Jealous Much?

Oh, my sweet Hope. She has been such a good big sister. Such a trooper. So supportive of the changes in her life that come with not one but two little sisters at the same time. People ask if she's jealous, and I always reply, "no, she's a good big sister." And she is. When she really forgets about the whole big and little sister thing, and they all play together - there is nothing sweeter. However, I think she is not ready to give up her place in mommy's (or daddy's) heart.
I know there are families with lots of kids, and I have so much respect for the parents. I can't tell you how many times a day I find myself saying, "no I can't do that right now, I have to feed the babies" or change the babies or bathe the babies or fill in the blank. And I do try to take time to do activities with just Hope, but it's hard, and I feel a little stab of guilt every time I have to say no. I think mornings and evenings are when she feels it most; when we're getting up or going to bed, because there's the stairs. I wait for her to wake up so she doesn't have to wake up by herself, and inevitably she asks to be carried downstairs. I try to negotiate, can we walk together and count the stairs? No, carry me. Ug. How long do I still need to carry her downstairs? (Thank goodness she's only 28 lbs). Am I supposed to put my foot down and listen to the crying that will definitely follow if I refuse. I tell her I need to take the babies downstairs because I can't leave them upstairs by themselves, and then I come back upstairs to carry her down. I am such a sucker. Is it printed there on my forehead? I think this is a direct attention thing, the babies get carried downstairs, surely Hope must too. I know how to negotiate toys - these toys are meant for the babies, you have toys that are just yours, so these toys must be shared with the babies. But how do you negotiate your own energy? I think this is why Hope does not want to be a big girl. She does not want to go in the big girl potty. She does not want to sleep in her big girl bed. She wants to remain Mommy and Daddy's little girl. We've tried bribery in many forms to no avail. Even if the babies are sleeping in their bed, it doesn't matter, Hope still wants to be in Mommy and Daddy's bed. I read on Ask Moxie (yes, another blog) about two different types of babies in reference to crying. The first is the type that releases tension by crying. The second is a child that increases tension when crying. The first child is the kind that you put it to bed, it cries a little bit, but then once it releases that, the child can settle down and go to sleep. Unfortunately, I think all of my children are the latter. It seems that if I lay down a crying child, they increase their tension. So, I know that Hope is three years old, but even her, if she's sleepy and ready for bed, and I go to lay her in her big girl bed, she starts crying and that tension increases and she gets all worked up. Now, I know that if I were a hard-nosed parent, I would walk away and assume that she's going to just have to simper down eventually. But that is oh-so-very-hard. And I just don't think it's in me. So, yes, I know I'm left with the alternative and that is a toddler sharing my bed. It's not ideal, but we'll resolve it eventually. Maybe by the time she's a teenager. My own personal feeling is that, I don't like sleeping alone, is it so wrong that maybe she doesn't either? I think all of this just came together at once - focusing on Hope being a big girl, but trying not to replace Hope with the twins. That's parenting though, right?

Addicted to Blogs

Yes, it's sad, but true that I have a blog addiction. It could be because it's one thing I can do while holding two babies (yes, America does have talent), but it seems I could take up hours daily roaming from one blog to another. Am I catching up on all the latest and greatest in my dear friends lives who take the time to update their family blogs? Oh no. My addiction started with craft blogs, I enjoyed dreaming of all the crafts that I could do if I could ever walk away from my computer. But in the past several months, I adopted a new favorite - Mommy blogs. Who knew there was such a category? One good thing has come of this. I'm inspired to blog more (no, that is not a New Year's resolution - I refuse to make those). For those of you that keep your blog up to date that are shaking your heads at me, I'd like to point out, I'm not as bad as an unnamed friend whose last post was Dec 21, 2008 - and that was a post about Thanksgiving. (I guess FB has replaced her blog - boo).

So here are my top two Mommy blogs (both of them from Babble's list of top mommybloggers). I feel like both of these bloggers have hit my parenting style (or lack thereof) on the head. I have literally "laughed out loud" several times while reading these blogs, they're just so confessional and humorous in their manner.

1. Dooce.com

from Babble: In Heather Armstrong's words, "The chaos in our house is unreal." On Dooce, Armstrong channels that chaos through brutally honest, sardonic blog posts generating millions of visitors. Blending her biting wit with photos worthy of forwarding and an "all's fair" policy, Dooce has defined the mommy blogosphere since 2001. Along with raking in enough cashola to be the sole breadwinner, she's earned awards for Best American Blog, Best Design ed Blog, Best Writing for a Blog, Weblog of the Year and, in 2008, the Weblog's Lifetime Achievement award. In between blogging, Armstrong wrote the bestselling book It Sucked and then I Cried about her post-partum depression.

Armstrong's cross-over to the lush blog-only lifestyle was not voluntary. Now the stuff of legend, she was fired from her job after her merciless musings about her employer and her coworkers surfaced. She became what is now referred to as "dooced" — let go for negative job ramblings on the web.

