action.  The big kids got to play with Fizzing sidewalk paint!  The recipe made plenty for both kids with lots of leftovers!  This could entertain Tori for hours!

Brian and I decided to throw caution to the wind and take 4 kids to the STL zoo since Tori has been begging to go back.  We had the twins in a double stroller and the big kids in a wagon.... I lost track of how many people asked us if we had two sets of twins!  It was quite the undertaking, we had to stop constantly for potty breaks and snacks for the big kids, a diaper changes and bottles for the babies.  We worked it out so that half way I took the babies, fed and changed them, and pumped while Brian took the big kids on the train around the zoo, which worked out really well.  All in all it was a good trip and the kids had fun. 

Just hanging around the house we got some big smiles from Liam :)

Baby Lizzi looking so cute!

Bed time stories from Aunt Catherine

We made slime with the big kids on their last day here.  So much fun!  It took some coaxing to get miss Tori to put her hands in the bowl but Braden jumped right in!

We had a great time with all 5 kids in one house!  Looking forward to our next trip to Texas when the twins are bigger and can get in on the games too. 

2 Month Pictures

The twins are getting so big!  They are now wearing 0-3month clothes (Lizzi can still wear newborn size but they're getting tight) and size 1 diapers.  At their 2 month appointment Lizzi weighed 8 pounds 13 ounces and Liam was a whopping 9 pounds 3 ounces.  They did great with their shots, only cried a bit and weren't fussy at all afterwards.  Our doctor did start Lizzi on baby zantac (GERD medicine) to help with her spitting up.  She will throw up a whole bottle a few times a week and always spits up multiple times after each feeding.  She was worried about her weight gain because Lizzi is still not even on the growth chart and Liam is just touching it.  They are still eating only mommy's milk.  I nurse when I'm home and pump at work.  They go back and forth so well but definitely prefer mommy over a bottle.  They are both smiling and cooing :) Its so adorable to come home from a long day at work to smiling babies!

This is Tori at 2 months.... I still think Lizzi looks just like her!  They both have such big bright eyes :)

So hard to get a good picture of all three!  lol

Sweet Liam doing a baby push-up!

Two Months

Here are a few pictures from the past month.  All three kids are currntly under the weather so I dont have time to type much.  Ill update everyone on the twins' stats once I get their two month pictures taken. :)  Hopefully these pictures will tide you over for a bit.

STL Zoo

Brian, Jeff, and I took all three kids to the St Louis Zoo last weekend.  The twins did great, they slept most of the time and took their bottles well.  Tori had a great time!  She LOVES animals as all kids do and really gets into asking us questions about the different kinds.  She has asked to go back every day since.....  It was nice to get out of town but it was a big undertaking to take two newborns and a newly potty trained toddler out of state....... so it may be a little while before we do that again :)

Freezer Cooking

In preperation for going back to work I wanted to make sure we had a lot of dinner options for when I had to work late or we just don't have time to cook.  In order to do that we went out and purchased a deep freeze.  I have been wanting one for a long time, and every time we go to the store we seem to struggle to get everything to fit.  Our freezer was also filling up with frozen breast milk so I finally bit the bullet and got one (and I love it!).  I can be a lot more organized now that we have so much more space and I vow to always keep an inventory so we know whats out there.

I started out by searching for freezable meal recepies.  I searched freezer cooking and once a month cooking.  I can't believe how many sites there are dedicated to freezable meals!  These are a few I really like.

http://www.bulkfreezercooking.com/

http://www.momsbudget.com/freezerrecipes/index.html

http://onceamonthcook.com/

I looked for recepies that we would love and that were fairly simple to make (I only had one day to do all of this).  I also wanted recipes that didn't have a ton of ingredients for the sake of having to carry them all into the house.  Here is what I decided on:

3 bags of Root beer Pulled Pork (a favorite of my family's ~ from Better Homes and Gardens)

2 9x13 pans of Chicken Tetrazitti (each pan is 2-3 meals)

1 batch of Taco Soup (3 meals)

1 pan Tater Tot Casserole

1 pan BBQ Beef and Bean Cornbread Casserole (2 meals )
3 bags Mexican Chicken Black Bean Filling

3 bags of meat spaghetti sauce

2 pounds of taco meat

2 marinaded bags Flat Iron Steaks

1 batch Beef Stew (3 meals)

I gathered my recipes and made one master shopping list.  Tori and I went shopping and returned a couple of hours later with a van full of food!   

Then I got to cooking!  Most of the food was made is just a few hours!  It went much faster than I anticipated since I was able to brown 4 pounds of ground beef at a time and for the recipes that called for cooked, diced chicken I shredded a rotisserie chicken to save time. 

I had a few helpers in the kitchen :)  I had one of the twins in the bjorn most of the time and Tori helped pour and stir.

Here is the majority of the cooked meals, ready to go in the freezer.  Most of them went into freezer bags since I had trouble finding freezer containers at the store.  I am going to order a few from amazon for next time, I am really excited to try Glad Ovenware pans!  They can go from freezer, to fridge, to oven!  Are they're reusable and inexpensive, just my kind of product! The foil pans are working well for now, no clean up! :)  I made sure to include cooking instructions on each container for the meals that need baking.  Now all we have to do is decide in the morning what we want to eat, stick it in the fridge to defrost, then warm it up for dinner.  Limited cleaning and now we can have a yummy homemade dinner with just a few minutes in the kitchen.  There are tons more freezer recipes we can't wait to try next time! 

Stats

One of the questions we get frequently when people see us walking around in public with the twins and Tori is "How many diapers do you change a day?"  So that gave me the idea to write out the "stats" from the first 5 weeks of having the twins home.
We average of 20 diapers a day (10 for each baby, Tori is potty trained).
I nurse on average 8-9 times a day (I feed them at the same time, they eat about 30 minutes).
I pump after each feeding, about 10 minutes.
We make 3 meals a day plus 2 snacks for Tori.
I also average about 2 loads of laundry a day.

That means in the past 5 weeks we've.......
We've changed 700 diapers
I've nursed 149 hours, or 6.2 days
I've pumped 49.6 hours, or 2.1 days
We've made 105 meals and 70 snacks for Tori
We've sorted, washed, folded, and put away 70 loads of laundry!

And we wonder where all of our free time has gone!  :)

One month!!

My babies are a month old already!!  Oh my goodness it has gone so fast!  Here are just a handfull of the pictures I took of them today.  They were so sweet to fall asleep for me :)