6 weeks old

The girls are now 6 weeks old, but they continue to act more like their adjusted age of being one-week old. They pretty much eat and sleep, which does make life a little easier for me but I am eager to have them start to interact with me and the world around them. Once in a while, they will focus on my face and I swear Catie imitated Ellis and me sticking our tongue out at her (that was the first thing Will copied us doing when he was about 3 weeks old). They also are not cooing yet - just a whole lot of grunting and a little bit of crying.

Neither one of them cries very much. They eat every three hours and I usually have to wake them. They might have a little bit of alert time after they eat, but then I swaddle them back up and they go back to sleep. Ellis has helped me get a good night's sleep in the last week. He feeds them at the 12:00 feeding so I can go to bed around 10 or 11. Then, the girls sleep about 4 hours before Catie (and its always Catie) will wake me up with her grunting that slowly turns to a hunger cry. So I get to sleep from 10 or 11 until about 4 or 5 am. Not too shabby at all - I'm certainly not complaining!!
This next picture of Catie cracks me up - looks like she is saying "please no more pictures." This is definitely in line with her personality.

Catie is our little diva (as Ellis fittingly called her the other night). In the NICU, she slept all the time and was very quiet compared to Carter who screamed and cried all the time. But that has changed. Catie cries like crazy if you do anything she does not like, such as give her a bath or change her diaper. She cries very dramatically with her bottom lip just a-trembling. And don't you dare try to change her and make her wait on her boppy pillow for a meal while her sister gets changed. She will cry and cry until you are back to feed her. (Its best to change Carter first!)

You can see from the next picture that this week's photo shoot wore Miss Carter out!

Unlike her sister, Carter seems to be very laid back and easygoing. She does not cry even a little bit when she gets a bath. She'll just have this big frown on her face or poke out her bottom lip to let you know she is not happy about the situation.

Ellis has not had a lot of night meetings lately and was able to spend Saturday and Sunday at home, which was WONDERFUL. We were able to do family things together all weekend, and I honestly believe this made a world of difference to Will's behavior. (I'm going to do a post about him and only him soon.) We all even made it outside for a bit on Saturday - Ellis messed around in the yard, Will played, and the girls slept in the pack n' play in the shade and I sat in a chair and just enjoyed our family of five.

Carter

Catie

The girls are starting to wear newborn size clothes, although Catie is swimming in them because of her short length. I think they are both somewhere between 6 and 7 pounds. I was excited to pull those newborn clothes out of the drawer because they have so many other options of clothes to wear and I don't have to do the laundry quite as much. Carter has been eating 3 ounces of Neosure for a while now, and I just started to give Catie 3 ounces today. She is somewhere between needing only 2 1/2 to 3 ounces still.

Although I am handling the girls fine on my own during the day, I have not mastered handling them with Will at the same time by myself. If Ellis is not home because of a meeting or a trip to Spartanburg, my parents come over to help me with Will. I don't know when I will be able to do it all on my own, particularly because the girls always eat some time during Will's nighttime routine. One day, I will figure it out though!