So far, so good!

Kadien has been sleeping a 4 hour stretch, followed by a 3 hour stretch every night since we started the zantac. We even got the two kids to take a nap at the same time on Sunday. Almost two full hours of kid free time! What did we do? Nothing to begin with! Then we got up and cleaned the kitchen and dining room. Followed by making some gluten steak. Huh? Gluten steak, what is that? It is vegetarian steak. It is super good for you, and our first patch actually wasn't to bad, a little tough, but we can work on it. You use it in place of regular steak in recipes, or just eat it as is. I am trying some tonight in a stir fry, so I will let you know how it goes.

Makaylee has started to get a littl rough with Kaiden, so keep your eyes open at all times! She is not trying to hurt him, quite the opposite, she is trying to help. She likes to help burp him, and was doing great for awhile, except now she wants to burp him all the time, so if he is accessible, she just walks up and starts hitting him to burp him wherever is available. Feet, head, belly, it doesn't matter. We keep trying to explain this doesn't work, but she isn't quite getting it, or she is ignoring us, so we have to keep a close eye on her. She also likes to cover him with a blanket since Mom does this all the time. She just thinks he needs to be completely covered with the blanket, head including. So watch out Kaiden, you are getting hit, and your sister is trying to smother you under a blanket, but she has good intentions! She is also taking care of her baby, burping the doll, and feeding her, it is super cute. Though I wish Kaiden went to sleep like her baby doll does. She chucks her on the ground and says "night night" and walks away. Wouldn't that be nice?

We are working on Kaiden putting himself to sleep. For several reasons. It is such a luxory that Makaylee puts herself to sleep, but we use to rock her to sleep. Teaching her to put herself to sleep was very time consuming and difficult process. We hope to skip that. Also, Makaylee doesn't understand, leave mommy alone while I rock the baby to sleep. She already has to give up time with me while I am nursing him. Sometimes I can lay Kaiden in the co-sleeper and he goes to sleep with only a couple patting and shushing trips along with replacing the paci sometimes. Sometimes I put him in the swing and he falls asleep. So I let sleeping babies lie, and he takes a nap in the swing. At night he fights going to sleep a bit more, and it can take me anywhere from 20 min to an hour to get him to fall sleep in the co-sleeper.

We have started introducing the potty to Makaylee. We are reading potty books, and watching elmo potty time video, which she loves and is addicted to. We have a potty seat in the bathroom, and she usually sits on it about once a day. We are working on introducing the concept right now. I bought some pampers that have a "feel wet" liner, but she was not bothered by it at all. We have not had a successful potty trip yet, but I am in no rush at the moment. Although it would be nice to only have one in diapers, it is difficult to get her to the potty as often as I need to with Kaiden wanting to nurse. Maybe once we have all settled into a routine we can really start focusing on it.

That is about it for right now~

Who's baby is this?

So we started the zantac yesterday. I would like to know who stole the screaming baby? No, seriously. Kaiden slept for.........are you ready for this? Four whole hours straight last night, followed by 2.5 hours. Holy cow! What life luxury is this? Then he took a two hour nap this morning, followed by a three hour nap. What a great day right? Of course the kids refuse to nap at the same time. I did have a slight overlap and rushed to take a shower all on my own. Without Makaylee sitting in the tub trying to steal my shower water. It was a nice luxury followed by Makaylee waking up. So, you would think it would be a good day right? Well, no. Makaylee has decided to take over her brothers roll of complaining, crying, and just plain crankiness today. I guess you win some, you loose some right? I am not confessing zantac as the miracle drug quite yet, because it could just be an off day for him, so I will keep you updated on the progress. But I have high hopes that this does continue and we can resume some resemblence of a scheduled life.

There is hope for sleep!

Kaiden was diagnosed with silent reflux today. Basically it is acid reflux in infants except he is missing the main symptom which is throwing up. The reason he doesn't throw up is because he throws up, but swallows the puke before it comes out. This is worse than normal acid reflux because the acid burns on the way up and on the way down. Luckily, the DR perscribed baby Zantac. So we started that today, and I HOPE that this helps. Kaiden has not been a very happy baby when he is awake, and we thought it was gas, but I have cut out a bunch of things from my diet to try and reduce the gas, and that didn't work. I thought maybe he was sensitive to what I was eating because feeding times were becoming a battle to get him to eat. So I went to very bland food, and we were still having issues. This led us to the silent reflux diagnosis. It could take up to a week or so for the medication to make a difference. We are hoping for some better sleep, as right now Kaiden doesn't sleep for more than 2-3 hour stretches at night, and a 30-45 min stretch during the day if that. The Zantac unfortunatly does not stop the actual refluxing, but it reduces the acid in it so that it doesnt burn as much, if at all. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Profesional pics

Oh My Goodness!!!!!!!! Let me tell you how much fun it is NOT to try and get pictures taken with two kids :) Which we already suspected. We made an appointment for 11:15 this morning at kiddie kandids. We *suprisingly* all got dressed and ready to go and made it there early of all things. You would think we would know something would go wrong right? Well Kaiden took his two pictures alone just fine. Then when I went to change his outfit Makaylee tripped and fell head first on the babies r us floor. Oops. Mike calmed her down while I changed Kaiden. Then when we took her over and tried to get her on the platform to take a picture she completely flipped out and screamed at the top of her lungs. So we took a break and Mike walked around the store with her. Bought her a sucker (hey, not above bribery). Then headed back to the portrait studio. COMPLETE FREAK OUT. So we left. No one wants to pay for pics of a screaming kid right? So Mike went off to work, and I took the kids home for nap time. Makaylee took a super long nap, then back to the studio, and ready for another freak out when we tried to get her to take the pic. We worked through it though, and the photogropher was very patient. So we did end up getting some great pics. Though trying to get Makaylee to hold Kaiden for a pose proved to be impossible, so we said we would settle for one of the two of them in the same pic. Thank goodness Kaiden slept through both photo shoots. What are we going to do when we want them both to smile for a picture? We will cross that bridge when we get there. Here are the pics: