16 months 24 days

After 4.5 hours of sleep I got up to make their breakfast. We sat down to feed them, and before we were done, the doorbell rang. It was Christine, the Caritas helper that we can have for a few weeks out of every year, as needed, and it's a paid service. Christine has become a friend, and it's so great to have her back for the next few weeks, for a few hours each, two to three days per week.

She sat down and helped feed them their breakfast. She was there right in the beginning, when they came home from the hospital, and I believe they remember her, or at least her voice. It didn't take them long to warm up to her again. Even Sammy had no problem being held and interacting with her, which is huge and rare.

After breakfast, everyone went downstairs and the three of them had Christine to themselves to play with her. As for me, I went to bed, and had about two more hours of sleep, which brought my total today to 6.5 hours, which is not enough. It was very hard getting up at 11:10, when my alarm rang, to cook lunch.

The boys had gone to bed at 10:30, while Christine was playing with Tammy downstairs, and Randy was upstairs, so I got him to help me cut some vegetables. I made lentil-tomato-carrot soup with Quinoa. As noon was approaching, the boys woke up, and everyone was hungry, but it wasn't ready until 12:15 pm.

Then we sat down to eat. I had mixed a baby food jar of potatoes and carrots into the soup, which made it less liquid and more creamy, and they all really liked the soup. Of course there had to be dessert of banana and snacks.

Then everyone went downstairs to play but Tammy. It was her time to sleep. The past two days she had surprised me and fallen asleep in her bed, so once again I put her into her bed, which she didn't like, and walked away to clean up the kitchen. She was crying for a while, but then got quiet and fell asleep. Yeah, that's the third day in a row! I was so excited I had some free time and was weighing up whether to lie down and sleep or go downstairs and work. I decided to get some work done.

Christine was playing with Sammy and Emmy when I got downstairs, while I turned the computer on and continued working on the newsletter. I got some work done, but not much. I ended up talking with Christine, and Emmy was getting more and more tired. So much so that I finally decided to already put him to bed, even though it was only 1:30 pm. By the way, Randy was at the grocery store, taking advantage of Christine being here.

I put Emmy to bed, and he did not protest whatsoever. His sister was fast asleep right next to him. Then I got Sammy and put him to bed, and Emmy was still quiet. I went back downstairs to work, where Christine was putting their toys away. After a while of hearing Emmy talk, he started crying. Randy always gives them milk when they're not falling asleep, so I decided to do just that. He gladly took the milk, however, he continued talking rather than going to sleep. And so he never fell asleep, but talked to himself for a whole hour. Then I decided to go get him and bring him back downstairs to play. Every time somebody walks by outside, he points at them, and today he was saying his word for sheep quite a few times.

It wasn't long before the other two woke up as well, and Randy had also returned, but Christine had to leave us at that point. So we went upstairs, and they all had their afternoon meal at 3 pm. Tammy had slept about 2 hours, so really long, and she was not ready to sit in her chair but insisted on sitting on my lap. They ate their cereal and fruit jars, but I also had to get some banana, grated apple and snacks. Then we went back downstairs to play.

It wasn't long before I got the motorcycle with the long handle back out that they had loved so much yesterday, and that's when my exercise class started. Both Emmy and Tammy got strapped in, and off I went pushing them in circles. Today Tammy was the one enjoying it more than her brother. We had lots of fun.

Emmy had never slept in the afternoon, so he was getting tired after a while, and I left just before 5 pm to go get their dinner ready. They were so cranky, that Randy already came upstairs with them all 15 minutes later, which was 15 minutes too early. I was not done yet, but they enjoy roaming around upstairs and pulling everything off the shelves.

At 5:30 we started eating, and they ate well, before going into the bathtub. They had lots of fun, and when they came out, I weighed them all, as we do on Mondays. They've been eating a lot, and so they had the biggest weight gain ever in just one week. Sammy gained nearly one kilo, and he only was 7 kilos before, so that's a huge percentage of body weight! They're trying to catch up after not gaining weight in Mali!

Emmy was asleep really fast, right after drinking his milk. Sammy did some talking for a while after his milk and then fell asleep, but Tammy cried for a while after I walked away, and I had to come back and stay until she fell asleep. She now actually has a molar breaking through on the other three sides where she hadn't had one yet!

Then I did the necessary housework, grabbed something to eat, and got started on office work. It's midnight now, and I'm really tired, so I'm tossing up whether to go to bed or work. I really need to get that newsletter finished!

Today Tammy was in the double digits, weighing 10.3 kilos (+700 grams in one week), Emmy 9.4 (+700) and Sammy 8.1 (+900).