Naps and feeds are later (plus potty stuff)

Over the last week, I've been putting the girls to bed for naps later, and feeding them later. It's working out just fine.

In other news, HAZEL DID A POO IN THE POT!!! I promised my loyal Facebook constituency that I would not bleat on about further elimination excitements (after I bragged that IVY DID A WEE IN THE POT!!!!). However I never promised anything of the sort on this blog. Brace yourself.

Yesterday I bought a slightly nicer potty. The one I already had was a very minimalist $5 thing, which looks a bit uncomfortable. The part that the legs rest on is quite narrow, and I think soft little baby legs would find that unpleasant. Also there is no back support.

The new potty was $10 and is similarly very simple. No tray, no removable bits, no footrest, and certainly no music. However it has a wider seat and a backrest. I sat Ivy on it this morning, but no dice. She sat there happily for ages though, playing with toys. I popped Hazel on the older, less comfortable potty for a while too, and mirabile dictu, we have POO! Because Trudi is at home today, I didn't need to take a photo.

I'm only using timing for when to give a potty opportunity. The cues I can see are only immediately before an event, and not enough time to get to the pot.

Added a comment to an old post

...because I was remiss and did not reply to it in a timely fashion.

I love my comments

Another stodgy pair of sourdough loaves

My beginner's luck was fleeting. This morning's two loaves are another pair of stodgy things. Trudi is ready to mutiny. Looks like she might start buying bread on the sly. I don't blame her!

I think I should be making smaller quantities of experimental sourdough so we aren't afflicted with so much of it. *sigh*

Been to Shepparton and back

...to my cousins' 21st birthday. Claire and Eddie are my twin cousins. They had a joint party, and it had a dress-up theme (60s and 70s). Everyone else put in a lot of effort and looked excellent, but I showed up in jeans, sneakers, and a swirly shirt. Being the mum of little twins means one can do this sort of thing, but I did feel a bit silly being the only one not in a lurid frock and a kerazy wig.

We also went to the SPC Ardmona factory shop, where we bought slabs of baked beans, tinned tomatoes, and some canned fruit.

Before the party we visited my Grandpa (who is 92 - looking good!):



Then we visited Di and Ross McPherson (friends of my parents), in their gorgeous house near the Broken River. They have four grown-up kids, of whom the younger two are twins. We didn't get down to the river, but we did have a lovely lunch that Di put together in a flash after I rang in the morning and invited ourselves over.

The girls hooned around the floor, making a beeline for the open fire. Here's Di with the girls as they admire the two big black dogs through the window:



Off I go to make anzacs.

While you're at it...

Can you manage a caption for this one?

Louise made Minke into a lolcat

Will Selby be jealous?


moar funny pictures

OK, try your hand at this one (I swear this is the original photo, and has not been photoshopped):

Baby-led pottying

I just made that up... off to Google the phrase to see if it's in wide use... OK there are nine hits, but only six unique sites. I think it's a better name than "elimination communication" (naff rhyming) or "infant potty training" (implies that it's the same as toilet training but earlier). Anyway.

I'll call it EC.

Beware, do not read this post if you are bothered by or not interested in wee and poo.

I have kind of been doing EC with the girls since they were a few weeks old, but only in a really lax way. Full-on ECers hold their two-hour old babies over a sink for their first wee, and are so deeply attuned to their baby's needs that their lucky babies never need to sit in a shitty nappy while oblivious mama finishes her latte. We are not like that.

Every morning the girls have nappy-free time while they have their first bottle of the day. They both usually get their morning poo done during this time. I clean it up on the spot, so they do not have to get messy. Sometimes it is a disaster, but usually it is really simple and fine.

During nappy-free time, when someone does a wee or poo, I make a noise and a sign: SSSSS and the Auslan sign for "wee-wee", or a kind of groany grunt and a sign I made up for poo. The girls seem to take no notice of me.

A few times, Ivy has woken from a nap with her nappy still dry. That happened this morning, so I got out the plastic potty, sat her on it, and gave her her bottle. I sat behind her and supported her and the bottle, and I made the wee cue (sound and sign). She obediently weed in the potty! Hazel was having her bottle while lying on the floor, as usual.

I was so excited that after the bottles and nappies were all done, I took a photo of the Victory Potty with its Victory Contents. Trudi can admire the photo when she comes home. I was thinking about saving it so that she could admire the real thing, but I recognised that this is not okay.

I would really like to get a better potty. The one we have seems very hard and uncomfortable. If we get one that the girls seem to like, we could get a second one. Perhaps we can have potty concerts in which they both have potty time during that first bottle of the day.

