Biren and Kristen's Universe - Household

Week 33

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:37:00 -0600

Another week has gone by and we have made more progess on settling into the new house. It's been slower going since I started my new job this past week (which has been going pretty well so far). I've now replaced every bulb in the house that I can with energy saving bulbs. The only ones I haven't yet are the recessed lights in the great room. The reason I didn't yet is because the ones I bought are not dimmable and the lights in that room are all on dimmers. Since we use the dimming feature all the time at night when feeding the girls, I won't replace them until I can find decent dimmable energy bulbs.

Kris has discovered a whole bunch of fun critters that inhabit our neighborhood, and love to frolic on our lawn. Some of the critters the chipmunks even live in our lawn. Lately, Kris has been seeing a couple bunnies running around our lawn on a daily basis. She did her best to capture a few photos. She's also affectionately named the fella you see here, Thumper. The chipmunk that's always around is named Chip. Clever Kris... Clever...

Kathryn is doing really great with her mobility. She's still sooooooooo close to crawling. I think at times she frustrates herself that she's not able to crawl just yet. We can see it in her face, she really wants to do it but she just can't yet. She'll get there pretty darn soon. Karina is doing really well sitting up now too, and can sit on her own for pretty long stretches. Kathryn's biggest improvement this week, though, has been that she can now sit herself up - she now goes from semi-crawling, to laying down, to rolling over, to sitting herself up pretty easily. It's pretty neat to see her progress week to week. She's doing amazingly well. She continues to do her 'yoga moves' too.

Yesterday the girls tried pear for the first time and they LOVED it! Pear seems to be right up there with applesauce, which is apparently in a neck and neck race for favorite food. They also tried oatmeal cereal this week and did alright with that as well. It's no pear or applesauce, though

Friday night, we headed up to Hampton Beach (in New Hampshire for those that don't know) to hang out with Jen and Steve. Jen's family has a great house on the beach up there, and every year Jen has all her college friends up there for a weekend getaway. A few years ago, we made plans to go up for a weekend, just the four of us. Since then we've been going up there every year with Jen and Steve. It's great fun to just relax and get away from home for a weekend. A sort of mini-vacation. This year was, of course, the first weekend we made the trip with all our girls! Grace was there, and Karina and Kathryn came up with us. It's an old house and is not air-conditioned so we were slightly concerned about how the twins would handle the heat, but fortunately, it wasn't that bad Friday night and Saturday morning. The house is right off the water, so there's a great breeze that blows through the house, keeping it pretty cool inside. We only stayed till mid-afternoon on Saturday and then headed back home. The plan was to go to the beach with the girls for the first time, but by the time we all got our act together it started raining a little. We opted to just head home, but Jen, Steve, and Grace did go to the beach after we left for about a half hour, and Grace had herself a good time. Kris is having her annual college girls trip up to the house in a few weekends and she might take the girls up then... so they might still get into the water up there soon enough

Yesterday, we decided to have Grammy and Grampa come over since they will be headed to sunny Florida later this week and will be gone for a few weeks. The girls played with them and had a good time, and eventually got tired and went down for bed. When they finally went to bed, we had a nice dinner.

The weekend has completely flown by with our trip up to Hampton, working on the house, and Grammy/Grampa coming over. I can't believe I'm back to work already!

[Thumper Photos]
[Hampton Photos]
[Week 33 Photos]

Week 32

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:24:00 -0600

It's been an incredibly busy couple weeks, and lots has happened! As most of you now know, we moved¹ into our new house last weekend. A BIG thank you to Niral, Dave, Randy, Steve, and Grampa for their help! We are still in the process of unpacking and settling in, but for the most part we're doing very well. The girls adjusted easily to the new house, but the cats didn't do do so well. They took a little longer than expected to get used to the new house, especially Grady... but they're doing much better now, a week later.

My brother came down on Saturday (visiting from California) to help with the move, and my parents came down on Monday. All three of them stayed until Wednesday afternoon. While they were here, we got a LOT of things done around the house. My dad and brother were incredibly helpful in putting together the patio furniture and grill, changing various light fixtures in the house, unpacking (as was my mom for this one), etc, while my mom was more than happy to watch the girls. Once Wednesday afternoon rolled around, we were left to ourselves to continue unpacking.

