Someone paid me a huge compliment recently when they told me that I “make twins look easy”. First of all, I am considering it an enormous win if at least one person in the world looks at me and thinks I’m even marginally competent at parenting. And secondly, this is someone who actually interacts with me/sees me with the kids in real life vs someone who only gets a glimpse into our world through the rose tinted screen of social media so I was even more humbled by her comment. I know it’s not all sunshine and Cheetos but nothing in life is, so that being said I swear it really has been easy, which is insane to realize. I can’t believe I spent all those months worrying and stressing about how we were going to be able to handle everything, because just like anything else in life – you just do it. The worst days involve tears, and at the end of the day that’s nothing. And the best days involve so many squawks and squeaks and smiles and peeps and snugs, truly what more could we ask for? I’ve been so amazed at how seamlessly we’ve been managing the daycare shuffle in the morning. When I sit down and think about all that needs to get done before we are in the car and on the way it gives me anxiety – pump, shower, dress me, dress twins, rouse and dress and wrangle OG’s hair into some semblance of not a rat’s nest, take out dog, make coffee, feed OG, feed twins, pack lunches, pack bottles/formula/breastmilk, pack pump/pump parts, etc etc etc all while also taking care of the children/tending to needs/wants/hungers/tantrums/gas/etc. But as I’m actually going through the motions of preparing for the day it doesn’t even seem like any work at all. Just plow through that mental checklist and off in the car we go, steaming cup of hot bean water in hand. Only one major screw up so far where I left the pumping bottles/flanges in the sink like a dodo brain but luckily Gates was able to execute a quick rescue mission and deliver to me before all hell and liquids broke loose. And being back at work gives me so much joy I can’t even put it into words. My first day back a patient hugged me which maybe is common for health care providers in other settings but is a rare occurrence for me. I had to concentrate on not crying like nobody’s business. Taking care of your own kids is one thing, but taking care of strangers is something else entirely. Truly grateful to have a job and a passion and an opportunity to touch lives. Oh and getting to gab and eat taco dip with my gals at work again is just icing on the tortilla chip cake.

I would say the only thing we are really struggling with currently are my rude AF teats. Despite my absolute commitment to pumping every 3 hours rain or shine, I have gotten mastitis 4 freaking times and dealt with larger than life clogged ducts more times than I even like to think about. I’ve been waterboarding myself with pineapple juice and guzzling the lecithin supplements like a good crunchy hippie and using heat and massage and rarely am late for a pumping session and yet baseball sized honkers keep popping up on my knockers and really busting my balls. My goal was always to try to breastfeed until 6 months like I did with Olivia and I am more than ready to reach that goal and say byebye to breastfeeding forever. I know some people love it but it has never been my thing. Actual nursing is barely tolerable for me, I can’t stand that little wet tongue slipping all around my nipple and those sticky little hands kneading on my boobs like a heavy, farty kitten. It was a total relief for me when exclusively pumping became the path of least resistance for us but I am sick of dealing with sick breasts. So sick. And I am 100% selfish and not ashamed to admit that at all – I don’t want to travel this summer with my pump and I don’t want to live my life in 3 hour increments. So let’s just say I’m counting down the minutes until June, and until then I will continue to sigh and pump and pop antibiotics and walk around half the time with heating pads down my bra. The one thing I will definitely miss is the magical mystical power of breastmilk. I put that shit on everything. Cut? Breastmilk? Goopy eye? Breastmilk. Diaper rash? Breastmilk. Marital discord? Breastmilk. That and I love eating garbage and not gaining weight. That is some sort of wizarding bamboozlement.

