Day One

Today was my first real day alone with the kids.

9:00am: Feeling pretty confident about how things are going. Even had showered by this point. (Did I mention Ryan left at 8:50am and Cash didn't wake up until 9:30am?)

11:00am: Every piece of clothing on my person is covered in spitup. Considering saran wrapping the entire couch. Possibly me.

12:00pm: Woman shows up to do moving estimate. Go back and forth holding one crying baby, then the other. Then back to the first one....

1:00pm: Woman looks really relieved to be leaving our house. I go find chocolate.

1:30pm: Chocolate is finished. Go hunt for more chocolate.

3:00pm: Feel like I may actually get a chance to lay down! Get in bed.

3:01pm: Landlady calls.

3:05pm: Lay back down.

3:06pm: Cash wakes up. Nap time over.

4:00pm: Talk to Ryan for the 4th time. Tell him he better bring home dinner.

5:00pm: Ryan comes home. I realize I'm going to need to invest in more chocolate.

Housewife

It was that or the PGA tour
I tried to call Ryan
If he had answered perhaps he could have stopped me
But I got sucked in
By
The Infomercial

Man I need cable

I sort of feel like it was a milestone though
Like I am now offically a housewife

Maybe when I have sweet abs
He won't be making fun of me anymore

Is this funny to anyone else?

So after the last time when we realized how much we actually detest moving ourselves, we've been trying to get some quotes from movers. The first guy that came was from a well-known national chain. He took an hour and a half, went through the house putting everything into his little computer, talked to us very thoroughly about how they work, what to expect, etc., and then pulled out his printer and printed up a very detailed estimate.

The second people that came to give us an estimate walked in, said, "Whatcha got?" They looked through the house for two minutes max, gave us an estimate with about a $1400 range (why even bother coming to the house with a range like that?), told us some random stories about who knows what, and left us this business card:

This is funny to me on so many levels! What's with the "Strong like bull"? First of all, why is it in quotations? Is this a common phrase I just am not familiar with? To me it just makes it sound like you don't speak english very well. Second of all, the whole large Polish boys part. They really were large, and they really were Polish - but what a crack up! Anyway, Ryan and I just got a kick out of this business card!

One month old now

Mr. Right

If I'm being brutally honest, I'll admit that we really don't love the newborn stage. We sort of see it as something to get through. I know, that's probably terrible and may elicit gasps from all of you baby lovers, but it's just the way we feel. Maybe it's because we are serious sleepers around here. We LOVE sleeping. We LOVE that our toddler goes to bed at 8pm and sleeps until 8 or 9am without interruption and then takes a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day. We would gladly be asleep that whole time with him.

Having said that, if you feel bad for me and all my issues dealing with newborn twins right now, the one you really should feel bad for is Ryan. Seriously. In the first place, I'm not the superwoman like many of you. I don't do all the child care single-handedly. I'm just not that capable. I know some women take care of everything, including all night-time stuff with the babies from day 1. Pretty much, when Ryan is off work, or home without studying or other things he has to do, we split it 50/50. Currently he's taking far more than his share. He did, however remind me that once we're in Miami and he's doing his ophthalmology residency - it will be a totally different story.

But honestly, he is currently doing everything right. Don't get me wrong, he's always been very helpful - when he's asked. It's usually something like this around here -

"Ryan will you do some laundry?"
Hours later: "Ryan, will you change the laundry?"
Hours later: "Ryan, will you bring up the clean laundry?"
Days later: "Ryan, will you fold the clean laundry that is spread out all over our living room?"
Even more days later: "Ryan, will you put away the folded laundry that is sitting in piles all over the living room?"

So I've been in total shock that he's just doing everything right now. No nagging, no asking. I woke up from a nap yesterday to find neatly folded piles of laundry stacked on the couch. I haven't had to ask him to take out the garbage for weeks. He actually picks up the house spontaneously. He always gives Cash a bath and gets him ready for bed. He takes one of the night feedings with the babies. He changes diapers. LOTS of them. He even offers to give me backrubs once in a while.

WHERE DID MR. PERFECT HUSBAND COME FROM AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY RYAN?!?!?!?

Actually, nevermind. I'll keep whoever this guy is.

Booties

Look how lucky my boys are! My friend LuAnn made these booties for them. I took the picture from her website since I haven't been taking many photos lately, but I wanted to show them off!

