On the bright side

Ok. Sorry to leave on such a negative vibe all week. I seriously was going to write something positive and then my mouse died and it all got too complicated. So now I'll write something positive, like it's after 10pm and my husband still isn't home and it's not even a call night. Oh wait, let me try again.

How about these guys in their new house:



You can totally tell it's a new house huh? Nope. Same couch and same signature quilt that my mom made. But that makes it officially home! It's funny when you move to a nice new place and then bring in your furniture that you got off the street and realize, oh yeah, same old junk, different surroundings. Just kidding, it really does look much nicer in here.

Here's something else positive:

My cousin Mike and his wife Heather, who are so nice to act like an hour drive isn't a big deal! THEY'RE THE ONLY FAMILY I HAVE FOR ABOUT 15 STATES!! So thank heavens that there's at least some family. They even came down and helped out last weekend when Ryan was on call. And Cash has a new buddy in Mike. Not a day goes by that Cash doesn't go through the roll call of my whole family: Julie? Carter? Dawson? Zac? Lacey? ......... basically, ANYBODY!!?!?! Please?!? The other day he finally brought me his shoes, as if to say, "Seriously, I've got to get out of this place."

And he needs some male influence. I keep saying I need a manny (male nanny), because here's his latest thing:

(and it really doesn't help that he's making this slightly gay face), but if you look closely, you can see he's really taken to wearing my earrings. Like every morning when I get ready, he goes and puts them on. And you should have seen him doing pedicures with me last week....

So I really do love our apartment and the area we're in (for about one block on either side before you fear for your life). It really is perfect. With the little time that the twins are content inbetween naps and stuff, we can go take a walk around the pool (yeah, can't get in it because how the heck do I do that with three kids? But at least we can see other people having fun in it and imagine how nice it would be in the 95 degree weather with 90% humidity). There's also a little gated garden down there with a couple of fountains in it too. Going downstairs to get the mail or get packages is also enough of an outing to get out of the house. And then there's the park right outside our building, right along the water. Granted, it's still too dang hot to go out there in the middle of the day, but we've gone out a couple times in the evening. With the poky little two year-old walking though, it takes forever to get over to the playground and back, so often all three of them have lost it by the time we get home. I really am thinking of getting a triple stroller - the double with a sit 'n stand in back. But we get to walk around and hear all the little ladies in their squawking at the babies in their espanol accent "Ahhh! Tweens! Cheep cheep cheep!" (Ok, I have no idea what they're saying, but they just sound like little birds to me.) I always feel so bad when I get home though and take the babies out of the stroller and they're just little balls of sweat.

Also, the ward has SO many young families. I really can't believe it. In fact it's a little overwhelming almost. The first time we went to playgroup there was seriously like 30 little kids running around. With shy little Cash and already crazy mom me trying to take care of just my kids I was almost a little scared off. But it's great to have so many people. I wish the ward wasn't so spread out as a lot of them are about a good 30 minutes away, but it's definitely exciting that there's so many. And they don't mess around about getting together. They meet twice a week for playgroup and it's seriously an all-day affair. They meet at 9am and go jogging until 10:30 or 11am. (I opt out of that part. Um, you want me to deliberately try to sweat in this weather????) Then they go to someone's house for playing and everyone makes lunch together and then someone will even do activities for the kids and stuff. All I know is I've left at 2pm before and the activities were just getting going. Wow. And this week it was playgroup Tuesday, a going away party for one of the girls that night, a baby shower Wednesday and there will be playgroup again on Friday. PHEW!! Uh, yeah sorry people who used to be in playgroup when I was in charge. I didn't have nearly the stamina these women do. So anyway, at least there's no lack of opportunities for me to socialize. Just lack of attention to socialize while trying to keep all my kids happy.

I also lucked into finding a little 14 year-old girl from the ward who lives in the neighborhood and so to prevent mental breakdown, I'm having her come about twice a week for a few hours (while I'm still home, just to help out). Before we moved down here, I had talked to the wife of another ophthalmology resident a few years ahead of us, who also has a few kids. She said, "Yeah, looking back at that first year, I probably should have been on medication." Great.

So I guess I'll try babysitters first. Before I had found the 14 year-old though, I was looking on Craigslist for childcare and found a woman who sounded nice (ok, and she was the only one who could spell and didn't advertise herself as the "modern day Mary Poppings!"). So she came once and was really nice, but she was 46 and had never had her own kids. So I was kind of wondering why you would want to do something like this when you were that age and stuff, but she's in massage therapy school and just needed some extra cash for insurance and stuff I guess.

Anyway, it should have been a clue that she never had kids, but she seriously kept asking me how to hold the babies, how to burp them, how you knew when they were done burping, how to hold bottles.... And then she had this running commentary the whole day, "Oh, you're the fussy one. Oh you're the happy one. Oh, I see that you like to do this. Oh, I see that you want to hold the spoon. Oh you are just the thinker. You are just the social one." When she couldn't successfully feed them rice cereal and I ended up putting it in a bottle: "Oh, see, I knew you didn't want that cereal, you just wanted milk." Uh, actually that was the cereal, just in a bottle... Holy cow. It started driving me nuts. And she would keep labeling them as the fussy one and the happy one, but she never realized she would be saying it about different babies because she didn't know who was who. And she was so super anxious about everything. Every time they would cry, "Ok, ok, ok, what do you need? What's wrong? What do you want?" And then she'd pick them up and they wouldn't settle down and she'd say, "Oh, I know. I'm not your mommy. You just want your mommy." And then she'd bring them over to me. Uh. Not helpful. (Besides the fact that they aren't at the stage where they care if it's me or not.) WOAH. She was stressing me out. Needless to say, we'll be using the 14 year-old and she's more fun playing with Cash anyway.

Anyway, it's not ALL bad. But it is sweaty.