New baby makes five!

So we kept debating on when to have another one and we finally just decided to go for it. Baby #3 is due April 25. I'll be 14 weeks this Saturday and baby has been measuring six days ahead.

Pregnancy announcement with baby books!

The girls will be around 23 months when baby arrives so I think that's a good distance. Yes, we will have three kids under two for a bit, and I fully understand there will be some crazy moments, but I think in the long run having them all close together will be really fun. Our thought in the end was let's just add more crazy onto our already crazy lives.

We had our first ultrasound at ten weeks. Obviously we knew there was a CHANCE of twins again. The average person has about a 1 to 3 percent chance of having twins (without fertility). Your chance increases if you've already had twins, making you four times more likely to have twins (so about a 4 to 12 percent chance). Overall, still pretty low odds. My doctor said they've never had anyone in their practice have a second set of twins. Of course, she said most moms don't have another baby after having twins, lol.

Anyway, just one baby! We made her double check a few times. We also had the NT scan at 12 weeks and still just one baby so no way they missed anything. I knew it was only one this time because I felt about 1/10th as sick. Only had to take Zofran a couple times. I dry heaved maybe ten or so times, but way better than all day every day. Didn't need all the morning sickness remedies I mastered from last pregnancy.

I've been super tired though. I will chalk that one up to being pregnant, working full time and having two toddlers. I've been in bed by nine most nights and have zero energy to cook or work out. Doing the best I can.

We find out the gender Nov. 21. Since this is just a few days before my 30th birthday, I think we are going to have her write it down in secret again and do another gender reveal cake, but just for Darren and I this time.

A few things that will be different about this pregnancy that I have already decided and refuse to budge on.

• No bed rest
• No c-section
• No preemie babies
• No NICU
• No early delivery
• No taking my babies away from me and not being able to see them for hours or hold them for days

At least I am HOPING for all this. My doctor said doing a v-bac after twins makes you a great candidate because everything is so stretched out and even if the baby is breech its easy to flip. Which is wonderful because I prefer never, ever to have a c-section again.

The doctor also warned me that I would get big fast, again because the twins stretched out my uterus. Honestly I look pretty on track with a singleton belly as I did with a twin belly. Comparison below!

Ball catching, heel wearing, baby gate defeating and twin groupbrunching

So Brooklyn can catch a ball now! As preemies, the girls haven't really ever hit any developmental milestones early (they've been right on time for everything for adjusted age) so this was the first time I've been able to say "she is so advanced!" (Typically kids don't catch balls till around age 3. Brooklyn is 16 months). And this isn't a one time fluke. She's been doing it all week. She also kicks and throws the ball pretty good. A future athlete maybe! Bailey can't catch yet but she does love when the ball hits her tummy and rolls off.
Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh8ppVExOlA


Some other funny recent toddler moments.

We've had a baby gate set up to block the lamp and the beloved electrical cords from the girls. This has worked fine for months and months. Until this weekend. I turn around and Bailey has moved the gate aside and gone inside like it's a fort. This turned into the girls opening and closing the gate, trying to play with the outlet and the lamp's electrical cord and knocking the gate over. They seemed to forget about it the next day so hopefully this buys us some additional baby proofing time. Also Brooklyn now has an obsession with wearing my shoes, which is adorable.

We had another twin parent survival get together. This time we traveled super far to the east side where are friends from Fairview Park now reside. Turns out the iphone maps does include directions to the mysterious east side. The kids all had a good time and we somehow managed to even get a photo of them all in the same area! You have no idea what a challenge getting ten toddlers between 15 months and 22 months to stay in one spot is until you try it. Good times!

15 month check up, mom brain, another bloody nose, the muffin man, pumpkin patch

So we had the 15 month check up at the end of September (the girls were basically 16 months, but I had to reschedule due to client meeting).

Bailey: 22 lbs 8 oz, 30.5 inches (50th percentile for adjusted age)
Brooklyn: 21 lbs 4 oz, 29 inches (20th percentile for adjusted age)

They also got four shots each! Took them like champs and only cried for a minute.

• Flu shot
• HIB Vaccine
• Chicken Pox Vaccine
• Diptheria, Tetnus, Acell, Pertus (DTAP) Vaccine

But everything was good at their check up.

Bailey is still not the greatest sleeper. She consistently wakes up between 5:30 and 6:15 am EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yesterday she woke up at 5:08 a.m. and today she woke up at 3:48 a.m. There is no way I was getting up for the day before 4 a.m. so I turned off the monitor like a bad mommy and listened in bed to her cry on and off for two hours. She must have dozed a little bit but was obviously so tired when I finally gave up and got her up for the day. Both girls have had a bit of cough/cold so maybe that is part of the problem. But 4 a.m. is not going to work!

So in my sleep deprived brain frog, I took Bailey out of her crib and set the monitor and my phone on the stove top. Turned on the back burner to boil water to warm the bottles (my girls don't care for cold milk!) and busied myself with pouring the bottles. Then I realized there was a PROBLEM. I turned on the front burner and the $150 baby monitor was now cooking. I literally melted the monitor. It still works and still fits in the charger at least. And luckily my phone didn't melt. I learned an important lesson that the stove shouldn't double as a table. 

In other news, Brooklyn got her second bloody nose after a nasty spill she took the other day. Poor little girl!

The girls new obsession are books that have buttons you push that make noise. We have an Elmo book I just bought at the twin sale that plays "Do you know the muffin man?" Do you know how many times we have heard this song in the past few weeks? They literally sit with this book in their lap and hit it over and over again, rocking back and forth to the music. Darren actually looked up the muffin man origins on Wikipedia, this is how engrossed in our brains it is. The song dates back to 1820 when an actual muffin man would deliver muffins (the English muffin kind) to your door. While the song usually references Drury Lane, another variation references Dorset Lane. I prefer to sing Strawberry Lane, which I think sounds less awkward than Drury Lane. 

We took the girls this past weekend to the Rockin R Ranch with the twin group. Hayrides, pumpkin patch, hay mountain and petting zoo. We took a thousand pictures. Fun day, but I really think next year they will be super into it.