Beauty in the Ordinary

Monday, March 14, 2011

My Cutie Pies (Video)

This is just some video of Vivienne and Miles being ridiculously cute. Most of this stuff is for the grandparents, but the rest of you can watch it, too, if you're really, really bored. =)

Running and Food Poisoning (A Bad Combination)

This weekend started out great! I ran all the way to the 540 construction and back, which is just under 6 miles round trip. That's the farthest that I've run since before I was pregnant. I was running without the babies, because Jason offered to watch them while I got out for a little while. It was great to soak up the wonderful weather we've been having lately.

I also decided to eat some leftovers that were apparently a couple days too old. I hate throwing away food. But I guess I've learned that I would rather throw away food than throw it up (sorry, I couldn't help it). Sunday morning around 4 am, I woke up feeling nauseated. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. Then I managed to fall asleep again and woke up at 8 am nauseated again. Ugh. Nothing like hugging a toilet and then trying to breastfeed two babies at the same time. It wasn't pretty at all. *shiver*

Luckily, it was a Sunday, so Jason was home all day. He was an absolute champion of a daddy (as he always is) and watched them all day while I slept. I would come downstairs long enough to nurse them and then crawl back to my cave upstairs and pass out. I went to sleep last night around 8 pm and slept until 7 am this morning, only waking once to feed the babies around 3 am.

I seem to be back to normal today. I think I'll just walk today and pick the running back up tomorrow.

It Gets Better After HOW LONG?!?

I remember when the babies were only about 2 weeks old. Another twin mommy came over to drop off a meal for us, which was much appreciated. She also gave me some advice, and she told me that she and another twin mommy agreed that twins get much easier after four months.

(Pause.)

FOUR MONTHS?!? Are you freaking kidding me?? I'm not going to survive four months of this! (Of course, I didn't say that, but I sure thought it.) It was so difficult in the beginning that to hear that "it gets better after four months" literally made me want to cry. Actually, I might have cried about it, but I can't remember - at least I'm sure I didn't cry in front of her.

Anyway, it is true that around 4 months, you really hit your stride and the babies start to get much easier. But the truth is that they get easier every day. You learn to read your babies, and your babies get to know you better, too. You understand how to meet their needs, and you fall more in love with them every day.

Now we're already at almost 8 months, and four months seems like such a long time ago. Somehow we all survived it.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Lunch at SAS and Carrots in the Garage

Today was a great day with the babies. They both took great naps this morning. Vivienne fell asleep on my chest for about an hour and Miles slept in his crib for almost 2 hours. Then we went to SAS to have lunch with Jason. We love seeing him in the middle of the day. SAS has a great cafeteria - excellent food and live piano music every day. After our meal, I always enjoy grabbing a cup of free coffee to go. I think the babies really had fun (and soaked in all the attention from the SAS employees sitting near us).

After lunch, we did some grocery shopping and went for a walk with Elise and Greg and their 3 canine companions, Scout, Max and Hank. We must have been quite the spectacle - a double stroller, 3 dogs and 2 babies in carriers.

After the walk, I finally got the babies to take a nap at the same time (seriously, it's so hard to get them both to nap at the same time after noon). I needed to puree some carrots that I had steamed for them, but I wouldn't dare run the food processor in the kitchen while they're sleeping. So there I was, standing in the garage, with the food processor. My, how life has changed!

Taking the Kitchen into the Garage

Baby Ear Cleaning

Miles and Vivienne have had stuffy noses for a couple weeks, but nothing very serious. Yesterday morning, Vivienne was coughing a lot. It was a dry cough, but it seemed like she just couldn't stop coughing. We took her temperature (SO glad that we don't have to do this rectally anymore!!), and she didn't have a fever. I called the advice nurse just to be safe. The nurse recommended that we bring her in to get checked out.

So, I took both babies to the doctor's office by myself. This really isn't a big deal unless one baby decides to have a bad day. If one baby is crying, then I basically can't really hear anything that the doctor is saying to me. Luckily, both babies were in a good mood.

While we waited for the nurse practitioner to come in, Miles and Vivienne proceeded to completely annihilate the paper that was covering the exam table. Miles just wanted to rip it to shreds and flirt with himself in the mirror. Vivienne just wanted to immediately eat as much of it as possible. She has a refined palate for papyrus, apparently.

The NP wanted to check Vivienne's ears to be sure that she didn't have an ear infection. She couldn't get a good view of Viv's eardrums, though, because there was ear wax in the way, so she had to clean her ears. Of course, I was thinking,"Ok. This will be easy. Grab a Q-tip. Do a little digging. No big deal." I was clearly wrong. I had to hold Vivienne's arms while she stuck this long tiny Q-tip in her ears. Honestly, Vivienne screamed louder than she has ever screamed for any shots or any other pain. I had no idea this was going to hurt that much.

After the ear ~~torture~~ cleaning, the NP was able to see her eardrums. The first ear (the one that she really screamed for), she said it looked slightly red, but she wasn't sure whether that would indicate an infection or whether the redness was from the ~~torture~~ cleaning. The other ear looked just fine.

So, the test was inconclusive and I had a virtually inconsolable baby. Even when I tried to nurse her, she just kept screaming and wouldn't eat. She's never done that. Poor baby, she just wasn't feeling good and now her ear was hurting. The NP gave me a prescription and said that I should fill it if Vivienne's symptoms seemed to worsen.

Luckily, the hard morning was followed by lunch at the Chik-fil-a drive-through (I think I enjoyed that more than the babies) and meeting some dear friends at a playground to chat and play.

Starting to Stand (Supported)

Miles and Viv have gotten really strong at standing lately. They have been standing with our support for quite a while, but now they can do it for quite a long time. Vivienne is very steady on her feet, but Miles is still learning to steady himself. We have a musical table (you can see it in the background below) that they like to hold onto while they're standing up. We still have to have our hands on them, though, because they will eventually fall over.