First, I have to say THANK YOU to everyone who wrote in support to me on my last post. I wish I had time to respond to each comment, but for right now I don't. Thank you thank you thank you. It means a lot!!
We signed up on c.are.com. I thought spending $30 in hopes of finding a nanny was a bit ridiculous, but I'm so glad we signed up! We've had 24 people respond to our ad so far. Some were completely crazy, but a lot were legitimately decent people. I wrote back and forth with several people, set up three interviews and we hired one! Yeah! We hired a nanny!! She's coming over tomorrow to hang out with me for a few hours so I can show her the usual routine and get comfortable with the babies. She walked in, sat on the ground and talked to both babies. She's intelligent, energetic and sweet. I'm hopeful that she will work out.
Let me tell you about the first girl that came over. I think we got catfished. She looked NOTHING like her profile pic. She looked rough!!! She barely paid attention to the babies and when Ella puked a little bit the girl said 'yuck.' Yes, yuck. She was across the room from Ella. YUCK?! I wanted to kick her out right then...
Aside from the nanny stuff, I've still had a couple of rough days emotionally and physically. The babies are switching to one nap a day all of a sudden... How to do it has been confusing for everyone and led to crankiness for us all. Last week one wouldn't sleep in the morning and the other wouldn't sleep in the afternoon, so I knew it was time to convert to the one nap a day.
It's been tough...but I think we're all getting used to it. They have been sleeping in until 8ish all of a sudden. They go back down for a nap at 1 after lunch. The nap has been short...only 1-1.5 hours, but I think once they get more comfortable with this routine it will last longer (we're currently 2 hours into the current nap!). One nap a day makes it a lot easier to get out and do things!! I'm definitely liking that! We went to the mall this morning at 10. I returned a few things, did a little shopping and we walked around while I sipped my Star.bucks. It was a lovely little morning. I could get used to that...
So much seems to be changing... EE decided they want to use sippy cups all of a sudden. They are feeding themselves milk throughout the day. Evan prefers a bottle at night because he's usually completely worn out and would rather cuddle and be fed. I thought they'd never take cups, but just like that one day they decided it was time.
Both have also decided they want to feed themselves with a spoon. Typically at meal times, they get veggies, fruit and whatever we are having. Depending on how much they ate, we'll spoon them some yogurt, cottage cheese or a blended fruit/veggie. Lately they have been grabbing for the spoon and feeding themselves with it. Of course they can't load the spoon, but they hand it to us and we load it for them.
Meal time is a mess... anyone else have this problem? Somehow, they have decided when they are done with something or when they don't like something it should be thrown overboard. We'll tell them no, clear their trays etc. but can't find a way to stop it. We have food on our curtains, walls, floors. We have a dog that we let clean some of it up, but I'm so tired of picking up food from everywhere! I'm thinking about getting something to put under their chairs at mealtime... Is this normal or are my kids messy?
I find myself looking at pictures and often thinking 'a year ago' we were doing this or that.... I'm glad I've taken thousands of photos and videos because I love looking back at them and seeing how far we've come. They seem to be growing up and changing so quickly!! The days are long, but the year has flown by.
For no particular reason, it has just been one of those weeks... (If you are in the trenches, you may not want to read this. I'm going to complain about babies. Yes, I struggled and waited years for them so why am I complaining? I feel guilty...but for my sanity-of which there is very little-I'm doing it.)
It took us a week to get over the great hand-foot-and-mouth disease outbreak of 2013. While we were down and out, the 'to do' list kept getting longer. Normally we can stay on top of all the necessary things that need to be done (for the most part). However, being out for a week just led to everything piling up and I don't have the energy to catch up. Sleep has been shit since they were sick. Ella finally starting sleeping through the night this week. Evan has been touch and go...I think he has a molar coming in so that doesn't help. Have I mentioned how much I HATE teething?
We seem to be transitioning to a one nap a day schedule based on the refusal of naps had by both babies this week. Lately they have been getting up around 7:30-8, going down for a nap around 10:15-10:30, waking up around 12 and going down around 3-3:30 for 45 min-1 hour. I get up with them in the morning and then shower, clean up and start to prepare lunch during their morning nap. When one refuses to nap in the morning, this throws a wrench in things.... I need this break. This ME time. I haven't been getting it and I can't get anything done!!! The next baby refuses to nap in the afternoon so again, I can't get anything done!
It's especially draining when I have to work in the evening. I need as much time during the day as possible to get things ready for their dinner/ours, get my work stuff together and try to clean up/prep everything for my husband to make it a little easier on him. He comes home around 5:30 and I have to get ready and get out the door by 6:15. So you see, when I've had a baby up with me all day long it's just difficult.
I've mentioned this several times, but in case you missed it, we have no family around. We live in TN and they all live in WI/IA/SD. I know it's our choice. I stand by it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't cause stress. For 13 months now, we've gone out as husband and wife only a handful of times. We never get a break. I never get a break. I stay home with them all the time. I rush off to work 2-3 times a week (I get home around 11:30-12:30 when I work so I get in bed and fall asleep about an hour later). The weekends are spent trying to cram in grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry and all other random to do things because there is no time during the week. I'd like to be able to do more fun family things, but most the time we are exhausted from everything going on and don't get to it. I want to have friends over, but I rarely have the energy to clean and cook. I'm with the babies all weekend long unless I go out grocery shopping or run some other errand. My point is, I am exhausted!!!
I'm seriously behind on mandatory training at one of my jobs (I was told last night to catch up or I wouldn't be able to work there). I need CEU's in order to keep my license for my job and I have ZERO. Yes 0. I have to finish 10 (1 CEU/hour of training) by the end of the year. Five of the hours have to be in person and 5 can be on the internet. I have a dentist appointment and OB appointment that are overdue (how do I go to an appointment when my husband works 8-5 M-F?)
I feel like I have little support. I'll tell family I'm struggling or having a hard time and I never get helpful responses... We've all been there. Hang in there. It get's better. Doesn't help when you have cranky babies and are tired of treading water. I don't have time to stay in touch with friends. I'm a horrible friend these days. If I can manage a text, email or a 10 minute phone call it's a big deal. I went out for a friend's birthday dinner last week and this was a monumental event! I feel lonely... There have been plenty of days I've convinced myself I'm not cut out for this and dreamed of running away and starting over. I have even applied for a few jobs on my most desperate days.
I am tired. So tired. I need a break. We both do. We all do. In order to be a better mom and wife something has to change... For these reasons, we broke down and paid to sign up on care.com ($30 thanks to a $10 promo code). I posted an ad for a part time nanny position and we've had 22 people apply. Some I wouldn't trust to water a plant (hi there. i have two babies but I can watch yours. they real pretty...um no thank you!), but some were great candidates. We're interviewing 3 people this weekend and hopefully hiring one and having a back up person as well. I absolutely do not want to pay someone $10-12 an hour to hang out with our kids and I'm leery of leaving them with ANYONE (even family) because I do it better, but I have to get over this... I have a serious 'I can do it all. I'm Wonder Woman' complex I think. I used to be able to do it all. I've always been able to juggle whatever came my way, but for the first time I'm failing at life.
I'm hanging on by a thread. Did I mention I sat in our shower and cried for a good 20 minutes this morning?
I hope the nanny is the answer. I hope having 3-5 hours a week to myself to get things done will help me feel more refreshed. Getting out once a month to go on a date sounds dreamy. I'm not sure what the answer is, but hopefully this will bring some kind of relief.
Evan is down here with me since he refused to nap this morning and he just knocked over the paper shredder. The FULL paper shredder. As if I didn't have enough to do already. Time to wrap up and get ready for the lunch crowd.
I wrote in my last post that we have yet to contract a sickness of any kind and of course I curesed myself by making this statement. We had a hell of a time dealing with hand-foot-and-mouth disease over the past week. When we do anything, we go all out. Sickness included. We couldn't just have a common cold with some sniffles. Nope. We got diseased!!!
We had photos taken the first week of Oct for their one year pics (I'll post some later. LOVE how they turned out.) The photographer has 3 kids and runs a business out of her house. Yeah, she's busy, I get it. Well, there were toys all over and some not so clean carpet that the babies were roaming on. Evan puts EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING in his mouth (snails, dirt, hoses, woodchips, flowers, etc.-that's just a list from being outside yesterday for 30 min). Of course he was eating a bunch of toys and I tried to stop him, but he's a forse to be reckoned with.
Fast forward to Wednesday and sleep became interrupted for both babies (mainly Evan). Thursday he had a fever of 102.4 and had a rash on his upper legs/butt. I thought it was some kind of nasty diaper rash, but we don't get diaper rash bc of the cloth diapers so I was stumped. Rash got worse. Fever sustained. Baby was cranky. Husband was heading out of town the next day. I knew it was a virus and there was nothing we could do but treat the symptoms, but we went to the doctor anyway. One look at the rash and he was diagnosed with hand-foot-and-mouth disease. It's highly contagious. Ella probably will get it too.
