I owe quite a few people emails, i am sorry. I am totally behind. Still trying to get ready to start school next week. Actually most of my teaching stuff is done but have a bunch of nitty-gritty to take care of. I keep remembering more things i have to do. BLAH. I will never catch up. My MIL is coming tonight, probably, so i had better do something about the state of the house. BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. I wish i could just hide in my bed and sleep.
Some outfit, huh? Her shirt says 'this is my birthday shirt', courtesy of S...
The mermaid cake....My neighbor R made it. She's the nosy one...but she loves C to bits and is happy to do stuff like this. She & her daughter made cupcakes with a mermaid theme too. S made handmade princess invitations...and came early to put up decorations. I did almost nothing (though i did clean the house!)...it takes a village, to throw a kid's birthday party...
Presents....
....are more fun when everybody helps unwrap!
It was a great party! Of course, put a bunch of kids in a room with some balloons and it is always good....Oh, and her actual birthday isn't until this Friday (i wanted to avoid a party on labor day weekend, because most people are going away, including the lady who made the cake, heh heh). So none of your birthday wishes are belated yet...
April did show up by the end of the day -- she had been hospitalized for an asthma attack & had a phone issue at the same time. Of course i only had the one number for her & she only had the one number for me. Thus we pay for our over-reliance on cell phones. So she is fine now and back on the job, and we have emergency backups and all that now. I guess we should have had that before but my mind doesn't work very well these days....
It is 9:10 pm and all the littles are in bed sleeping! This is a first, i hope it is not a last though...
Tomorrow is C's birthday party....she will be three, i can hardly believe it. so i have been cleaning all day, as much as i can. I cleaned out some of the weeds in the garden (it looked so bad...) because she wanted to have cake outside. But of course it seems there are thunderstorms in the forecast...anyway i will post pics when i have them.
April didn't show up for work this morning. No phone call, and her phone is disconnected. OK, so much for that babysitter...possibly the job was emotionally too much to handle after all. But now i am in a bad spot -- no sitter & work starts in 10 days.
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I agree with Julia's rant about options....i guess that is why i assumed that April's loss was further in the past. They don't treat you with much respect when you are young. But i suppose that even when you are older, they don't often treat you with much respect. Goddamn. It is very wrong.
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A new montessori school is opening up for fall, essentially just around the corner from our house. And they have a very attractive 'introductory' tuition rate. So C may very well end up going there...we will go visit it tomorrow.
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The boys weigh in at 9 lbs 11 oz (M) and 10 lbs 2 oz (T). Which is 10th percentile still...but they look good to me. Chloe is 80th percentile in height and weight, so yes she *is* big for her age, and all of a sudden too, since she was always 50th percentile before. I thought it was kind of an illusion that she looked so big & grown up -- that it was just because the babies are so small -- but apparently not. She was her on usual behavior at the doctor's office for her checkup -- whiny and difficult for the nurses, and a bundle of smiles & happiness for the doctor. I dare not change to a female doctor, who would she flirt with then?
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I have lost no weight at ALL since giving birth to the boys. Not a freaking ounce. I thought breastfeeding twins was supposed to be some kind of magic diet, but no dice. NOW i will have to figure out how to cut calories without endangering my precarious milk supply. That or invest in a whole new wardrobe. Oh, and a whole new hubby who doesn't mind having a porky wife.
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A has school orientation tomorrow, and not a single pair of school shoes that fit. So we are going to get some now....once i can get out of my PJ's....
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Looking at the catalogs for bulbs for spring....can't believe it is that time already.
April (the babysitter) and i took the babies to their 2-month checkup today. In the car on the way back we got to talking, and yeah you already know where this is going.
'I had a miscarriage', she said, 'I was 6 months along'. Not a miscarriage in my book...but what happened was that she fell, and as a result the baby died -- no labor, they did a D&E. I told her my own dead baby story, in brief, and ascertained that she had not been given a choice between laboring vs. the D&E, they just did it. 'Like an abortion', she said, 'they sucked it out, but the baby was already dead.' But she said she wouldn't have wanted to labor anyway....which i can understand, actually. That would not be my choice now, but prior to my loss i would most likely have chosen a surgical procedure too.
Anyway, i asked her how old she was at the time. Somehow i had gotten the impression it was quite far in the past. '22', she said, 'it was a year ago'. A year ago? And she accepted my job? Which is what i said to her -- i know i couldn't have done that, a year after Nicolas died...take care of someone else's babies. Heck, i don't even think i had held one yet. 'It's fine, usually', April said. 'I'm fine...this weekend was hard though. Two baby showers.'
Oh, what to say? There is nothing to say. I am so sad -- for her, for me, for all of us. So, so many. There was some chocolate ice cream in the freezer, (Ben & Jerry's Phish food), and i ate a good deal of it...but it didn't help. There just isn't enough chocolate in the world, to make it better.
