An entire year. A YEAR! A year with the twins, and a year with three under three, and a year without sleep, and a year with chaos and crying and laughing and tickling and breastmilk and diapers and appointments and sticky hands and long nights and beautiful moments and full arms and fuller hearts. The best and fastest year of my life.

I couldn’t form a single word when I saw the ultrasound. I sat up and stared, slack-jawed and dazed, heart pounding so hard I couldn’t hear the sounds of the words the tech was saying as she gave me a hug. I moved quickly into a phase of complete denial and stayed that way until one of my friends repeated the ultrasound and confirmed it. Yep, definitely two. I couldn’t get excited. All I did was worry. How would we make this work?

I threw up every day, I cried every night. Everything hurt so bad. I made Gates promise over and over and over, never again, never again. Everyone promised they wouldn’t go completely full term, that I would get relief a little bit early. Yet my stubborn little bugs held on until the bitter end, and probably would have gone past my due date if we hadn’t given them a kick in the behinds out what is basically now a revolving door of a groin.

And then….

There they were. And everything was fine. Two really is better than one. A baby on each hip and double the gummy little smiles. #blessed doesn’t even begin to describe it. Wouldn’t change a thing.

Except for the sleeping. Would sell pretty much any of my organs for 1 hour of sleep. Also there should be some rule out there that kids who don’t sleep regularly shouldn’t be allowed to somehow sleep even less when they are sick. That just doesn’t seem fair.

Babies are finally both somewhat caught up on their motor milestones. In all honesty I think for a long time Sasha could actually do lots of things but basically wrinkled up her nose at the thought of venturing outside of her comfortable bubble where she mostly just plops and observes. She still doesn’t particularly like to pull herself to stand or do anything other than sit on my lap and stare at everyone but she is actually physically capable of a ton. Spencer on the other hand was DESPERATE to get moving and was only hindered by his gigantor head. He still prefers the army crawl to hands and knees crawling, probably because he is super, crazy fast at it. He will shoot like a little worm rocket through any open door he spots. He is fascinated by anything that moves or makes noise or basically exists in any capacity and I’m constantly having to fish foreign objects out of his mouth and hands. For the longest time he was just working on mastering moving from a laying to sitting position without much success so one night when I felt something warm and soft on my face and my eyes popped open to find Spencer standing up in the Pack n Play touching my face with his paw I was so startled by it that my brain wasn’t processing what I was seeing and full out panicked like something was wrong. After that first success in the night he has Not. Sat. Down. He pulls to stand on everything he can grab and he is strong AF too. My mom was letting him hang onto the top rail of the crib for fun and let go and he hung there dangling by himself like the monkey child he is.

Their one year check ups included 4 shots apiece and 90th percentiles+ in all areas of measurement. I was hoping that we would get to graduate from Spencer’s head checks but no dice yet. Since his hospitalization last spring he has had visits between neurology, craniofacial, physical therapy, and his pediatrician’s office every 2-4 weeks. That’s a lot of appointments my friends. But for now it will just be head measurement monthly and no intervention beyond that needed right now. Extremely grateful. 

Olivia continues to entertain us to no end. She is curious about everything and asks question after question, over and over (and over and over. And over), as she attempts to figure out the world. She also has become quite the little snitch and will tattle on everyone in the household for various transgressions such as “Brauny is barking” or “Spencer is making noise” and expect me to dole out punishments. But she is just as protective of her siblings as ever and if I dare to irritate one of the babies by trying to change their diapers or strip yogurt soaked shirts off them and they start to fuss, Olivia will march over and demand, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY BRUDDER?!”. Lol. A recent cute phrase of hers is referring to eyelashes as “eye wishes” which makes more sense to me personally, and pronouncing granola bars as “groan-a bars”. She has become a little bit of a hoarder with her trinkets and play figurines and is often found clutching small plastic animals and random magnets and stickers and other various toddlerhood accoutrements in addition to her standard Peppa paraphernalia. And lord help us if she cannot find whatever specific random item she has decided for whatever reason is essential to her well being in that exact moment it pops into her little brain… Absolutely nothing will suffice until said item is located. And this goes on about every 16 minutes around the clock, which is absolutely fine because I have nothing else I need to be doing during the day besides fishing for rogue plastic knickknacks nestled under the couch amidst the dog hair tumbleweeds. Never a dull moment.

We also recently somehow misplaced one of her verrrrrry special toys, one of two that she has carried around since birth, the one lost being Winnie the Pooh. I had to make up an elaborate story about how he had to go to a special place to get a cleaning because when I first said that he was just getting washed in the washing machine after I realized he was missing and realized I would have to replace him and he would look much newer than he had in years and tried to explain why she quizzed me about why it was taking so long and demanded that she check on him in the washing machine. And so I said that there was a very special place for toys to get washed that helped them look “as good as new” and so he was there and she narrowed her eyes at me in a way that indicated she didn’t quite believe me but would let it slide for now. When the new Pooh arrived I made this big deal about how clean he was and she didn’t want to hold him at first and said “why does his face look funny? I don’t like his face”. Gradually she warmed up to him, just in time for me to stumble upon the OG Pooh who was balled up inside a blanket I had jammed under her bed at some point. When I showed it to her she looked back and forth between the two and announced the old one’s face was now the weird one but she now carries both of them around. Such exciting lives we lead. This month we have also been having some fun doing the Elf on the Shelf which she takes VERY seriously. I’m assuming we will get sick of having to hide the elf at some point but honestly its been cracking us up.

The months are flying and blurring by, only differentiated by the amount of slush on the ground and the time it takes to get the kids in and out of their car seats and into wherever we are headed with the need to pile on layers and coats and blankets once liberated from their little harnesses. I’m lazier than ever though so often I will just zip fleece jammies over their clothes for extracurricular activities and hope for the best. I don’t even know how to begin to recap everything we’ve been up to since my last post, but this pretty much sums up this stage of life:

Finally, after a few weeks of nasty germs for the kids and I and the horrible car accident we were in, I just want to say that the fact that we are all safe and sound and snuggled in for the winter together is making me feel very hashtag blessed hashtag grateful hashtag sappy so will end with a little song of thanks to the universe written by our dear friend Raffi:

Thanks a lot
Thanks for Sun in the sky
Thanks a lot
Thanks for clouds so high

Thanks a lot
Thanks for whispering wind
Thanks a lot
Thanks for the birds in the spring

Thanks a lot
Thanks for the moonlit night
Thanks a lot
Thanks for the stars so bright

Thanks a lot
Thanks for the wondering me
Thanks a lot
Thanks for the way I feel

Thanks for the animals
Thanks for the land
Thanks for the people everywhere
Thanks a lot
Thanks for all I’ve got
Thanks for all I’ve got

 

Happy holiday season to you all!

 

Ok and just a few of these: