Today was a great day with the babies.
After a good night's rest for everyone, we started our day. Our whole crew slept until about 8:00AM which was a blessing. It's the first morning Les hasn't been up at 6:00AM since we got here. We didn't mention it in the last two days worth of posts, but we sure are lucky to have Les along for our journey. We knew he would be a big help, but had no anticipation of having a day like yesterday (or whatever day it was) - that was a blessing.
When we got up this morning, we played for a little bit and then had "first breakfast" as they call it at the baby house. They usually have this at 6:00AM, but we started our schedule later. This meal contained a bottle with formula and some cream of wheat mush mixed in. After this meal, we played some more and then had the "second breakfast" which is oatmeal or cream of wheat and some juice (they actually fed them tea with cookie at the baby house, but we'd like to cut off the caffeine and sugar).
After this, they went down for a nap about 11:00AM. Kai is not that fond of the naps. Sierra goes down right away and sleeps through his yelling. He eventually falls asleep, but he's not happy about it (we're happy that he's in a better mood when he wakes up). After the morning nap, we had our "big meal" - lunch. This is the heaviest meal of their day - meat/potatoes and maybe some fruit with juice to drink (we're actually watering down the juice so they get some water in them). They both had full bellies and we played some more. One big note of the day was that Sierra has started crawling. It's not "polished" yet, but it's coming along nicely. We bribe her with a cheerio from across the room and she makes her way to get to the "finish line" for her prize.
We're working with Kai to practice his walking (we do this with Sierra also but she's not as advance yet - although she did surprise us today when we practiced. Her legs are getting much stronger - she doesn't buckle as much). We're also working with Kai to play on the floor without someone holding him. They are so used to us holding them during our visits that he, in particular, starts to whine when you put him on the floor. He's still recovering from our journey so it's partly from still being tired. Sierra does well playing on the floor by herself or with us laying beside her. She does get a little freaked if she looks up and doesn't see you.
The afternoon nap was a little more of a challenge. He would not go down. She slept for about an hour. We finally picked him up and played some more after a long period of screaming. Then we kept them both up for a bit and tried again. They went down around 4:00PM and actually slept for about an 1 1/2 hours.
Dinner and baths were a big hit when they got up. We played some more and watched a Baby Einstein movie (they love it - thanks Kim B). Our grand finale was the same type of bottle we'd started the day with... and then time for bed - right??? Right before putting them down, Sierra nuked the place and had "you-know-what" all over her and her clothes. That was a fun way to end the evening. She felt much better and we all felt better after the team effort to get her cleaned.
"Knock-on-wood" - bed time has been awesome the last two days. With our winding down rituals, they go right down without much fuss and sleep all the way through the night (even Kai). Let's hope the trend continues.
Here are some pics from the day (all inside kid shots since it was a day of recovery and we didn't leave the apartment):
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