Yesterday

Naps
As the day goes on, it gets harder and harder for the boyz to be put down.  There's more crying and fussiness and a real lack of wanting to be in the crib.  The morning naps are longest.  Yesterday it was about 2 1/2 hours.  As naps progressed, the naps became progressively shorter, until the last nap was 30 minutes.  I don't have any idea if that is normal or not but it seems to be the pattern that the boyz are in.  I really really study their faces and bodies for signs when they're tired.  Again, it's easier to put them down after I acknowledge those signs in the morning than later on in the day.

Sleep
After nursing them at about 6:15 (or so?) last night, I brought them downstairs to their rockers, turned down the lights and just stared at them.  It was calm and LBM was extremely chilled out.  LM was a little hyper but he was trying to contain himself (heh heh).  I gave them their blankets and they used them to suck/lick.  After about 20-30 minutes, LM began to rub his eyes and yawn.  My mother took him upstairs to rock him to sleep.  That took a good 20 minutes (perhaps more?).  He was still stirring when I came up with LBM.  LBM was not ready for bed and showed very few signs of being tired.  So, as soon as he rubbed his eye just a bit, I picked him up and started to rock him.  He finally fell asleep after about 15-20 minutes of rocking in all kinds of positions.  I put him down and went downstairs.  This was about 7:50pm.

At about 8:15, LBM began to scream.  It might have been because he had kicked his blankets off and was cold but it's hard to say.  My husband held him until he calmed down and fell back asleep.  At 10:30pm, he woke up again and I could tell that his nose was all stuffed up.  I gave him some saline drops, which made him freak out more.  I wanted to quickly remove him from the room in case he woke LM up and so my husband swept him out.  The screaming and crying continued to escalate when finally my husband was able to clear LBM's nose, which seemed to calm him down.  I took over until LBM fell asleep in my arms.  I waited an extra few minutes to be sure and then put him down beside LM.  They slept until about 3:15am.  LBM woke up again to eat, LM just wanted to sleep!  Maybe LBM is going through a growth spurt? Who knows?  Anyway, my bra and breast shells were full of milk, I was soaked.  And in pain.  I basically just wanted to get up so I could feed them, I didn't care if they were just having a bad dream or not.  Last night, i decided that I should probably not wake up to pump because I'm just teaching my body to continue to produce milk when in fact, the boyz don't want or need that extra feeding anymore.  It's a consistent 6 times a day now, and me pumping is fooling my brain to produce milk for 7 times a day.  It is painful and makes a mess (I still have to figure out how to sleep without using up a bra a night), but in truth, I think I need the sleep.  I'm looking a little messed up lately.

Co-sleeping
Have I written about our family co-sleeping with the boyz?  We started at about 3 months and it's at the 5 1/2 month mark.  I am getting closer and closer to being ready to put the boyz in the crib overnight.  It only makes sense if they only wake up once a night, right?  My baby daddy loves sleeping with them, but I think he feels torn.  He wants to reclaim the bed but he rarely has much time with them during the weekdays -- perhaps an hour at most -- and at least sleeping with them, they're closeby and it's just, well, nice.  It's really nice to have them right there, to look at them and watch them sleep so peacefully and to see their angelic faces.  It's like, soooooooooo beautiful.