Happy Easter

We are so lame at celebrating holidays. I see all these friends with cute ideas on their blogs of fun things they've done to celebrate the holidays with their kids, and we're just not that way. I realize it's probably my job as the wife, but Ryan doesn't really care either and doesn't think we need to bother celebrating until our kids understand what's going on. Luckily we had some neighbors bring over some Easter candy today so at least there was some sort of celebration. And we watched a church movie (good idea Mandy, since we didn't go to church). The real celebration will come tomorrow when we'll walk down to the corner Walgreen's and buy all the Easter candy on sale. That's our favorite thing to do. So we're usually celbrating one holiday behind everyone else.

If you don't feel like hearing about babies and stuff, maybe check back in a few months

I'm becoming a little lax in my posting. Seriously, who wants to hear about post-pregnancy and all my woes over and over since I have nothing more interesting to talk about? Except the fact that when you're sitting around nursing all day and all you have is whatever channels come in on the rabbit-eared television make you realize there can be some really LAME stuff on tv. Oh how nice cable sounds right now.

Can I say how lame the news is in Milwaukee?? Seriously, the headline story for weeks has been the potholes in Milwaukee. It was the headline when my mom was here and we laughed about it. Then it was the headline when my sister was here and we laughed about it. And it is still the headline today. Although some soap opera was cancelled so they could keep covering the current snowstorm that they'd already been covering all day. Seriously gripping coverage. "Look how much snow is on this parked car. Can you pan down to my feet? See how much snow is covering my feet?" I am not even kidding. Since I had no hands free, I had to keep yelling for Ryan to come put me out of my misery and turn the stupid thing off.

Speaking of nursing, in case anyone wonders, I have finally started trying to nurse them simultaneously. Yes, the first time I tried my sister took a picture with her cell phone because it looked so funny. I was dying that she took a picture, but she insisted I had to see what I looked like. I made her erase the picture before who knows what could happen with it -especially since Ryan kept insisting there must be a market for that somewhere on the internet. Hopefully we'll get better at this feeding. When I don't feed them together, feeding time takes about an hour and a half total. It stinks, but it's at least manageable when there's someone else around, but what do I do with my toddler yanking at me all the time when I'm by myself? Seriously, I am so terrified to be by myself with the three of them. Luckily we've had help most the time - my mom came for almost two weeks, then one sister came for a week. Ryan now has almost two weeks off, then another sister comes - and then I freak out. I almost cried when my sister left this week. It's hard enough with three people around.

I'm debating about church, even though I know it's Easter and all this Sunday - one of two holidays when even not very religious people go to church. Cash and Ryan and I all went last week and left my sister home with the twins. My other sister warned me not to go to church. We should have listened. All three of us are now sick. Ugh. On top of everything else. Like the fact that I found out I have a couple of herniated discs in my back. Really bad timing. I guess it looks like one of them is old and one is more of a fresh injury. So I'm going to physical therapy (in all my spare time??) and I got some injections today and hopefully they will help, but it's not like a herniated disc really goes away. In fact it only gets worse. And the first thing the orthopedist said when he came in the room was, "You have some pretty bad arthritis for someone your age." See, any of you who have heard me say I live in a 60 year-old body - I really was totally serious.

The placenta report came back and it looks like they're identical twins. Like I said, sometimes they still look pretty different to me, but I guess there are too many similarities for them not to be identical.


Cash is doing a little better. He finally seems to like me a little bit again now. I don't know what we'll do when Ryan is gone again though. He's definitely a daddy's boy now but I guess it's a good time for him to be like that.

Ryan's new obsession is finding a place to live in Miami now. (Remember that he must always have some obsession?) Anyone know anything about that place? We are ALL going to find a place there the end of April - yes, all 5 of us. Ryan said he could just go and find a place, but I said I was actually the picky one about this place, so if anyone just went, it should be me. Only I can't because I'm nursing two babies, and so they have to come with me, and if they have to come, I have to have another lap to take them on the plane, in which case that just leaves Cash, so I guess we're all going. Let's hope we get lucky and find something with many bedrooms for cheaper than it looks like it will be. Yes, Miami is another very expensive place to live. Besides the fact that it was also recently voted the rudest city in the U.S. Worse than NY? Can't imagine.






Thanks again to my mom and sister who saved my sanity by being here and letting me get some sleep!

It's me, not you

So lest anyone think I have hard children, I should say the problem is not them - it's me. Seriously, do they look like trouble makers?

Really, thank heavens these babies have been so good so far. They eat, look around, and sleep, and only fuss for a few hours between about 10pm and 1am - which I expected since they were like that in the womb too. As I was starting to blow dry my hair today I was thinking how nice it is to have babies who actually sleep for a few hours at at time. With Cash I knew I had exactly a half hour to do anything before he was awake again. Anyhow, they are wonderful and the two of them together are easier than Cash was, although I realize they've only just reached when they would have been full term and they'll probably wake up and be fussier soon enough.

In the meantime, I don't know why I'm such a mess. It's probably not a good sign when the high point of your recovery was while you were still in the hospital. I am just not destined to have good recoveries. Let's just say by the end of this week I will have been to the chiropractor 3 times, an orthopedist, my OB (couldn't wait until the 6 week checkup), the pediatrician (for two week baby checkups), and will have had x-rays, an MRI and two different types of cultures performed on me. Ugh.

To stay positive, however, I did think of a few more things we did right. Like the fact that I started pumping after each feeding from the very beginning - I feel much more confident about my milk supply this time. (Plus I do it in front of the computer so I'm assured my coveted personal time at the computer! You all wonder how I have the time to blog :) Also, the week before I had the babies, I had ordered some new clothes from Old Navy - comfy clothes to wear around the house that would be flattering on the post-baby bod, but ones that were still cute if people showed up at the house. When I got home from the hospital, the package was waiting for me. It was so nice to have new clothes and not feel like I still had to be wearing my maternity clothes.

As for my experiment this time - I swear the reason why the actual popping out of the babies is pretty easy for me is because the phrase "child bearing hips" was coined for people just like me. I swear my hips open WIDE up to let those babies out. Therefore, pants I wear into the hospital 9 months pregnant can't even get over my hips on the way out. So I figure while my body is still going back to normal, I'll try wearing some serious hip-sucking spandex for a few hours a day and see if I can get back into my normal clothes anytime soon. I'll let you know how it goes.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

That is all I have to say about yesterday.

Doing alright

Well, it's going pretty well here. Perhaps as good as I had hoped for. I think the first night home was just a fluke, and maybe they were just uncomfortable from their circumcisions because they've been better since then. Still better sleepers during the day probably, but not as nuts as Cash was.





Phoenix (left); Ashton (right)

And I've done a few things right, like sending them out of our room (where their crib is since we only have 2 bedrooms) after that first night so they only keep one person awake (namely my mom, downstairs in the living room - thanks mom!) instead of two. Also, my other good move is sleeping through one of the night feedings while somebody else feeds them so I actually have managed a few 5 hour stretches of sleep. And last night it was close to 6 hours I think. I'm not sure at what point you can let them sleep longer at night without waking them to eat, but we're about at that point where we'd welcome it, so last night they slept 4 or 5 hours straight. Oh yeah, and the other thing we did right was hide the train set Cash got for Christmas until the day we brought the twins home. That's been a lifesaver.


As for Cash's reaction - well this picture pretty much sums it up. "Um, what are these, and can you get them out of my way so I can watch tv?"

He's been a bit out of sorts, and I've had a hard time feeling so neglectful and sort of missing the days when I just had one child and could be such a doting and attentive mother, but overall he's doing pretty well. And it is cute to see him peeking in over the pack 'n play to make sure where they are once in a while.














Ashton (left) Phoenix (right)
As for the twin thing - I guess they send the placenta to the lab and that's supposed to give them some sort of idea if they are identical or not, but we haven't heard back about that yet. I think I mentioned the doctor said there were some things that made them seem very identical, but it's hard to tell sometimes since there heads are shaped differently. But based on what it looked like in the ultrasounds - one placenta with one big sac and two smaller ones, and the fact that there are enough similarities that we still think they're probably identical. The only real other way to tell is genetic testing. When I look at pictures, it's sometimes quite easy to tell them apart, but when they're all bundled up with hats on, we have a hard time. I must say we refer to them as "this one" and "that one" quite often so as not to have to use the brain power to identify them. And sometimes the same one gets their diaper changed twice instead of them both getting changed once. Ryan was pretty adamant that we put a dot of nail polish on one of them in case their heads changed overnight, so we did that. But then he decided to paint the other ones toes. So then the next day, of course I couldn't remember who had the toes and who had the fingernail.

I don't know if you remember my coveted crib bedding:










but I used that as the inspiration and begged my mom to make something comparable. I LOVE the results!! I would wait until we had them in their own cutely decorated matching room to display them, especially since this picture doesn't do it justice, but I have to put it on here so you can see her work because it's just too great. And saved me $600. The one for the other crib is the same fabrics but a little bit reversed. Love it mom! Thank you!


















As for having a great recovery, well, I probably spoke too soon.