We love our new house, but there are a few things we are still getting used to. For one, there are too many stairs to deal with. Most of our time is spent in what we've been calling the "great room". It's a large family room above the garage. To get to it, though, you have to go up 7 stairs. So whenever we want to go to a bedroom from the great room, we have to go down the stairs, then up a full flight of stairs. On top of that, the washer and dryer are in the finished basement, which adds to the number of stairs to go up and down. Traversing all these stairs all the time gets to be a pain. Ah well, we'll get used to it... and maybe lose a pound or two? We're also developing our green thumbs as we have a lot of beautiful plants and flowers that surround our house. My mom brought us five plants, and she showed me how to plant them and gave me tips on taking care of what we have (she's definitely got a green thumb!). I picked up a lot of tips from her, and hopefully I can keep the lawn and garden looking good.

Ok, enough with the house... on to the girls! The week before last they tried sweet peas for the first time. They weren't fans... especially Karina, she was NOT fond of the peas. She literally started gagging, eyes watering. Last week they tried applesause and they both seem to love it! So at this point they will eat the stage 1 sweet potatos, bananas and applesauce. It seems like they need to be in the right mood for it though, because Kris says sometimes one or both girls will push the food out with her tongue instead of eating it, while other times they eat really well.

Both girls are able to sit up on their own now, although Karina only lasts about 10 seconds until she leans over one way to reach for something and she topples over. Kathryn seems to do much better and can sit for minutes, playing with toys, reaching for them, etc. Kathryn is this close to crawling, which is pretty cool. She is constantly getting on all fours and trying hard to crawl. She's mastered every part of crawling, except for the part where you move your hands to get that forward motion. Instead what she generally does, is scooch her legs up and then lunges forward... usually face planting into the floor. She doesn't mind it though. She's constantly rolling around and moving via this half-baked crawling method, so much that her knees are always red. She's giving herself rug burns from moving around so much!! We are at the point where we need to seriously consider getting our baby gates installed (and purchased, for that matter). She is going to be correctly crawling in a week or two, I'd say. Until then, though, here's a video of our li'l Kathryn trying oh so hard to crawl...

Kathryn tries to crawl 2

Something else Kathryn started doing a week or two ago is grabbing her bottle when we're trying to feed her and just play with it. She'll take it with both hands, sometimes just one hand, look at it, make noises, and then she'll actually put the bottle in her mouth and drink from it! It's pretty cool... and cute... Here's a short video of her doing this...

Kathryn feeds herself

When the girls are playing with each other, if Kathryn gets too close to Karina's head, she will just grab her hair with both hands and just PULL! Kathryn just LOVES pulling hair. She actually did it to Karina earlier today and poor Karina started bawling. I'll put her up on my shoulders, and all she does is grab at my hair and keep pulling. I don't mind it as much, but when she grabs a fist-full of Karina's hair, it's not pretty. Karina, for obvious reasons, does NOT like it. Kathryn also pulled Grace's hair when Jen and Grace came by on Friday. We're going to have to keep a close eye on her. Karina pulls other people's hair (like Mommy and Daddy's) but not Kathryn's for some reason.

As you may know, I was off of work this whole week to work on the house and settling in. It's been an incredibly productive week, and it was nice being home all day every day, but it's back to work tomorrow. What a lot of you may not know is that I'm actually starting a new job tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about this new endeavor, and hopefully it's a rewarding experience in which I can learn a lot.

[Week 32 photos]
[Biren mowing the lawn photos]
[Jen & Grace visiting photos]

¹ There are a few new photos in the Big Move gallery I posted last week, courtesy of Randy. Thanks Randy, for the photos!

Week 31

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:42:42 -0600

Sorry for the late post folks. Unfortunately I haven't had time to type up this past week's happenings as we've been incredibly busy with the move and settling into our new house. To hold you over until next weekend, here are this past week's photos of the girls and photos of the move.