I about lost my shit Friday when I was here alone with the two of them. Ella was just coming down with the sickness and both were CRANKY! Being stuck at home with two sick cranky kids is extremely trying. Wow. By the time my husband got home that night at 8, I put myself directly to bed because I was cranky and a tad (okay very) bitchy.
No one slept...we were up from 1:30 on. Sometimes just to give meds and comfort. Sometimes with Ella screaming inconsolably. She spiked a temp of 103.5. It was awful. Ella had to sleep on one of us or she wouldn't sleep. It was exhausting. We made it through Saturday and our plans of going to the pumpkin patch were cancelled. By Sat night my husband and I were feeling achy and feverish so we went to bed at 8. Yeah, 8 on a Sat night. Exciting!
Babies were up on and off screaming all night. I started throwing up around 2 and made a few rounds into the bathroom for that experience. We both had sore throats, aches and fevers and felt like hell. Somehow we survived and made it to Sunday. I tried to help out with the babies, but honestly could not do it. Both the hubs and I felt like hell, but he took over taking care of them and I went back to bed. I got up to help get them to bed, but stayed in bed until 2. I don't remember the last time I was so sick I couldn't get out of bed....
Sunday night was more not sleeping....the husband worked from home Mon and Tue because he didn't want to get the whole office ill with this crap. Evan started feeling better by Sunday and Ella was feeling better by Monday. By Tuesday I finally had my happy playful babies back. They wouldn't eat or drink much, wouldn't play, just fussed for 6 days straight. That's enough to send you to a rubber room.
We all had rashes of varying degrees. Evan's was mostly on his upper legs/butt. Ella's was all over her body (see pic below). Collin had it on his stomach and back. I had blisters on my feet and in between my toes (made walking comfortable). We all had blisters in our mouths/throats. Ouch. No wonder the babies have been on a hunger strike.
What a week.... Sleep deprivation is an awful horrible thing. Thankfully my husband was the rock that got us through this whole thing as usual. I can be such a mess. He is the voice of reason at times. I'm thankful for his calm demeanor. I don't give him nearly enough praise.
First sickness down. I'm sure we got it from the photographer's house. She wrote on FB that her family was sick in bed... Oh well, that's part of this whole growing up thing I guess. We got some amazing photos out of it and we survived.
I'm thankful to have healthy happy babies again. We're moving on to bigger and better things!
Whaaaat?! I'm back already. Yes indeed. I was excited to see comments from you lovely ladies! I'm glad someone is interested in still following along and reading this craziness. I realized how much I missed writing. It's therapeutic for me.
So here's the deal. I try to get out with the babies several times a week to do something. They are a bit young yet for organized activities so we don't do any Little Gym classes or story time at the library stuff. I want to get out and meet more people with young kids, and I have some, but it's still a pain to organize getting together for play dates around nap schedules. For right now, we kind of just do our own thing so I can keep our schedule on schedule. Usually these outings we go on involve spending money...which is not a good habit. I'm trying to do some free stuff instead of trips to Target, Carter's, Hobby Lobby etc. where I always seem to spend at least $20. The park! What a novel idea. There is one less than 5 min from our house (that's driving time. Loading the babies alone takes more than 5 min).
We've been several times and it's always been a great experience. Evan loves to run around and attempt to eat wood chips. Who wouldn't?! Ella likes to walk holding on to my hands. We all hit the swings and slides. Good times.
Well, today something happened. I think I should be initiated into some kind of mom club for having a problem at the park. Here's my park experience today. We stroll up to see three kids running around all about age 5 and under. Perfect. My babies love to watch other kids run around.
As I unload Evan and let him walk around all three kids come up to the stroller. Two of them start talking to Evan. One of them, who we'll call red face snotty nose, starts grabbing at Ella's pacifier, the diaper bag and starts pushing the stroller (while ELLA is still IN IT and I'm walking around trying to keep my eye on Evan). Red face snotty nose is 18 months old according to dad who's standing RIGHT there and doing NOTHING to stop her. I had to put Ella's paci away in an locked space bc I don't know what kind of contagious disease that kid was rocking. Mind you, all the while the dad keeps asking the usual twin questions and makes several comments about how hard it must be to have two etc. No shit it's hard! Now get your sick kid away from us and stop letting her push on my stroller and grab stuff from it....what an idiot.