2. Mom-101
from Babble:

One of Nielsen's 50 Power Moms and Forbes' Top 10 Mommy 'Hood Gurus, publisher/editor-in-chief of Cool Mom Picks, Brooklyn Heights-based Liz Gumbinner might look like another trendy blogging mama, but as she commented to the New York Post: "I'm kind of tired of the 'indie hipster smirking at the world around you' thing . . . cynicism has its place when you're, like, 20 and raging against the world, but once you become a parent, I think you owe your kids a little better than that."

Gumbinner's famous for her writing on Mom 101 about the sanctimommy trend; in her blog post she describes a particular breed of judgmental mom: "She has read every baby book, and has decided that her expert of choice is the expert and that heeding any other parenting theories is akin to worshipping false idols." Gumbinner's objectives — to put people at ease, not channel sanctimommy, and to post (often loudy) "I AM NOT READY FOR THIS" about new parenting trials — make for a lively read.

Happy 3rd Birthday Hope

Hope is very excited about her ABCs this year, so I had fun with an ABC theme for her party. I made cupcake piks for mini cupcakes with each letter of the alphabet. I hung pictures of Hope for each I made various signs for the snacks like "L is for lemonade" or "P is for pasta." I found some ABC pasta. We cut sandwiches into the letter H for Hope. Our activities included making necklaces or bracelets with letter beads to spell our names, stamping with letter stamps, fishing for magnetic letters, and "puzzle walk" that had one letter of the alphabet for each puzzle piece to make up an alphabet train - when the music would stop, each child got a puzzle piece to hold on to in order to put the puzzle together in the end. After cake and presents I read "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and then we did some dancing and twirling to some alphabet songs. Overall, a very fun party!

Happy Halloween

For those of you that haven't checked out my FB pics, here's some Halloween pics we took of the girls. I planned to try and take pics at the pumpkin patch, but the twins fell asleep and I forgot my memory card, so that flopped. Instead we did a quick backyard session. Hope had fun keeping the pumpkins away from the babies, the babies enjoyed crawling over each other. Altogether, I think it was a success.

(yes, that's Joy putting Grace in a headlock)

I put together a video of things that the twins are doing right now - they're definitely crawling, they're almost sitting up (Grace more than Joy), they eat solid food...sometimes they're even coordinated enough to grab food and get it into their mouths and so much more. We're still not sleeping through the night, but they're enjoying so many other things...so what's a little lost sleep, right?

Twain Harte

We had a nice visit to Twain Harte this summer. We enjoyed being lazy by the lake, miniature golfing, dipped "cones," roasting marshmallows - all the favorite pastimes. Jim and I both celebrated out birthdays there (thank you, Maria, for the birthday crown).

Jim and Angela, August Birthdays

Grace chilling in Hope's float

Grandma Linda and Joy

Hope enjoying her float

Grandma Linda and Grace and Joy - we're so glad she came to Twain Harte too, she was a tremendous help!

Seattle and Family pics

I can't believe how fast time flies. I started this post, and then some babies probably started crying and I never got back to it. Having two little babies can be demanding - I love them so much, but it's exhausting and some days I feel like I'm either holding them or feeding them all day long. Hope is so patient and very helpful as a big sister. She loves cuddling them and laying down with them - she can hardly wait until they really can play more interactively with her. I feel like the babies are good for the most part, but they take turns being colicky or gassy.

Last month we went to a beautiful wedding in Portland for my high school friend, Margie. So we debated the different methods of traveling there and ultimately ended up driving for its cost-effectiveness. Going there was pretty simple, we stopped every few hours to feed the babies and it went pretty smoothly. After the wedding we drove the remaining few hours to Seattle to visit our friends, the Lewis'. Vicki is a very talented artist and photographer, and it was generous of her to offer to take our family photos. A few of my favorite shots are below. It felt like old times (before kids - other than the struggle to get the two-year-olds to bed that disrupted our evening) as we chatted and played games with them and we had a really great visit. The Lewis family is a good example to ours and we're happy to have kept in touch with them. We naively decided to take the return trip in one jaunt and had a much tougher time on the return. I think we were all more ragged from the journey and the final three hours of the trip we all just wanted to be home. We definitely want to go again, but maybe we'll take two days each way for traveling.

I know, I know...

So, now this has become somewhat like my personal journal-keeping...I get behind, and so much has happened that I feel I should try and catch up and then I don't write the current stuff and becomes so far behind. In short, the babies and I are doing well. I only keep my sanity through the generous support of family. My mother-in-law makes sure we're fed, my mom comes once a week for a couple of days and is an immense help with the twins. Joy and Grace are doing well, starting to be more expressive at nearly 10 weeks and enjoying more awake time. Not to say they haven't had their moments (which seem like hours if it's both of them crying at the same time), but overall we feel very blessed.

I have managed to venture out of the house - sometimes with help, sometimes not - and it's kind of fun the attention that twins draw. Who knew it was still such a novelty that you feel like a mini-celebrity with the looks that you get and all the people that stop you.

Anyhow, last weekend was my friend Misty's wedding. It was a beautiful day and I'm so very happy for her and Robert. Below is a pic of Hope that Stephanie took, and I felt it encompassed Hope perfectly right now. She looks all sweet and innocent, but you know, she just might be plotting something sneaky too. I'll try to be better about posting more regularly.