Week 30

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:54:00 -0600

Sorry for the late post this week, but Kris and I spent a lot of time working on the house over the weekend. I primed the nursery on Saturday and then we both put down the first coat of paint yesterday. We also spent a lot of time unpacking the kitchen boxes we've brought over. Kris spent some time cleaning as well. Things are coming along with the house, we've moved a lot of stuff over there, but we still feel like there's a lot left to do. We only have this week left before we move in on Sunday.

This past week, the girls "graduated" to a new diaper size! They're up to Pampers size 2 now. Another sure sign they're getting bigger and bigger! Another sure sign is their actual weights. The girls had another well-baby checkup this past Monday and Kathryn weighed a smidge under 15 lbs while Karina was about 14.5 lbs. The girls also got a shot at that visit, but because it was only one they did much better. I mean, they cried, but neither of them had a fever that night or the next day like they have in the past. This is proof enough for us that we should be spacing their vaccinations apart more so than pediatricians generally recommend them to be. They were slated to get a total of 3 shots this past visit, but we asked if we could space them apart since the girls (Kathryn more specifically) don't do so well with all those shots at once. So the girls will go back next month for the other vaccinations.

On Monday, Kris introduced the girls to sweet potato baby food! I think they liked it a lot better than the rice cereal. They're still getting rice cereal almost every day, but now they get to have something a little tastier. Friday, Kris tried out banana baby food, and they seemed to like that as well! So far, they're not showing any signs of being allergic to any of this, so that's really good. We'll keep introducing new foods to them every few days. Spacing it out like that allows us to narrow down any potential allerges if they start showing symptoms. Here's a video of Kathryn enjoying her bananas... more specifically, she's just smacking her lips a lot... I guess one might say those were some "lip smacking bananas"!

Kathryn smacking her lips

Last week, I mentioned Kathryn's teeth were coming in, but I failed to provide video of them like I did for Karina. So, to make up for that, here's a quick video of Kathryn's teeth!

Kathryn's first two teeth

Kathryn has been a jumping lunatic in her Jumperoo lately. She will literally jump non-stop in the Jumperoo for over an hour straight squealing with delight! She just can't get enough of jumping and bouncing... but jumping up and down like that for an hour will surely tire you out... So from time to time, she'll take a break and suck her thumb for a bit, but then it's right back to the jumping! Check out this video as Kathryn tuckers herself out from relentless jumping. This video was shot over the span of about 20-30 minutes, but I've edited it down to about a minute... and keep in mind that before I started taping, she had already been jumping for about 45 minutes!!

Kathryn in the Jumperoo

[Week 30 Photos]
[House photos]

Week 29

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:32:00 -0600

Things have been pretty crazy and busy around here lately as we begin moving things to the new house. Kris has been going over to clean and I've been going over to spackle holes and move boxes. We have been really lucky to have Kris' parents helping us too. Grammy has been helping with cleaning and organizing, and Grampa has done some spackling and A LOT of landscaping and lawncare for us. He knew that we would be focusing on the move and wanted to make sure that the outside looked nice - and it really does! The challenge for me will be to keep it looking as good as it does now! Thank you again Grammy and Grampa! Today, I mowed the lawn for the first time in my life! I think I did a pretty good job, and it only took me about an hour. I will say that I'm very thankful that I listened to the advice given to me by many different people... that advice being, whatever you do, get yourself a self-powered mower! With all the slopes I have to deal with, I'm glad I did. One important lesson I learned the hard way while mowing is that you shouldn't mow with your mouth open, because you'll end up swallowing mosquitos or other airbourne insects. It's quite disgusting.

In baby news, Kathryn is just a rolling lunatic. She'll just roll all over the place like a log. She is able to rollover from back to tummy and vice versa with such ease now. Karina, on the other hand only seems to roll over from back to tummy. She will lay there on her tummy for long periods of time, just looking around or playing. She has on occassion rolled over to her back, but it's quite infrequent. We have to watch Kathryn now, though, because she's quick - the next thing we know she's on the other side of the living room!