We moved to a different area to get away from red face snotty nose and her idiot father. Next up was a boy who was friendly enough, but had no parents around. I asked him how old he was and he said he was 6 (obviously not 6) then he said he was 3 and then 4. Who knows...I'm going to guess he was about 3.5 years old. Um. Where are his parents? As Evan was walking around this kid, who we'll call bug bites since his legs were loaded with red bumps, kept walking up to him and trying to direct where he should go. He also kept trying to get my attention to play with him. Um...I have two kids here. WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS? Oh yeah, they are the spaced out couple sitting WAYYYY over at a picnic table engaging in their own conversation. Nice. So bug bites keeps herding Evan and asking me to push him in the swing over and over and asks to get Ella out of the swing so he can get in it. Annoying! Finally bug bites parents manage to scrape their ass off the picnic table and come over to push their kid on the swing. The dad had to the balls to ask me to move my stroller so he could push his kid super high on the swing. Nice.
We got the hell out of the swing area and went to another part. Some girl who told me she is 5 starts hanging out with us. She's cute and friendly and not annoying. Well, she runs over to a pavilion where her parents are and brings over a handful of chips and keeps trying to feed them to the babies. I was polite and said they don't eat chips, they just ate lunch and aren't hungry etc. It didn't work. This chick was persistent. Chip girl kept trying to shove chips in my kids faces. What the hell?! Can her parents not see this happening and see I'm trying to manage two ONE year olds and I don't need to keep an eye on their 5 year old as well?!
As if keeping chip girl away from Evan and Ella's mouths wasn't enough, red face snotty nose wandered back over and started grabbing at stuff from the stroller again while her dad kept making 'i don't know how you do it with two' comments. I finally loaded up the babies and we went home.
We have a small play gym and swings out back so we played on those instead.
Some people's kids....
Anyone else have any experiences like this? It's the first time I've had any kind of run in like this, but I know it's not the last.
I'm back baby!!! I've been following along with most of your blogs still, but I just haven't found the time to even comment. I am lame. Most of the time my free time from the babies has been spent doing laundry, cleaning, prepping food for when they wake up, cooking us meals etc. Things have calmed down some and now that they are napping well (sometimes it would take me 30-45 min to get Evan to GO to sleep. By the time I got him down Ella would wake up 15 min later). It's been hard. I could write 37 posts on how difficult of a baby Evan has been...
Yup, one year. Holy shit. My babies are one year old! We have survived a year. It has been the most trying year of my life thus far, but I don't think I'd change much....
Where do I begin? I struggled a lot in the past year....from dealing with reflux, colic, lack of sleep, trying to adjust to being a SAHM who works still on the side, lots of puke (I think our entire house got a once over coat of puke), PPD (I had a worse case of this then I admit to most people. Why am I ashamed of it? I had the baby blues hard core. There I said it), not having family close by to help, and a lot of emotions surrounding our not ideal birthing experience, etc. Sure, it has been difficult, but I could also give a list of positive things as well....
Anyway, I guess this is what kept me away from blogging. I was just trying to survive each day and some days were filled with tears and feeling inadequate and I wanted to hide from myself more than share it with the world. I am in a good place (mostly. Being a mom of twins is an interesting experience), and I miss blogging. I miss writing down what I'm thinking. Maybe someone out there misses reading my take on things too?
We had a first birthday party for Evan and Ella. It was a lot of work to prepare for and took us about a week to recover from, but it was so much fun! We are not throw big parties type of people at all, but we've waited a long time for this and went all out. Both of our parents/EE's grandparents came down from IA/WI and we had about 25 friends here as well. There theme was Oktoberfest and they had leiderhosen and dirndl outfits for the occasion made by my amazing grandma.
Neither one of the babies have been sick in the past year. At all. I know now they will both have the flu next week since I said that, but of course on their birthday Ella wasn't feeling well. She has a runny nose and was generally cranky. Fun. Of course she wanted to be held by mom or dad only the entire party. They had their one year appointment 2 days later and turns out she was suffering from allergies. We got her some children's clar.itan and she was good as new! Poor Ella...
I could write a lot more, but I'm going to ease my way back into this thing. This post has a lot of words, but doesn't really say much of anything. Ha! I'm rusty at this blogging thing...