One thing that I know has been helping my sanity to no end is that I make a focused effort to take at least a few minutes out of the day for myself. No matter what kinds of shenanigans are occurring, I always make sure to get a scalding hot shower in. Lots of times that means cranking the music, getting all the kids into a safe spot where minimal harm can be done aside from screaming until voices are lost, and blasting myself in the ears with water to help drown out the noise for a whopping 3 minutes. But I get a huge recharge from a hot shower, and those few minutes to myself feel totally indulgent. On work days, if I time it absolutely correctly and traffic cooperates, I also have exactly 9 minutes to stop at the grocery store or Target, etc with enough time to get to work and punch in on time. If 9 minutes doesn’t sound like enough time for anyone to get any shopping done than you are truly a rookie and should see the amount of financial damage I can do in those few minutes. And shopping without 2 carseats in the cart and a toddler on my arm is probably my version of nirvana. We are also blessed beyond belief to have so many friends and family and caregivers wanting to help with the kids and give us breaks, we’ve had time to ourselves and time alone as a couple – luxuries that so many people only dream of. I think the other major factor in my overall happiness with life right now is that I sickly thrive in a little bit of chaos. Some have observed that it is hard for me to sit still and if that’s not the understatement of the century I don’t know what is… But I like being busy. I need to have a project or craft or renovation or big idea on the back burner at all times to keep my cup filled, and I also work better and more efficiently under pressure which has always lead to great advancement for me in my career so I don’t know why I didn’t realize earlier that may also apply in my personal life under the right circumstances. I’m not one to really think about divine intervention or destiny but when you hear people say that you were “chosen” to have whatever lot in life you’re dealt, I’m starting to believe it because I really do like this busy, chaotic life with 3 littles right now. I even told Gates that I really didn’t see what having even more kids in the mix would matter. And then we laughed and laughed and Googled the information for local urologists.

Also it was a huge game changer when we realized the babies would shush if we just covered their faces with something. This has increased asleep time by about 35%. Subsequently this has increased the danger level of their asleep time by about 60 trillion percent so we have to fiddle with them more to make sure at least one nostril is peeking out as they shuffle and snarfle around so much in their sleep that they end up with their heads totally covered way too often. But we are on it! Add it to the list of dangerous parenting hacks we in no way encouraging anyone to use.

The babies are happy and content 95% of the time. Really the only thing bringing them down is toots for Sasha (heavens, the deafening trumpets our little gourd can crank out) and spit up for Spencer, but between their expellings of their gasses and liquids of choice they mostly are adorable, smiley, and chatty. Sasha wakes up absolutely ready to be entertained and rewards us with the most hilarious happy screeching as soon as we start talking to her. Spencer takes a little longer to embrace the day but after a few sleepy false starts and some major stretching he is all smiles as well. They both absolutely adore Olivia and will kick and pant in excitement whenever she takes a second out of her busy day of Peppa-ing and spinning around in circles until she topples over like a weeblewobble to sing them a song or “share” toys with them by chucking her favorites their way with instructions to “DONE DWOP IT SPENSORE”. Her daycare provider tells me that OG can tell which baby is crying from another room and will announce, “Sasha is crying” etc to whoever will listen. When I ask about her day at daycare she says, “babies crying” and “Lucas hit me” which would make me anxious if I didn’t know her sitter was amazing and that Olivia has been prone to telling tales as of late. She randomly tells people “Grandpa poked me” and that there is “a snake in the wall” or will blame someone who isn’t around for a mess she made. Or all of these things are true and we need to do a better job with supervision. As far as the hitting goes, when I asked her if she told Lucas, “No thank you – hugs and kisses only!” she said, “Yes…No, I hit him”. Little gangster. Olivia continues to be one trillion percent hilarious and says and does just the most funny toddler things. Although she definitely has become a little snitch lately and after a particularly trying day during a week when Gates was out of state she told everyone we encountered whilst shopping in the  grocery store, “Mommy crying, but she better now” (better pronounced “bed-door”. Thanks, girl. Her biggest struggles are definitely potty training (major regression after she had a little oopsie and tinkled on the floor) and nutrition, as she still refuses the majority of the food groups that don’t include cheese and absolutely every vegetable except one time she gnawed on a carrot for a few seconds because she saw a character on Peppa do it. But my goal for the year was to have her eat one vegetable so I’ve officially slayed all of my 2019 goals like a GD boss.

Couple of thoughts – first of all I legit am losing sleep at night after seeing pictures of some of the messed up hijacked kid’s cartoons that are floating around YouTube. Do not Google this if you haven’t seen it, it is impossible to unsee. But I saw it. Extremely sadistic stuff like our beloved Peppa murdering her family or committing suicide. I feel like barfing even just typing that out so I deeply apologize if you were unaware of this kind of disgusting stuff circulating the interwebs. We adore Peppa. We’ve got boxes full of Peppa.

I just can’t imagine my innocent little demon having her beautiful, happy, shiny, perfect world balloon popped way too early and thoughts of worrying that she’s already seen some of this stuff make my mind absolutely race. Granted we are with her and watching along with her dang near any time she gets screen time at our house – meal time and otherwise in extenuating circumstance: mom has stomach flu, Olivia has stomach flu, mom has stomach flu again, we are out to lunch and want to avoid complete meltdown, mom has mastitis, etc etc. But we can’t control what’s happening when she’s with other people obviously and that just makes me crazy. I guess better get used to it, huh? Because it’s a big bad world and if we expend our energy worrying about what’s out of our control I’m guessing that we are going to end up more exhausted than the normal exhaustion required as a basic tenet of parenting. But for real, f*ck the people behind the shanghaied kid’s cartoons. Super, super uncool.