Both girls babble a lot now too, but Karina has more "formed" babbling, if that makes sense. Her babble sounds more like words than Kathryn's. Both girls like to squeal a lot too, it's very funny to listen to them. They also like to play with each other now, and definitely notice each other. Karina will stare at Kathryn pretty often as she's playing and if she sees Kathryn having fun, she'll get the biggest smile on her face. We've also seen them touching each other's hair, ears, face. It's pretty cute how much they seem to love each other. We have breathable bumpers on the cribs so they can't see each other in the mornings when they wake up in th enursery, but Kris will go in and pick up one of the girls and bring her over to the other crib, and both of them immediately light up with BIG smiles! I do have a video for you this week. It's one of Karina babbling. Kris was getting ready to give the girls their baby cereal a few days ago when Karina started making all sorts of funny noises, so Kris picked up the camcorder. As you'll hear it's babble that sounds like the word "dada". She kinda just repeats "dah dah dah dah" a LOT. At one point in the video, I swear she says daddy! Take a watch and see if you agree...

Karina says "dada" and plays with her feet

Yesterday, we went up to Maine for my friend Brian's wedding. It was a beautiful location on a beautiful day. They had the wedding (ceremony and reception) outdoors at Grey Stone Manor in Cape Neddick, Maine. The views and house were just amazing. Grammy and Grampa watched the girls while we enjoyed ourselves at the wedding and they said that the they girls were really great the whole time! Kris and I have been dragging all day today because we're just not used to late nights out anymore.

[Week 29 Photos]

Our self-decorating Christmas Tree

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:48:00 -0700

We realize people generally don't put up their Christmas trees until after Thanksgiving, but given that it's a real possibility that Kris could go into labor at any time between now and December 3rd, we thought we would get our Christmas tree up now, so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. Given Kris' condition, and my laziness, we also decided to let our tree decorate itself this year... check it out!

34 Weeks

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:47:00 -0700

We had an ultrasound appointment this past Friday, and everything is looking great! Mulva is weighing in at 2000 grams (4 lbs 6.4 oz), while Dolores is at 2200 grams (4 lbs 13.6 oz). I decided not to post any of the ultrasounds we received, because they didn't really come out that great.

The doctor has told us that the goal is to deliver at 38 weeks. A lot of times if you go into labor too early, the doctors will give you drugs to stop it, but we're now at the point where if Kris goes into labor, those twins are comin' out!! Although we're aiming for 38 weeks, they could come at any time between now and then, but no later. If Kris still hasn't gone into labor by 38 weeks, she will be induced. So basically, that means by early December, the girls will definitely be adding to the population of Massachussetts!

Ideally, the girls would be delivered at 38 weeks, and not any sooner.

In preparation news, we've pretty much finalized the nursery and just today, I got the car seats installed in the minivan. It's been highly recommended to have your car seat installation reviewed by someone authorized to do so. In most communities, it's either your local fire department or police department. In our case, it's the police, so we will drive the minivan over to them sometime very soon and have them look it over and make sure it was done properly.

Kris continues to hang in there with her discomfort. Sleep is becoming more and more difficult to achieve at nights, and my increased snoring is not helping. Apparently, I now snore at levels so high, that even Kris' earplugs provide little help. I did go to an ENT doctor recently to get checked out, and I'm currently scheduled for a sleep study in February. The sleep study will determine if I have sleep apnea, or something else. Sleep study results take approximately 4 weeks to analyze and get back to the doctor, so I won't be seeing my ENT doctor again until about March. So Kris will have to somehow endure my snoring for a few more months, unfortunately. I feel completely horrible about my snoring, and wish there was something I could do, but everything I've tried so far hasn't really helped. :-/

Anyway, that's the news for now in the Shah household.

Holy batteries!

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:23:00 -0600

This past weekend, I purchased about $140 in batteries. It's quite ludicrous, the number of batteries baby equipment/toys take. Swings, crib mobiles, toys, vibrators for bouncy seats, etc. You name it, it takes a battery for something. Because of this, Kris and I decided we should probably pay some extra money up front, and get rechargeables. We should make back our money pretty quickly.

