Life With Twins – Week 35

Happy week 35 – which I say with a bit of sarcasm as we’ve entered our 6th leap which means we are facing a few weeks of crankiness, less sleep and supposedly less eating but I have yet to see that one 🙂 Just before we started this leap, though, Abby slept through the night for the first time and two nights in a row! (Now I think this was to prepare us for what was to come.)

Miles is the proud new owner of 5 teeth, which is technically 6 but the 5th and 6th haven’t quite fully broken through yet. No signs from miss Abby yet but that’s ok because I kind of like her toothless grin. Not much progress on the crawling even though I often put them on the floor on their bellies with something just out of reach and tell them to “go get it”. Just like the dogs, they don’t listen. 🙂

An interesting (and admittedly slightly annoying) new thing I’ve seen is they seem like they are getting a bit testy. Once, when the milk hadn’t come down yet and Miles wasn’t happy about it, he let me know by bellowing out not a cry, but a VERY unhappy scream. I can kind of imagine the baby version of Veruca Salt yelling, “but I want it NOOOOOOW!!!!”. They can be playing happily, but if I walk by too closely, one cries. If I pick up one, sometimes the other cries. By the end of this, I am going to have Hulk arms. That’s cool, as long as I don’t turn green.

Anyway, I often feed them in bed in the morning and eat my own breakfast while they do. I can no longer do this, because they stop drinking wanting oatmeal. Even if I wait, they still want oatmeal, so I am now sharing my breakfast :). One day soon I’ll be eating in the bathroom.

On my end, I actually started reading a new book, which is something I haven’t done in quite awhile.  I discovered that Jodi Picoult had written a new book and since I’ve read and loved just about every one she’s written, of course I had to read it (and so far it has been awesome as well). I was sick over the weekend (yuck) and still can’t exercise let alone run, but my back/butt at least feels much better (a more thorough update on that to come).

Not many pictures this week, sorry. But better some than none!

• Abby gets friendly with her inner hungry caterpillar

The baby girl, much like the caterpillar, was still hungry

• Miles (now out of his sleep suit), sports a new sack

I call it the “baby in a bag”

• Miles insists that I rest, and not do laundry

I will sleep on you, and ONLY you

• And grows a strange obsession (Abby too) with non toy objects (I swear all babies really need are phone cords, hair, cardboard boxes and in our case, the edges of the alphabet mat).

Toys? Who needs toys?

Half Marathon Training Run 1: Why Long Runs Save My Sanity

Most of the time I come off as a blunt, sarcastic, don’t-care-what-you-think person. The truth is, though, I can be pretty thin skinned and sensitive. I can take everything to heart. I’m extra hard on myself. I worry needlessly about what others think. Little things start to become big things and I obsess over little details or mistakes. I can feel like I’ve failed at all the things. Like it or not, this has been a part of who I am for many years, and I didn’t always deal with it well because I didn’t have a healthy coping mechanism. I have toughened up over the years and can usually catch myself before any major spiraling happens, but I spent much of high school and college depressed. Then one day (very long story short), feeling completely overwhelmed with stress and emotion, I ran out of my dorm. I ran down the street until I felt like I could not breathe. I made it probably a quarter of a mile before my lungs felt like they might explode, but the point was I didn’t feel as overwhelmed anymore. I had an outlet.

Fertile or infertile, motherhood is a challenge. My emotions have been a little up and down the last few weeks. The babies are going through a lot of developmental changes right now. We’ve hardly followed a schedule for the last 2-3 weeks. They are waking sometimes several times a night (one of the main signs of these Wonder Weeks leaps is less sleep). They are crankier. Its silly, but difficult not to sometimes take the extra crying as a sign I am not doing something right. I’m not sure how to handle all of these new things and still make sure they are fed, happy and well rested. I question working because of its impact on “the schedule”. I obsess over feeding times, nap times, bed times and wake times. Sometimes so much so that I am missing the babies, and by that I mean their giggles, babbles and rolls. Their faces as they eat bananas for the first time. The smile they give me when I go in the room to wake them up. I’m realizing that one day I’m going to wake up and realize that I’ve missed it all. I swore up and down that I would appreciate these miracles I have been given, and while I realize that you simply cannot appreciate EVERY moment, I also realize I am missing too much over these obsessions.

Yesterday I went for my first long run post super lame toe injury. Running has this way of taking my brain out of its obsessions and back more into reality. As the miles add up the fog clears, the tendency to react in raw emotion lessens, and I can really think logically through the issues. The truth is I personally believe schedules are important, but realistically, what schedule is the EXACT same day to day? Within these schedules we need a certain amount of flexibility – something I have been really lacking recently. And not just in reference to the babies and schedules.

I’d been looking forward to this run all week. I didn’t initially take it well when it was postponed one day, and then two. When I made it out the door, I felt like I was ready to take it on full force. Then, I got a stomach cramp. A stomach cramp that lasted 2.5 miles. For a moment it sucked the excitement of the run out of me but I instinctually pushed through knowing it wasn’t going to last forever. Low and behold, it didn’t. I took it easy, took short breaks when needed. I was able to pick up speed for the second half, and finished feeling triumphant. I hardly remembered the cramp happened at all.

I know there will continue to be tough times and constant changes in schedulesDeep down, I also know they won’t last forever and it won’t be the end of the world. Sometimes, though, I really need that reminder.

And when I do, I’ll go for a run.

Life With Twins – Week 15

Boy are we starting to see some personalities come out of the twins recently. I think we are going through another Wonder Week, though this one should be more fondly (sarcasm) referred to as Wonder Month (roughly 14.5-19.5 weeks, though I think we started it about a week earlier). During this period of time, it says that the babies will begin to learn the following skills:

• Suddenly very active; one moment he is taking a rest, the next suddenly moving about (they both do this)
• Hardly misses when grasping (both do this)
• Puts mothers hand in mouth (not yet)
• Pulls cloth away from face (haven’t tried this yet)
• Hits table with a toy (not yet)
• Is busy with an activity center (both do this on the play mat if this is what they mean by activity center)
• Searches to see where mom and dad are (not sure, but they do sometimes get fussy when I’m gone)
• Reacts to mirror image (not sure)
• Responds to name (not yet)
• Uses consonants (Abby has used an M a couple times on accident)
• Pushes breast away when they’ve had enough (not yet)
• Grumbles when impatient (more like screams)

One thing is for sure, both have decided that when they want attention, they want attention NOW. Not tomorrow, not in a minute, but YESTERDAY. Miss Abby has become MUCH more talkative and smiley. Miles has developed an apocalypse cry of his own. Both are drooling fairly constantly and/or blowing spit bubbles. I’ve gotten drool in my mouth several times (but I’ll take that over spit up).

Running continues to go pretty well. I’ve kinda mostly almost decided to run the Half Marathon in October (if you’ve seen that I’ve registered already, technically that belongs in next weeks’ update, so shhhh). I’ve been throwing in some more “serious” training runs on the treadmill that incorporate both speedwork (eh) and hills (hate). A blog about that more specifically to come.

Time for bullets!

• I ran my first Comeback 5k

We Rock

• My friend who is currently watching the babies while I work takes them to her sons school for Meet the Teacher. The visit is less than stellar thanks to Miss Fussapotamus. She tells me people ask if they are twins, and when she says yes she is asked “are you sure?”. (Apparently they appear to be a month or two apart in age)
• I have no words for that, so I’ll just let you contemplate that one.
• Because seriously, did I somehow manage to give birth to one, and then another like a month later?
• YES I AM SURE
• Miles is hysterical when he discovers his hand this week. I unfortunately did not get a picture, but it cracked me up watching him stare at it in awe, put it down, bring it back to his face, stare at it etc.
• My neighborhood delights the 90’s kid in me

Life is demanding, without understanding

• Bonus points if you can name the band
• Extra points if you sang part of the song out loud
• Abby tells it like it is

Unfortunately, I’m not sure daddy will ever say no

• They both start to giggle more – we are so close to belly laugh it isn’t funny. Or is it?
• We begin what I think might be an inkling of the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. We are back to waking several times per night. This makes mommy tired. There are a billion sites on the subject. Just try typing 4 month sleep into Google….
• Miles says hi

Its always a good day for a chomp chomp alligator

 

Running stats (haven’t changed much)

• Fastest single mile: 7:30
• Longest run: 10  miles
• Fastest 5k: 25:45 (sadly did not beat this at the race, but I blame the fact that it was humid.as.heck.)

Just in case you missed them:

Life with Twins – Week 14

Life with Twins – Week 13

Life with Twins – Week 12

The entire life with twins series