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As they get plumper they look more and more identical. I no longer dress them alike because if i do, i mix them up! If this continues, i will have to mark one of them somehow (dot of nail polish on a toenail, perhaps.)
They are on one of the quilts that my neighbor had made for them.
C's birthday party is in a little more than a week, then she starts at a different preschool (though i have not yet decided which one), Alexander starts school on the 27th (orientation is next week), i start teaching right after Labor day. I have not even looked at any of my teaching materials yet. I hired a lady (her name is April) to sit the babies 20 hours a week, she started this week. I am trying to get them on some kind of schedule...We are trying to finish the 3rd floor so it is ready for renting, ha ha ha.
So yeah, it is a little hectic around here. I am still figuring out how i am going to manage all of this!!!
This was from last week at the mall, after my visit to the OB's office, but i forgot to blog about it then.
Saleslady A: Oh, twins! Look at the twins!
Saleslady A & B gush over babies for awhile
Saleslady A: So, is it hard, having two at once?
Me: Uh, it's not easy....
Saleslady A: Someone who works here always says that God only gives you what you can handle. Is it you who always says that?
Saleslady B: No, it isn't me....
Me: Well, that's bull anyway.
*everybody laughs*, Saleslady A says appreciatively 'Listen to her! She says it's bull!'
I hate that particular statement, which i have heard many times in connection with both Nicolas' death and with the birth of the twins...but i have never dared contradict it before. I would not have dared here either except it was clear that the person who really believed it was not there. I am not assertive enough to contradict someone about something like this to their face -- if someone is trying to make me feel better or bolster my confidence or whatever they are trying to do, i can't seem to tell them they are spewing nonsense. So i was pleased to finally be able to say it somehow, to someone -- even if not the lady who made the original statement.
Check it out, we are now big enough that we fit into our cloth diapers! (Bum Genius one-sizes)
OK, the babies are taking a long beautiful nap and i should go take a shower and vacuum while i can. But as you see i am blogging. I am kind of in the doldrums since my postpartum appointment on monday. Don't exactly know why, though.
Dr. B greeted me with 'Hey, we had a story just like yours the other day' -- i immediately thought he was talking about Nicolas and started wondering if i should ask him if i could contact the woman, or not, seeing as i have newborns. Even though he wasn't my OB then, of course, it seems to me that Nicolas' death colors all my interactions at the OB's office. But apparently he was talking about a lady who was completely and totally shocked when she found out she was carrying spontaneous twins. I guess, thinking about it, if it was a story of death he would not have yelled it across the hallway, eh? Duh. But what else could i think of, when the OB says 'a story like yours'? I forget, i suppose, that people in real life don't automatically associate me with dead babies.
So my appointment went well, everything is fine, i didn't cry or anything. There's just something upsetting, disconcerting about these things. I fed myself junk food and went to the mall afterward to shake it off. It worked, temporarily. But now two days later, there is a moment of quiet and i want to cry again. Still can't figure out why. Luckily the moment of quiet will not last. So very luckily! Maybe it is just that going to the OB reminds one so viscerally of how easily, how quickly, things could be so very different.
just a cute pic. All the sunflowers are volunteers, coming up in various places in the vegetable garden. The sunflower on the right is 'Lemon Queen', a 'decorative' variety that i planted last year. The one on the left is the one from the birdseed. C loves to fill the bird feeder but tends to drop seed everywhere, so these are coming up all over the place. Oddly enough, i think they are alot prettier than the so-called 'decorative' ones.
Several of you have asked about Abee -- indeed he was sorely neglected when M and T first came home. Poor Abee! But he seems to have regained C's attention now...and the other day she decided it was his birthday. Here he is in his party hat, waiting to eat his cake!
We didn't have very many party guests but Abee's friend Bitty Baby did come, wearing her pink top and white bonnet. (Yes, his party hat is part of Bitty Baby's princess costume but perhaps it would be more prudent not to mention that to him)
Chocolate chip. Stuck inside with kids on a rainy day, what are you going to do? C loves to measure and mix, and rub chocolate all over the couch. The hubby informed me, upon coming home, that the cookies weren't very good. Indeed, they were hard as rocks -- something which happens when you consistently leave them in the oven too long while you are busy with other things. But rock-hard cookies are good when dipped in that morning cup of coffee.
Theoretically, anyway. I guess they weren't that bad after all. I should have stashed some in my sock drawer.
I have not been around much, everything is fine but it has been a tough week. 6-week growth spurt for the twins, massive doses of jealousy from C, etc etc etc. So in the absence of content here is a picture of the boys, who have now actually outgrown their preemie clothes.
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