The Vintage Pearl: calligraphy. (a giveaway!)

The Vintage Pearl: calligraphy. (a giveaway!)

I would love, love, love a piece from them.

Well, I called that one

It's April. So.. yeah 4-5 months later, right? And with a new background I saw and loved and kinda stole from a fellow blogger. Shameful. Downright shameful.

Oh well.

I'm still here...

So maybe I'll just write something when I want to change the background of my blog. Check back in... um... let's say 4-5 months? So the babies turned 10 moths yesterday. And are adorable (duh). I was reading over the last post I wrote and wanted to give updates on things that are so old I don't even think about them anymore.

Breastfeeding/pumping: I'm not doing it anymore! I weaned. It kinda sucked, but man is it great to not have to do that anymore.

Bad Habits: (like the swaddling) We don't go to sleep with a pacifier anymore. They only get it when we're out and about. That was hard, but I think it's better that it happened already rather than have a horrible drawn out process.

Travel: We went camping and froze our asses off. We didn't get any sleep the second night because a cold front came through which kept the babies up. We had the babies on our air mattress with us and I didn't sleep at. all. But otherwise it was fun. (And let me just say, a portable noise machine was awesome; babies napped!) We also went to Colorado to the cabin. Which is more like a cabin than I thought. Like, two miles up the mountain on a single dirt road, go buy water to fill up the water tank, it takes 30 minutes to get to anywhere, cabin. So that was an adventure. The first night I was swearing to never do this again, but by the second night, it was better. We had fun, but it was a lot of work traveling to the middle of nowhere with babies.

Decorating: H's room is done. It took a lot longer than I'd like to admit, but its finished. I still haven't done anything more than put of stickers in Z's room. They're very cute stickers, but still... they're stickers.

This is the decal set I got; it's pretty freaking cute, IMO. I also got some flowers from another set. I set it up and pulled a couple out to make artwork for the other walls and stuck flowers over door frames and light switches and at other various points around the room. The Z in the second picture is from her names spelled out over her bed. I realized I don't have her room photographed like H's.. oops.

(Please pardon the mess in the background thankyouverymuch.)

Other than that... a lot's been happening. They both crawl around like crazy. H pulls himself into a stand and is super close to standing on his own. Z doesn't have the strength for that yet, thanks to the princess-like attitude of; I prefer to sit, why do you want me to stick my legs out? But she sees H doing things she can't and so she's trying.

H is in a helmet. It was determined by measurements that is head was misshapen enough to have insurance cover it. Yay! I felt quite superior about that as most doctors seemed to pooh-pooh it by looking at it alone. But you can't argue with cold hard numbers that prove it is as bad as I thought ha ha! (And then I feel kinda weird, like yay? My son's head is that screwed up? Mother of the Year right here.)

M and I are about to go on our very first adults-only baby free trip. To Las Vegas! We'll only be gone two nights, but the worry started as soon as I bought those plane tickets. Gma is coming into town to stay with the babies and my mom will be over when she gets out of school (she's a teacher), so things should be fine. But, still. The control freak in me is making itself known.

And I can't forget: Holidays. Thanksgiving left us fat. Babies gagged and threw up the ground fresh turkey I pulled off the bird that day. (Everyone else thought it was good.) I co-hosted at our house with M's mom (who was injured thanks to her husband running her leg over. No, seriously. There's a story there, but it's long; needless to say, it was an accident and she's

recovering/ed nicely after two surgeries and many pins and screws in her leg.)

Xmas was great as well. We stayed in town for my family and then went to SA for M's side. Babies had fun pulling paper off of boxes and out of bags. I think. They really didn't do much except look bewildered when were excited that they pulled a strip of paper off a present. It was a good holiday though. It looked like Fisher Price threw up all over our living room. The

y could have filmed a commercial. (And as an aside, is it only me who feels weird opening baby gifts? It's like ooohh... thanks... they'll love this... (I think) and thank you for buying my baby stuff. Does anyone else get this? Because its not yours, for you, yet you're the one opening it.)

And the sibling rivalry begins.

Wow

So maybe I'll just post once every 3 months or so?

Yay me!

The babies are 6 months on the 24th! Wahoo! In that time since I've last posted, we've worked through weaning from the swaddle, starting cereal and weaning from the pump. We weighed the babies yesterday and they weigh in at 18 pounds and 16 pounds 9 ounces. I got me some chunky monkeys. Man.

Weaning the swaddle was... ugh. I wish we hadn't kept them swaddled whenever they slept. We are so just creatures of schedule and 'this is the way it is done for it has worked well until now' and, well, you know, habit. And the swaddling did work. And if we swaddled them again, I'm sure they (or at least Zoe) would love it. But having to find and buy expensive ass swaddling blankets they won't break out of (because when they do they wake themselves up and cry because they aren't swaddled anymore) is the mark of enough. And no more swaddling. Also was tired of getting the side eye from the mom and sister about it.

The cereal! Oh, how the babies LOVE the cereal! We started with rice, then moved onto oatmeal, then barley and finally multi-grain. For fun, about a week ago I gave them an avocado.

Henderson ate a few bites before realizing how much he hated it and proceeded to gag himself

into throwing it all up. It was quite lovely. Zoe realized quickly she didn't like it and clamped her lips shut after spitting out the first couple of bites. They both regarded me as an evil person who tried to pull something over on them and they did not appreciate it. Not at all. So we went back to cereal. And after the pediatrician visit this week, we'll be venturing out into the real food arena once more. Babies beware!

And I am trying to wean. We have acquired a deep freezer on loan and are stockpiling all the last of the liquid gold I hope to stop producing. After the pediatrician said it would be better for them to get one bottle of breast milk a day because of all the immunities, we switched them to all

formula, but one bottle. So we're hoping the milk will last a good while through the fall. And I'm hoping my boobs dry up real quick.

We are going on a trip! One of the reasons I want to quit, is that bringing the hated pump on vacation with me does not sound like fun. And shortly after going to visit Gma and Bob in their "cabin" in CO we'll be going camping, with no electricity, so I damn sure better be done by then. For reals. We're a little nervous about flying with two six month olds and staying away from home for a week, with all of us having to share a room. It will be interesting. But the babies have done really well in other new situations, so I'm hopeful. We went to a grill and bar and watched

the Packer game Sunday (the whole game!). Babies ate their cereal, drank their bottle, sat in a highchair for the first time and napped in their carseat. And did great! No crying! We had a

plumbing incident in the bathroom accessible only through the babies rooms, so did a trial run of playpen sleeping all in the same room, and it was... well. That was ok. But I think it'll be better in CO. Henderson did awesomely well. Zoe is a tougher napper anyway, so, we'll see.

In more humorous of updates; the babies had their first "fight" over a toy. It's this fake taggie ball they have and if they're sitting next to each other and one of them has the ball... the other one wants it. And if they're close enough, will grab for it. And if they aren't close enough, they watch it the entire time as if beckoning it within reach with their stare. It's pretty freaking funny to watch.

I'm decorating the babies rooms. It's taking forever. I started H's room (I want to paint six stripes in a band around the room in five different colors. I am CRAZY.) and then moved onto Z's where wall decals made doing her room much, much easier. I'm still thinking about what else I need to do in there - it needs something else, I just don't know what. I'm thinking paint? But

what? So now I'm still stuck in H's trying to tape the stripe pattern and driving myself crazy. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get tape up around an entire room in an even, perfectly level stripe? I can't measure from the ceiling - it's uneven. Same for the floor. And the doors and window make it incredibly difficult to keep the tape even all the way around. M thinks I'm certifiable for doing this. And maybe I am. After this I want to do their bathroom and then the

other guest bath. But that should be pretty easy. I just need to find gender neutral bathroom

decorations that I like for theirs and then just paint the other one - I already have the color picked out.

I have to stop now - it's feeding time for the little bits. And I'll leave some recent pictures. It's the least I can do.

So cute

Go Packers!

Go Longhorns!

And as is a subject of much fascination in my household - Z has my eye color (green) (and, it looks like, my red hair - now we'll just have to see if it's curly like mine), but H? Those blue eyes? Daddy has brown eyes, like most of his family. And there are distant blue eyes on my side. So where did they come from? Genes are a funny, funny thing.

Super Slacker

Wow. So the last time I wrote a blog post... May... man do I know how to completely ignore and put something off.

Let's see, reading from the last post, the twins were about to get vaccinated. They did, and they did fine. They were very cranky immediately afterwards, but slept a lot that day and the next. They had a knot in their legs from one of the shots that just went away.

And my boob! Well, it had to get drained. It was very painful, since it was infected. More antibiotics finally cleared it up and Lecithin has kept recurring clogged ducts at bay (knock on wood). So, I'm still pumping and the babies are still exclusively eating breast milk - yay! This has also helped me drop close to fifteen pre-pregnancy pounds - wahoo! Getting close to pre-IF drugs weight! I'm just excited that a whole portion of my wardrobe has opened up, clothes that I had stopped wearing due to uncomfortableness from being so fat.

M has gotten the snip. Mwah-hahahah... I'm so glad he did that so I don't have to worry about getting pregnant again, and don't have to take any hormones. I think my body has had enough. I know it was hard on him, but I'm so glad he did it.

The babies are three and a half months old now. It's awesome because they smile all the time and are much more vocal. The next pediatrician appointment is at the end of July - they'll get more vaccines and hopefully a clean bill of health. We don't plan on starting solids until closer to six months, and will see what our Dr says about that - my mom was surprised to hear that its recommended that you wait until babies are six months. She has been advising my sister, who started her baby at four months... it's amazing to me that people don't do their own research. I know we all turned out "fine" but I don't see the need to rush it.

And now for some pics! The first is Miss Zee looking adorable, the second is Mr. H looking dashing and handsome in his post bath robe, and the last are them looking, to me, like the American Gothic painting. I like the pic a lot.

New Name

So I have officially changed the name of my blog. I was trying to come up with something that sounded like my old title 'My Life in Limbo' but was the opposite of being 'in limbo'. I don't think I found anything especially clever, but the new title seems to fit pretty well.

The twins are two months old. Tomorrow they go in for their first round of vaccinations. I'm slightly worried about these; how the babies will feel and behave after them. But, otherwise the babies are doing well. H has some head-shape issues that I hope we can talk about and get resolved... I know it's a problem, but it is impossible to get him to sleep on the side of his head - he moves it. And I have those head shaping pillow things, but they aren't supposed to sleep in those, so... ? There's only so much I can do.

The babies are officially in their nursery now, which is nice. I don't know that we sleep a ton better, its more like we make a lot more trips up the stairs. They're sleeping pretty well - we even got a few seven hour stretches recently. I'd say their biggest sleep deterrent is gas. And mylicon isn't the savior I'd hoped for. It helps, but not in a 'OMG its gone!' type way that you hope for at 2am.

My boobs have had issues though. I have an infection in the left one; a clogged duct that wouldn't go away developed into a raging infection. I never felt bad (like I've heard people with mastitis feel) but the skin turned red and warm. I had an ultrasound and they found abscesses, which were attacked with antibiotics, then determined to be need to be drained (OUCH!) and attacked with another round of antibiotics... and now, a week after the draining, there is still a small lump and the surface of my skin is still pink. I need to call and see what they want me to do as my antibiotics are about to run out. I just wish this would go away.

Pictures!

Funny Faces

One Month!