Doing the Math behind our family

I get asked a lot of math questions about our life. How many diapers? How much laundry? I thought I would break it down for you so get out our pencils and paper, fire up the calculator and the slide rule, and here we go.

Laundry 18 loads per week
· 1 load of whites daily = 7 loads of whites (we use a lot of raggies)
· A load of colors every other day = 4
· Towels and washcloths 2 wash clothes daily for me and the 4 little boys= 8 washcloths * 7 days=56 washcloths plus 4 Thor towels 6 little boy towels 5 Mommy/dad towels = 15 towels = 2 loads of towels
· We wear a lot of red= 1 load of reds and red tinted clothes a week
· Sunday = 1 extra load of whites + 1 load of jeans + 1 extra load of colors
· Plus 1 load of someone's sheets per week
· Plus 1 load of someone had an accident and all their stuff goes in by itself

*Dave doesn't generate very many washcloths. I have yet to figure out why.

7+4+2+1+1+1+1+1=18

Now if we have an extra blowout, Scooter/Bettina laundry, bath mats, special wash instructions, etc. that all is in addition to the 18 loads.

Diapers 1632 and counting
That is just for the little boys.
· 1632/102 days (the boys are 102 days old)= 16 diapers a day or 8 per twin. I am basing the 1632 on the total number of diaper boxes that we have emptied since bringing them home from the hospital.
Now Thor goes through about 7 a day.
· 1 first thing in the morning
· 1 mid morning
· 1 after lunch
· 1 after nap
· 1 right before he comes home from day car or about 4pm on the weekends
· 1 in the evening
· 1 special night time diaper before bed.
So we are changing 23-24 diapers a day.

Dishes
Aarrrgghhh, the bane of my existence. Why is it that plastic does not dry in the dish washer?!
Between bottles, sippy cups, pumping supplies, Rubbermaid pitchers that we mix stuff up in we do a load of plastics just about every day. Add regular dishes on to that, drying all the plastic and the pots and pans that must be hand washed and I am starting to feel like I live in front of the sink.

Count 8 loads of dishes per week.

And finally sleep.

Bedtime is at 8:30 for the boys. If we start at 8 o'clock getting everyone ready and through the tub and in jammies, and read to and rocked and one last feeding or cup of milk and it is 9:15-9:20 by the time everyone is tucked in.

Then there are dishes and laundry to fold and toys to pick up and work to get ready for the next day. I go to bed as early as midnight and as late as 1:10.

Wolf gets up at 4:30 like clock work to get something to eat. (he is always the first one down.
If I get to go back to sleep after nursing him, my alarm goes off at 5:30. Tyr usually gets up around 6 and I leave for work at 6:45.

So I get a minimum of 3 hours and 20 minutes of sleep and a max of 5.

What ever the numbers there are three big reasons why it's worth it.

Four Auk-del

That is how it comes out when you are 2. Thor is learning that he is more than just Thor. We are working in the car on saying our WHOLE name. IT is interesting what he thinks his name is, as he goes by many aliases:

Boogie
Boogieman
Baby Butt Baier (we like the alteration, he, as do all my boys, clearly has a Holst butt. But that is another entry.)
Hang Low Holst (only when the diaper is full)
Silly Boy

When the earthquake hit Haiti I started worrying about if Thor could tell a stranger his name, you know, in case a earthquake ever hit South Central Iowa. I realized that when asked his name he would give me a different answer each time. Mostly Boogie, as that is what I call him most often. (I know, only in the south can we refer to our children as Boogers and mean it as a term of endearment) So we started working on it.

So far, if he is ever lost he can clearly say with out any 2 year old gibberish:

Boogie
Baby Butt Baier
Silly Boy

That should help a police officer if he ever got lost.

So now when asked what is his name he clearly and loudly states:

Four Auk-del

That should definitely help anyone should there be an emergency.

This week we will work on adding Baier.

Something to Make You Smile

Haven't gotten a chance to update the picture site recently, so this have to tide you over.

Can You Hear Me Now

If you have been reading this a while, you know that when the twins were born Wolf didn't pass his hearing test in his left ear. How disheartening it is to have your new babies rolled into your room and one has the little card taped to the side of his crib that says I passed my hearing test and the other one has nothing. Wolf had passed in his right ear but not his left. He also has a skin tag on his right ear and since your kidneys and your ears develop simultaneously he had to have an ultrasound ran on his kidneys to make sure that they were functioning properly. They were.

But back to the ears...

I took Wolf back to the audiologist when he was 2 weeks old. He failed in his left ear again but when they ran a secondary test he passed it the second time 3/4 of the way through. The audiologist was please. I was not. Incidentally he passed in his right a second time when they did a base line.

The pediatrician suggested we see a specialist just to confirm, so Thursday that is what we did. They wanted to wait until he was three months old. He failed the test they gave him that was similar to the one in the hospital as well as every other test they gave him. There was no fluid in his ear. And just to be sure they did a base line in his right ear, and he failed it too. We go back in 2 months, should he fail again they will do a test in which they sedate him so that they can quantify the hearing loss and prepare him for hearing aids. Dave and I are terribly worried and there isn't a thing in the world that we can do. We feel confident that he can hear but to what degree we don't know. He smiles and he coos and reacts to noise. There is a chance that it can all be good and that when being tested his little ear drums are just collapsing as they can with preemies and twins.

Please keep little Wolfie in your prayers as we move forward on this. I, like every mother, want only the best for him and for him to have every advantage in life. Including hearing.