And just like that it’s time for me to return to the land of scrubs and speculums. 12 weeks over in the blink of an eye, except for those nights when the only rest our eyes got was blinking. And crying. I had to send an email to someone at work about something before I returned a few weeks ago and they told me they hoped I was “enjoying my time off” to which I immediately snorted and started to pontificate and clucking to myself… until I remembered that this time around maternity leave has kinda felt like a giant vacation. Tons of time spent with friends and family doing fun things. Lots of snuggling whilst the snow piled up. I’ve watched every episode of The Office and It’s Always Sunny in  Philadelphia and Arrested Development. I’ve read around a dozen novels. I’ve been able to do so many little crafty things and baby booking and home projects and organization, it’s been pretty awesome.  Probably the single most important factor though is that having all these little screechy things demanding my attention hasn’t left much time to feel lonely like I did when Olivia was freshly baked. Also Olivia is basically a tiny person now and not a baby and she is hilarious and absolutely bonkers and honestly excellent company. She is currently obsessed with all things Peppa Pig and it is so fun to watch her play with her little toys. She also continues to pepper her vocab with little English sayings which will never not be funny.

We’ve made the most of all the snowy days by getting outside and building snowmen and “jumping in muddy puddles” until our feet were about frozen off, and bringing snow inside on the really cold days. When we checked on our snowman in the morning and he had melted/slumped over Olivia said, “He was tired, he fell down. Nigh nigh Mr. Snowman!”.

 

 

 

 

I saw one of those “Toddler Interview” posts going around FB a few weeks ago so I interviewed OG –

• What’s your name? I want Peppa
• How old are you? I’m Olivia
• How old is Mommy? She’s a girl
• What are you? Olivia
• Where did you come from? By Peppa
• How old is Daddy? He’s a girl
• What’s your favorite color? Red
• What’s your favorite food? Bagel
• Who’s your best friend? Mommy
• What’s your favorite song? Twinkle
• What do you watch on TV? Peppa
• What’s your favorite animal? Bunny
• What are you scared of? Barking monkey
• What makes you happy? Della
• Where’s your favorite place to go? Target
• What do you want to be when you grow up? Tiger
• What is love? Nana and Papa
• Who loves you the most? Grandpa

Not too bad Olivia! For reference – “barking monkey” is from when we went to the Public Museum and a fake but very lifelike monkey screeches when you walk through the rainforest exhibit. Scared the bejesus out of the kids. Coincidentally we were there with “What makes you happy – Della” who is Olivia’s little toddler bestie. She will tell me, “I want to go play with my girl Dewwa” and it is the sweetest thing.

Really Olivia loves all kids and will try to make friends with anyone we encounter, usually by trying to hug and kiss them or by screaming, “IT’S ME, O-LIBIA” in their faces and grabbing them by their hands. Works about 90% of the time actually so maybe I should take a page out of her book when I’m trying to make more mom friends. Usually I’m just like, I put some wine in these juice boxes I snuck into the library are you in or what… and that’s only got like a 30% success rate. Regardless, it’s so fun to watch her interact with other kids, seeing their little imaginations crank out hilarious games together is beyond entertaining.

And she absolutely adores Spencer and Sasha. All she wants to do is hug them and kiss them and “I pet her now” and rub on their heads and shove pacifiers in their mouths and pile Peppa toys on them. She also has a v annoying habit of grabbing on to the handle of whatever carseat is next to her in the car and refusing to let go when I’m trying to get them out of the car. For a 30 lb muppet she is strong AF. I have to peel each grubby finger off one by one whilst hissing at her to set the car seat free. While she just cackles madly at me.

Toddlerhood is by far my favorite stage yet. I know I shouldn’t wish away this time with the twins, but goofy 2 year olds beat snuggly newborns any day of the week in my book.

The kids all did 3 days at daycare the week before I returned to work and they all did great. Olivia loves bringing “Squash” and “Spency Boy” with her, it is absolutely heartwarming.

Meanwhile, I spent those 3 days alternating crying about missing them/having mom guilt about sending them to daycare before work started, and having the most indulgent “me time” that every single mom deserves to have but doesn’t often get. I got my hair done, I got my eyebrows threaded, I got a manicure and pedicure, I grocery shopped for hours by myself, I went to the library for eons and read for hours on end, I took a bath sans Peppa/toddler, I cleaned and crafted and blasted Coldplay and tried to pretend I didn’t desperately miss the kids during the entire time. Additionally, after a little chitchat with Gates, he has been offering more and more to spend time with our litter solo on weekends so that I can have time to myself and I’ve been able to get out of the house alone more than I ever manged to when we just had Olivia. I’ve been able to meet girlfriends for lunch/brunch/dinner, take an exercise class, and even got my birthday spins in at the casino!

I won 2/3rds pay of 1 week of daycare. Happy birthday to me! All in all I have absolutely nothing to complain about in my life and that also makes me feel guilty because so many people/moms I know deserve a break more than I do. And so many twin moms have so much going on with their babies while we’ve got nothing but occasional crank/colic and some nights where sleep is a little harder to find. And one teeny little bout of mastitis. Ouchie. “Mommy’s boobies got an owie”. You can say that again.

