Getting ready for Christmas

Well, it has been a while since I have written or posted a video. I plan to post a video soon. Well, I had planned on doing that a month ago but just haven't had time. The main thing sucking up my time has been the calendar we made earlier this month. We are selling it for 20 dollars as a fundraiser and it is pretty great...if you like babies. Anyway, you can read more about it on our website at wilkinsonquints.org/calendar.html.
Here are some pictures from it:

January	February	March
April	May	June
July	August	September
October	November	December

Something interesting things have happened recently. Last week, Rachelle went and ran the Trail of Lights 5K near Downtown Austin. That was fun and I think next year we will ALL run it. That should be quite a spectacle. I was really proud that she could be running a 3 mile race four months after giving birth to quintuplets.

Also, we have had a bunch of people over. First, Candice, the doctor who delivered the babies, came to visit for a few days and helped us all get a little fatter. Next, my aunt Victoria came to visit and that was helpful. While she was here, we got to go see Enchanted which I can definitely recommend.

We also got to go to the little ceremony where Riley got his award for his video. He was the first student in school history to submit a video which was fun.

As I am writing this post, we are doing the sleep training. There are a bunch of books out there about how to teach your kids to sleep through the night and I think Rachelle has read all of them. I am not sure of the name of the method we use but it basically starts with creating a routine that you follow very strictlyeach night when you put them to bed. The idea is that they will start to recognize that it is time to go to bed and get sleepy. Our particular routine consists of feeding them at 7:00, taking off their clothes for a little diaper only time, changing the diaper, rubbing them down with lotion, putting their pajamas on and wrapping them up. Up until tonight, we would kind of bounce them and rock them until they went to sleep and then put them in their cribs. We have been doing this routine for the past few weeks now but tonight was Day 1 of the hardest part. In this phase, we do the routine except after we bundle them up and make sure they are calm (but not asleep) we go and put them in their beds. The result, as you might expect, is that they eventually began to cry. After you put them down, you go in after 5 minutes and give them a little pat (but don't pick them up) and then leave again. You next wait 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, etc... Eventually, they will fall asleep...in theory. Right now, It has been about an hour and a half and one of them, Ryder, is steadfastly refusing to sleep. The others, however, have all given in and are currently sleeping through Ryder's loud crying.

Lest anyone think we are mean, there are two primary reasons why sleep training is important. First, the babies need to learn how to fall asleep on their own. We did the same training with Riley and Kaiya and were able to avoid a lot of the sleep problems I had heard about from other parents. One of the biggest problems with getting kids to sleep through the night is that most of them wake up naturally multiple times during the night and don't know how to get themselves back to sleep without help. When they learn how to fall asleep on their own, they can wake up in the middle of the night and then go back to sleep without help which means they will tend to get more needed rest.

The second reason that babies need training is for the sanity of the parents. Parents need to be able to put the babies in bed and have some parent time.

Now, I definitely have to say that it isn't very fun. When we first put them down, it was an amazing chorus of crying that simultaneously made me laugh and cry. I wanted to laugh because it was just so comical to hear that many crying babies all at once and wanted to cry because it is a bit sad to hear that many crying babies all at once. Anyway, we will make it through this and pretty soon, we will be able to just put them down at 8:00 and have time to do all kinds of stuff... like catch up on making more videos.