Secondly, we are trying something new with the twins that we have never done before in our history of babies: bedtime. Olivia was such a nutty sleeper we never stuck to any routine and just let her naturally come to have a consistent bedtime on her own starting at about a year old. So when the twins came we were bopping along that same path and mostly just “putting them to bed” whenever we rolled into bed at night. But with Gates having lots of out of state travel in the books over the next few months and also our first few nights away together coming up I thought we would give it the old college try and see if they would still sleep “through the night” aka up every 3 hours-ish to eat but going back down again until morning with an early bedtime thrown in the mix. And… so far…mostly it’s garbage sauce. We try to lay them down for the first time around the time we start wrestling Olivia down for the night, 7:30/8ish and so far they give us about a solid hour of hysterical crying and then settle for an hour or two and then are up every 2 hours-ish after that for snacks and drinks and cranks. And unfortunately they are just enough on slightly different schedules that it seems as soon as we get one fed and down the next one has one eye open glaring at me like YOU READY FOR THIS and then starts yelling. We are hoping that they start to adjust soon so that we can get our evenings back. The sleep deprivation isn’t so much of an issue, because even this nonsense is better than what we had with Olivia for the first 7 months of her life, but evenings together sans screaming children is huge for relationships, in my opinion. Time to sit next to each other and stare at our phones, Netflix and doze, etc.  Although I am a little sad to give up the time with them at night on the days I work, I think this will be appreciated more in the long run. Plus will make it easier for when people babysit for us to have a schedule to aim for. Which will make it more likely that people will babysit for us again. So that we can get out and about and into shenanigans. But first, vasectomies. Shenanigans before vasectomies leads only to trouble. Like such:

On that note, and thirdly, I am forever ruined in regards to pregnancy announcements since having twins. I’ll tell Gates like “Oh, so and so are having a baby… just one though”. And we will both be like, “aww bummer” which is ridiculous. I think mostly I just want more people I’m close with to have twins so we can be like YAY TWINS CLUB but also I really think this twin journey is so amazing and interesting and unique and anyone who doesn’t get to have a pair or two of their own is missing out on some really cool stuff. Not that one baby isn’t great, it is. But a twofer is truly something.

Coming up: we are planning to hype up the Easter Bunny like hell this year and use him as a trick to get Olivia to give up her pacifier(s). The plan is to get her so excited to leave her pacifiers for the bunny in exchange for a BIG SURPRISE (to be determined) on Easter morning. The only trouble with this plan is she has dozens of pacifiers stashed around the house in various nooks, crannies, shoes of mine, up faucets, inside dolly’s “pockets” (down their shirts), in cupboards, etc and I’m not sure how to get her to show me all of her hiding places so that we can round up every last “NUGHHHK” (nook, pronounced with strong Eastern European accent). We’ve got a baby shower for my brother and his wife celebrating their little growing nugget (sadly only one perfect babe), Easter with the fams of course, warmer weather, and a million little things going on that I can’t keep straight.

 

Before I leave you, let me just express my gratitude to a few things that make life so much better and brighter:

An Ode To My Saviors, by Rosie

Oh, Public Library. What the hell would I do without you? 

Your amazing children’s programs, your sweet librarians with never ending patience.

Your millions of books we constantly have to replace due to ripping.  

You make killing time somewhat bearable. And for that we thank you.

Oh, mom friends. Well mostly I just have the one. 

How much sweeter you make life. Oh the laughs we’ve had. 

And the bitching we’ve bitched. And the booboos we’ve kissed. 

Where would I be without our playdates and commiserating?

Somewhere much darker than here. Thank you for you. 

Oh, caffeine. How you are there for me when no one else is. 

How you warm me up like a hug from within. 

You literally might make my heart explode. 

Oh, shopping carts at Woodman’s. 

How big you are. 

How you never complain about your burden. 

Except for you squeaky rusty carts, f*ck you.

You fit 2 carseats, a toddler’s behind, a coffee cup, and all of our crap. 

How could I ever express enough thanks. 

la fin.

And just a few more OG/Sasha comparison pics:

And lastly, just a couple of lolzing:

 

Stay cool friends!