We’ve got good babies. So good. They are snuggly and smiley and chatty and Spencer is Benjamin Button-ing from his little old man state right into teenage boy with his baby acne so properly and they sleep better at night than Olivia did up until she was like 7 months old. They sleep in the car and when we are out in busy/loud places, and they are entertained by things like ceiling fans and their play mat, and they don’t seem to mind if their bottles are cold or their mom is distracted or they rarely get held for extended periods of time. I read an article about how burping babies might not be that important and so we quit burping them. And they are fine. And I read a tip about not changing diapers overnight unless it’s poop and so we quit changing them overnight. And they are fine. I honestly am doing the bare minimum at all times. And they are fine. Such a different ball game than when we were learning to take care of OG and we did everything for her every little need immediately. These babies are getting like 1/100th of that kind of attention and they are thriving. So cut yourself some slack mamas, and do a little bit less.

Finally had our 2 month check up for the twins right around the 3 month mark. Spencer weighing in at a whopping 12 lbs and Sasha just cracked 10. Got their first series of shots and screamed in tandem for a good 15 minutes. An excellent time was had by all.

Growing and changing so much literally every second of every day:

I have to just comment again how lucky I am to be able to keep working just part time. I am definitely ready to get back to the grind but this would all be so much harder if I didn’t know I’d still be getting 2 days a week home with my crazies. I have so much more respect for both full time working moms and full time stay at home moms than I ever did before. As much as I whine about the hours and the travel that Gates puts in please know that I am forever grateful to him for where he is at in his career and how hard he works because without him I wouldn’t have the luxury of deciding what I want to do with my own work/home balance. He has told me over and over it’s up to me if I stay home or if I work or when I work and has been supportive of whatever I’ve chosen to do without question, including my desire to continue to work for a non-profit because it’s what I’m passionate about when there are plenty of opportunities with a higher pay grade in my field in our area. I know how many Mamas (and Dadas) would kill to be in this position and I truly am thankful of where we are at in life. Work hard, play hard amirite. #thankful #blessed #crushingit. And regardless if you’re a working mom, a stay at home mom, or a best of both world’s mom (as I like to call it) and work part time, we all have the exact same feelings about one thing:

This maternity leave also saw me reach my most famous social media presence status with a comment I wrote on an article getting 13k “likes”

but also my first (that I know of ) shunning by someone when I made a comment on her status that conflicted with her opinion. I won’t call out this person by name or occupation but let’s just say that she is in the business of helping women get their bodies beach-ready and she has a large amount of followers on her Instagram. I stumbled upon her profile because we were due at the same time and I enjoyed her posts about pregnancy even though during my pregnancy I wasn’t exactly in a position to get super fit due to being on death’s door the entire time. Anyway she had her baby about 1 month after the twins were born and wrote this post about how women needed to stop complaining about the hard parts of newborns/parenting and start seeing the joy in things like losing sleep and missing out on things because of having to take care of their baby which in the most general sense I do agree with – it’s good to try to find the silver lining. But I commented about how we also can’t forget about people/moms struggling with depression or anxiety and how it’s not always just that easy to “choose joy” but I loved her positive attitude. And she responded that she used to have severe depression and “chose” not to and that’s what cured her, and she knows that it’s possible for all people to do this because her husband is a therapist. And then she deleted my comments and blocked me from her Instagram. LOL WHAT?! I don’t know if that’s the message her company was wanting her to push because I’ve noticed that a few gals I know who are associated with this particular company are always posting eerily similar messages, and so she needs to control the tone of what her followers see but that terrifies me that someone who so many women look to for inspiration is telling her thousands of followers that all they need to do to not be depressed is to decide to be happy. Whatever, I’ll never know more because I got the boot. I’m definitely not her target audience anyway since my main nutritional stance right now is sneaking any carbs I can into my gullet as soon as my keto-diet following husband’s back is turned.

So in conclusion, as I iron my scrubs for the first time in months, (lol kidding, I rock the wrinkled look without shame) I reflect on these past 3 months home with the babes and I honestly just can’t believe where we are at with it all. I still acutely remember the anticipation of going in to the hospital to birth these gremlins, from the racing of my heart (probably due to the 30 lbs of fluid increasing its workload) to the splooshing sound of my water-logged ankles dragging my fat body down the hospital hall, it absolutely feels like yesterday that we were anxiously awaiting the arrival of these two. Spence and Sash – you guys are amazing. Thanks for being the coolest little babies and for making us members of the exclusive twin parent club.

 

Final thoughts:

 

And lastly, don’t forget to always start your day with a real proper, squashy stretch:

Also PS:

If you are considering having a baby – I cannot say enough about trying to time it to give birth right before the holidays. I think half of the joy of this maternity leave was that there was SO MUCH going on and so many parties and people to see between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year. Plus husband was off for lots of days he wouldn’t normally be and that was a game changer. Also nothing like a snuggly little newborn (or newborns) under the tree at Christmas. So to give birth in November you need to get impregnated like… now. GET CRACKIN KIDS!

Also PPS: Some of you have asked me about my abdominal muscle split that growing the two babes caused during pregnancy (diastasis recti) – here is 1 day post-partum vs 12 weeks post-partum! Like 6 inches smaller. Happy to say it is closing pretty easily with little to no effort from me and I can barely feel my own intestinal parts now when I shove my hand inside of it.