The point of EC is the communication, not so much the actual pottying. Any poos or wees in pots are bonuses. The main thing is to stay as in touch as possible with where your baby is up to and what they need.

Here is what the girls are up to:

We visited Marina, Alisa, and Alisa's Baba

And I forgot to take a photo. I see a pattern emerging.

Alisa is five months old and she is a charmer. Lovely smiles and so calm, even when being held by a stranger soon after waking up. She is a petite, pretty, blue-eyed poppet, but you'll have to take my word for it because I FORGOT TO TAKE A PHOTO.

Marina is doing well too. I'm envious of her post-baby body. You'd never know that she'd even had a baby. I have to hold my floppy tummy in and even then I am rather more thickset than I used to be.

Also Marina's mum (whose first name I have already forgotten) is staying with them, visiting from Ukraine. She has a three-month visa, of which one month has been passed in Mitcham, with her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. Marina says that her mum is happy to spend the next two months taking Alisa for walks in the pram etc, but I think she is going to be forced to do something tourist-y eventually. Does a visit to Preston count?

Before we left to make this visit, an exciting thing happened. When I re-read this in later years I will probably be horrified and saddened that I found this exciting, but Ivy did a WEE in the POTTY! I acted all calm and happy ("Well done love, you'll have a nice dry nappy now"), but inside I was doing a potty-victory dance.

Stay tuned for another post in which I natter at length about potties, wee, and poo.

As I type this I am eating one of Marina's yummy little Lazy Croissants. They are little puff-pastry crescents, filled with Nutella and then baked. Will there be any left when Trudi comes home? I suppose there'd better be.

Photos of second sourdough loaves

Well this time my bread is pretty poor. I again did not follow a recipe, and I was hoping that my beginner's luck would hold, but no dice.

This time I left the dough lying around rising for too long. The bugs ate up all the yummy whatever-they-eat, and then they starved. By the time I baked the loaves, the rising-ness was dying down, so they didn't rise in the oven much at all. The bubbles in the bread are all small and even. Nice sour taste though!

As I was cleaning up the kitchen despondently, Trudi had a look around, then asked me if making sourdough bread counted as a hobby. This is shorthand for "Are you doing this to save us money, because I don't think it's worth it". I clarified that it is indeed a hobby, which means that I can be crap at it, because it is fun.

It turns out the the bread is still very much edible, you just need to toast each slice for five minutes.

Here are the photos to prove it:

The first loaf (silicone "tin" again, dodgy slash, pretty much no oven spring):





The second loaf (on a pizza stone, this was the nicest-looking one, but still not much oven spring):





The third loaf (a disaster of flatness, but it actually has the nicest crumb texture):

Polecat bailed up by infant

Minke loves hanging around the girls, but now that they have learned to crawl, she sometimes has to retreat fast.

Norwegian hats

Bestemor sent us some lovely Norwegian hats and leggings. There's a red and a blue version of each. They are lovely lovely soft lovely merino wool, not at all itchy.

Here is Ivy modelling hers:



It's hard to see (dark blue hat against a dark blue seat), but it is very stylish.

And here is Hazel with the red one:



Ivy is a great hat-remover, so we can tie this one on. Very useful. Thanks Bestemor!

Here is Ivy in the act of fending off a hat (this is her baby sign for "WILL NOT WEAR"):

Classy dinner

Here is what we had for dinner one memorable night last week:

Sourdough photos

I had so much dough that I made three loaves.

I totally did not follow any of the recipes I had read, because we went away for the weekend so I left the rising dough in the fridge for 2.5 days. Also I just randomly threw flour and water in for the first couple of stages. Also I used cake-making flour (soft) instead of bread-making flour (hard) cos I have not yet taken the time to go to Scary Marg and Off-Putting Maree's.

So those are my excuses.

One was a tiny one in my new little silicone bread "tin". That one is in the freezer. It rose oddly cos my slashing was suspect:



Here it is all sliced and ready for the freezer:



And here is a close-up so that you can appreciate the inner texture:



The second loaf was supposed to be one of those long, fairly narrow, tall things. The standard "sourdough loaf" shape, the shape of expensive artisan loaves. My version rose OK, but it also spread. The dough was very soft, so when I transferred it to the hot pizza stone for baking, the ends gooped around, so this was the result:



However it still tasted great with Nutella:



The third loaf was really enormous. It was supposed to be a jolly round little thing, but I had so much dough that it got out of hand. It was as big as its whole pizza stone, and it also gooped over the edge a bit. Here is the proud new mother:



And here is a close-up, so you can appreciate the improved slashing technique:



I have not started on my second sourdough foray because we have enough bread for the next two weeks. Let me know if you want some.

Heck the girls are awake, better go do some Parenting.

