I had a chance to have a proper photo shoot with Lucas today. He's much better at lifting his head when he is on his tummy than Sam at the moment, and it makes for some adorable shots. Sam's photo shoot will have to wait for a bit until he is better at it. Here are some of the shots
Isn't he gorgeous! That should keep the grandmas happy.
When Lucas and Sam were inside Meeks they had different placentae and different sacs. This indicated they probably weren't identical, but it was still possible. The number of placentae and sacs is determined by how early the egg splits. When they came out they looked very similar, so we decided to get a DNA test done just to confirm whether or not they were identical or fraternal, all the time expecting that they were going to be fraternal, because fraternal twins run in Meeks' family whereas identical are essential flukes.
We got the result back today and much to our surprise, they are identical twins. Identical twins are apparently just 3 in 1000 pregnancies as opposed to about 30 in 1000 for fraternal twins, so they just got 10 times more special - not that the degree of "specialness" has changed in our eyes! In fact male identical twins are the least common form of twins.
A couple of shots - who is who?
Just a couple of pictures of a happy Lucas. I tried to get Sam too, but he wasn't in such a happy mood.
I decided it was time for a change so Meeks cut all my hair off. Here's me and Mitchy mucking around and me feeding Lucas.
Sam distinguished himself this morning with a projectile vomit that I'm sure defied the laws of physics. I was sitting on the couch with Sam lying on my legs. He'd just drunk 100ml of milk and had a burp and was about to have some more. He wriggled a bit and suddenly his mouth was full of milk. I thought, "That's gross". Then he wriggled again and the milk flowed out of his mouth. I thought, "That's even more gross" as I reach for a towel to wipe his mouth. Then he wriggled again, and the milk flew out of his mouth and all over me and even reached my face and splashed over my ear and into my hair a bit. Then I looked over my shoulder and the milk had made it all the way to the wall behind my head. His projectile vomit had almost covered a metre! Upwards! When I'd cleaned up the mess on him and me and the wall and the floor I gave him the rest of his bottle, but he was still hungry so he had another 50 ml then went to sleep. It's hard work drinking 100ml, vomiting it up while defying the laws of gravity and fluid dynamics, drinking another 100ml and then drinking another 50ml just to make sure!
In other news, the boys are 12 weeks old tomorrow so yesterday we went and had them weighed. Lucas is about 6.85kg and Sam is about 6.15 kg so they are both continuing to grow well. They are continuing to sleep well at night which is great, but don't sleep so well in the day - although generally they take it in turn having bad days, so neither of them is better than the other. They haven't quite got their sleep hours right yet and are feeding at around 6:30pm and waking up between 4am and 5:30am for a feed. We're going to try and push their evening feed to around 8:30pm tonight and hopefully that will get them through to 6:30am or something.
The boys had their longest sleep last night. They slept from 6:30pm until about 4am. Unfortunately, neither Meeks nor I managed to sleep very well. Meeks had trouble going to sleep and got more and more frustrated because she realised what an opportunity she was missing out on. I just kept waking up every hour or so expecting to have feed them. Then when they did wake up they took ages to go to sleep so Meeks didn't get back to bed until 5:50am and I got up at 6am because Mitch woke up and I had to tell him to go back to sleep!
Unfortunately they don't sleep nearly so well during the day. Sam slept well today, but Lucas was a nightmare waking up all the time. The day before was pretty much the same thing. Every time I put him down in bed he would cry, but when I brought him out in the family room and put him in the bouncy thing he was happy watching me as I walked around doing things.
No photos of the boys today, but I did take this one of the arm chair in it's new spot
It's really nice sitting there in the sunlight and reading stories or having a cup of tea.
After rearranging the lounge room we decided we want to put some pictures of the boys up on the walls. So today I whipped out the softbox and put on the trustee Tamron 90mm SP F2.8 and started shooting whenever the boys were still long enough to take some photos.
Here is a sample of what came out of the camera
Mitch
Lucas
Sam
Lucas and Sam are looking very like each other at the moment. Looking at the photos, the only way we can tell the difference is because of tiny spots on their faces!
Over the weekend we decided to rearrange our lounge room to make two smaller living areas out of it. One is for grown ups and there is a play area for Mitch. This is partially driven by the need to give Mitch a bit of a play area and partially because we needed to rearrange the nursery too. The nursery was only big enough for two cots, if we took the arm chair out. So we put the arm chair in the corner of the new play area. It's quite nice sitting by the front window in the sun reading stories. Here is the new arrangement
Shaz and Phil have loaned us their cot, so now the boys room is somewhat crammed with two cots, a change table, a bookshelf and a cupboard. Big thank you to Phil and Shaz for that. The boys are just starting to get to big to be in a cot together. We quite often separate them now during the day by putting one on our bed so they don't wake each other up. It's not so much of an issue at night because they sleep reasonable well, but during the day there is lots more noise in the house, so they are more inclined to wake up.
In other news, Mitch had another successful swimming lesson again yesterday, so that seems to have sorted itself out which is a great relief.
Finally, our thanks to everyone who has, and continues to, cook meals for us. We greatly appreciate it. It is so busy at that time of the evening, not having to worry about cooking dinner as well is a great help. We have had a great variety of meals and have appreciated every one.
First up a video of Mitch playing on the rope climbing ball thing the park, from a few weeks ago
Next up the boys from today.