I got 10 D batteries, 20 AA batteries, and 15 AAA batteries, and a charger to charge 'em all up. If I put these batteries in everything we currently have that uses batteries, I think I will have 1 AA battery left over.

Insane.

Baby furniture

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:35:00 -0600

Our new nursery furniture arrived today! Here are a few pictures so you can see what we got. We have a crib and the changing table on one side of the room, with another crib and dresser on the other side. There's a nice big window in the middle wall rounding out the room. Although the room looks pretty bare right now, rest assured Kris has some big plans on decorating it very soon. It'll look like a real cozy li'l nursery in no time! As soon as that happens, I'll take some more pics and post 'em.

26 weeks and updates

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:53:00 -0600

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, so I thought I'd throw up some updates... It's comin' up on about 26 weeks in a couple days. Kris' belly continues to grow a li'l bigger every week. The biggest news, really, is that we've gotten to the point (finally!!) where I can feel the kicks from the outside! It kinda feels like Kris is hiccupping such that only her belly moves. You can see her belly move a little when they're real antsy in there. It's nothing like the picture (although I wish!) , but it's pretty neat nonetheless!

In household news, we went to the Baby Furniture Warehouse and settled on our nursery furniture. It will be delivered on Monday, and I can't wait to get it in and set up. Once it's all in there, I'll feel that much closer to the big day.

This Saturday Kris and I, along with our friends Jen and Steve, will be taking a child safety and CPR class. It was a recommended thing to do by many resources, and certainly makes sense to do.

Over this past long weekend, we took the opportunity to go minivan shopping. Yes, it looks like your ol' pals Biren and Kris will be driving a minivan soon. We didn't end up buying one, but we might be close to owning one in a week or so. While at the dealership, they didn't really have one with the features we wanted. However, yesterday, I got a phone call from one of the sales guys we talked to about the particular model we were interested in. He said that there was one coming in to the lot next Friday. We've put a deposit down on it to hold it for us, and if we like it after checking it out in person, we'll buy it! Which one am I talking about? Why, the Honda Odyssey, of course! From all the research I've done, it appears to be the top rated minivan for safety among other things. Getting a minivan is definitely the practical thing for us to do, but feel free to let your minivan jokes pour in. I'm fully expecting it anyway... Jerks...

Finally, next Friday we will be going in for another round of ultrasounds. I'm hoping to hear that things look fantastic inside that big ol' belly of Kris' and hopefully we'll get some good ultrasound photos for me to post.

That's it for now... insert all minivan jokes in the comments section, and keep it clean folks... that's all I ask

Nothin' much...just movin'

nospam@example.com (Biren) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:31:00 -0600

Not much going in bean-related news lately... Kris is fattening up real good, though. She kinda "popped" this past week. The beans were probably feeling cramped in there, and decided to make some room... Wish I could just make my home bigger by simply stretching it out... but since I can't, we're moving...

We've been packing all week, as we prepare to move this Friday. I'd forgotten how much moving sucks. Really, it's only the packing part that we've gotten to so far in the entire move process, but I know more pains are in store for us. What really stinks is that we're going to be doing this twice in one month. Yes twice...

We went to look at apartments in a brand new rental community... so brand new, that they're not even done constructing all the buildings... which is the reason for our dual-move. The floor-plan we really liked wasn't going to be available until mid-August as they put the finishing touches on the building it's in. We liked it so much, that we decided to put up with the hassle of moving twice¹. We figured, we're going to be living there for at least a year, maybe two, so we might as well live in the apartment we're most comfortable with. It will be worth the hassle, but I'm sure we'll curse the whole situation until the day we're settled into our final apartment come mid-August.

The good thing, however, is that the rental community is having a deal where the first month is free, so the "temp apartment" is basically free.

¹ Why don't we just move in mid-August, you might ask? Because we have to close on the sale of our condo on Monday. If we wanted to be homeless for a month, we could have skipped the temporary apartment all together, instead opting for a comfortable ATM vestibule in Quincy Center until mid-August rolled around.