Milestones - a confession

You know how Ivy's dracula teeth have come in? The two top canines? And how I was surprised that they were so blunt?

Well they have not come in. On Friday we went to our usual nutty mum's group and Norma the Nurse Who Knows All About Babies had a look and said that they aren't teeth, they are hard cysts that sometimes form before the teeth come down. No saying when the teeth will actually appear.

So Ivy actually has tooth calluses instead of teeth.

Sourdough

Right so I am going totally overboard. I love to research stuff but this is insane. Been reading while watching a terrible DVD (Rock Star).

I have updated my list of favourite sites so I can re-read and properly digest the wisdom I have uncovered.

Visited Amir & Alex and their 10-day-old daughter Maia

But failed to take a photo. I mean really.

She is lovely. She was supposed to be sleeping but she was not. By the time we left (we stayed too long as usual... time flies with friends), she was snoozing in her pram.

Alex and Amir are in good nick. They are already lovely parents. I'm looking forward to getting to know Maia.

We still love our fur-babies

Even though we have babies, we still love our cats.

Here is proof positive: Minke likes to sleep in the pram and we let her.



The girls are in bed and making a lot of noise. Hazel has suddenly become squealily awake.

Sacred Harp crawling

On Sunday we all went to my Sacred Harp singing. It's only once a month so we make a big effort to get there.

Trudi took this video of Ivy while we were singing (yep that's us in the background. We mean well and we enjoy ourselves).

I had Hazel on my lap - she seemd to be enjoying the noise. It really is very loud.

Ivy had a fit of wanting to play with the pram wheels, so she invented a new crawling style to get to them. mean ol mummy Trudi moved the pram away when she got there, so Ivy had to keep crawling.

Also featuring in this crawling demo was a zipper and Ivy's ear.all

A sourdough starter is a stable symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast present in a mixture of flour and water

That's what Wikipedia says. I have a lump of sourdough starter, and now I want to do the thing you do to make some sourdough bread.

I am not going to try the hugely complex and deeply authentic methods first. Instead I will try the machine-mediated shortcuts. Wish me luck.

A thing of the past

We are members of Australian Multiple Birth Association(AMBA). Their website has a forum, of which I am an avid participant. There are some things that only other parents of multiples can help with.

Recently a mother-to-be of twins asked if anyone kept a breastfeeding diary, and I wrote back with a fervent YES. It made Trudi and me so happy to recall the pain that caused us to keep that diary - pain that is completely gone.

So here is my rehashing of that pain.

A page from early on, when we were recording wees, poos, and the volume of milk that I expressed, as well as the girls' feeds:



A page from when we were doing way too many feeds (just before sleep school):



A page from just after sleep school (note the more sensible distribution of feeds):

I am so shallow

I just love these funny photos of cats with captions:

Helping with the laundry on a cold bright winter afternoon

Hazel had a Special night last night

Hazel is still preparing to crawl. She does the rocking-on-all-fours thing whenever she thinks of it. For some reason, she tends to think of it when she has just gone to bed.

Last night she was hooting and singing and rocking and barrelling round her cot for an hour after bedtime, which was at 6 pm as usual. Ivy got increasingly irritated, and eventually dropped into a fitful sleep, leaving Hazel on her own.

Eventually we broke the Golden Bedtime Rule and got Hazel up. From 7 until 7.30 pm she sat on the lounge room floor in her nap-sack, hooting, singing, waving her arms, and dancing to her inner soundtrack (to do this, she bobs up and down, and tips her head left and right). We ate our omelettes and observed.

We gave her another round of Goodnight Moon (great book, thanks Kirsty), then off she want to bed. This time I patted her until she dropped off. All was well.

She woke crying at 11pm, again at 1 am, then again at 5 am. Each time she was rocking on all fours. She seemed to be unable to stop, and yet desperate to sleep, poor possum. Each time I put her on her back, and patted her to sleep.

I think she was so into this learning-to-crawl endeavour that her whole life was utterly focussed on it, to the extent that her body kept on rehearsing it even when she wanted to sleep.

I have had this happen with Tetris.

Tonight they went to bed at 6.45 pm, and they fell asleep immediately. I hope Hazel's phase was only one night long.

In other news, here is a funny story about a clueless dad: Not Always Right.

Locomotion

When Ivy is in the mood, she crawls. This first happened today, at about midday. Mum was here minding the girls while I had my head read, and by the time I got home Ivy was a crawler! She can take a few "steps" at a time.

Here is a photo of the girls wrapped up in towels after I took them both into the shower with me. We all sat on the floor in there.

The lens got steamed up, so the photo has a dreamy glow to it, only enhanced by the realisation that Ivy is chewing a discarded toilet-roll: