A Day in the Life

Well, I don’t know guys.  I’m going to write up my day, hour by measly hour, but I’m lying to myself and you if I tell you it’s happenin’ over here.  My life is a little on the crazy, busy, exhausting side with twins but it’s really not that fun to read about.  They’re not walking yet and we’ve child-proofed so there’s only so much complaining I can do about them getting into things because they don’t that much…yet.  They pee, poop…we cloth diaper so I spray all “solids” into the toilet with a handy-dandy nozzle.  That’s pretty notexciting.  I’ll spare you those details.  If you really wanna know what life is like with one or more children set free in one’s home, you’d find much better reading over at Grace’s blog, or Lauren’s, or Rosie’s, or Ana’s, or Maureen’s.

But alas, I’ll pound it out anyway.  Feel free to skip this one by.  It’s sure to be boring and oh-so-familiar for you moms (and dads) and possibly traumatizing to you who have yet to produce heirs…just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
  

Mornings:
They’re usually pleasant.  Usually.  I’m not the mom who wakes up before my kids to get things done.  Ohhhh no.  Not me.  They wake me up.  Seraphia always, always, always wakes up smiling, giggling, and plays in her crib and sometimes Cecilia will follow suit however she typically starts the whine to get o-u-t.  You better believe that when they’re both chipper and happy playing in their side-by-side cages, I/we stay sleeping. 

Anthony is home a good amount of mornings to help me get their five ounces of cow goodness ready and change from overnight disposables into daytime cloth diapers.  (I willing hand over diaper changing duties as often as I can when he’s home and he’s very receptive…good man that guy.)

There might be a trip (or two) to the silver toilet sprayer, there might not.  As you moms and dads know, you can either tell with your nose if there’s something besides liquid in that diaper or you get a nice little surprise after the velcro sounds…always welcomed in the morning hours to overpower the nice aroma of coffee you’ve got going.
 
And then of course it’s off to the “tandem” bottle feeding sesh after which there’s always an “I want more!” whilst sucking the air and life out of the bottle but we daren’t ruin their breakfast, dare we?  If I’m lucky, my other set of hands is still home to help me, otherwise it looks a bit like this:
 
[Except this pic was taken during an evening feeding sesh…I am never ever dressed before 10 unless there’s somewhere to be.]

So then the BFFs play with each other which I take full advantage of while picking up around the house (because no we don’t go to bed with a clean house, are you crazy?), figure out what project I want to get done, respond to (the few)comments or emails that might be awaiting me, or log in some blog reading for the day besides the important things like brush the night off my teeth and changing from pajamas into fancier pieces of comfy cotton lest the UPS man come or something.  Sometimes I even just sit on the couch and play that damned game Candy Crush…blast you people for inviting me to play it.  A hundred invites makes a curious cat even curiouser.  It’s addicting, don’t download it ever, ever, ever… 
[Teepee from etsy shop, B.E. Little You and Me!  We (because all of us fit in it) LOVE it!]

A half hour or so later and this mom lays her work aside her  to make breakfast for the tots.  It’s usually some sort of combo of oatmeal and fruit, maybe a few Cheerios for good measure, maybe eggs, maybe french toast if I’m feeling particularly adventurous.  Then we all sit in a little triangle and I feed them, bite by bite by bite by bite, this one then that one then this one then that one… 

I’m not crazy enough yet to let them loose with their own bowls and utensils.  It’s enough cleaning up the mess one makes, two would top my cleaning limits for the day.

One more diaper change (x2 of course) and it’s nap time for them, play time for me (so for all you people that ask me “how do you do all you do with twins running crawling around?!”…naptime people, naptime.  There’s a good solid three hours of that that goes on around here every single day.)
 

Afternoons: 
More of the same.  They wake up, they play/use me as a human obstacle course/, I feed them lunch whilst eating my own, they play some more, dot dot dot

[Bothering Visiting Daddy-o at work is always thrilling.]

If we leave the house to do something funnish (browse Target clearance racks or hit up a play date), it’s usually sometime during the afternoon – after their morning nap before lunch or after lunch before the afternoon milking and nap.  Afternoon naps start around the 2 to 3 area, depending on what we’ve been doing.  They’re another fun time for mwah.  I usually work on whatever project is on my plate at the moment or, if I’m feeling especially lacking in the sleep dept., I take a nap too.

The highlight of the afternoon (and whole day usually) is when babys’ daddy comes home.  The girls go all out and perk up at the sound of his voice coming through the side door and proceed to get their fastest crawl/push-toy walk on until they reach him.  It’s really so cute and they’ve totally got me beat in my “Hi Honey!” welcome home.  Chopped liver?  Right here (points to self).

For dinner, I usually let Baby Einstein via YouTube babysit whilst I cook something up)…something easy usually – wraps, leftovers from Daddy’s cooking the night before, chicken fingers, pasta (canned Bertolli sauce is zee best ever), whatever my limited imagination can come up with.  I tell ya, I’m pretty creative when it comes to paint and crafts but food, we’re running low on that tank o’ variety. 
 

However, if the man of the house is home, we feast.  He’s a culinary genius.  Single ladies, if you don’t get along with the stove/oven combo, marry a man who does. 


Evenings:

For some reason, the girls mistake the eve hours for the party hours.  I could sit on the living room floor and watch them for hours.  They chase each other around the house, alternating who’s chasing who, they play hide-and-seek with whatever piece of cloth they can find, they dance to whatever music is playing (did I mention we ALWAYS have music playing…thank you Pandora + the blue ray player), you know, crazy stuff every kid does.
  
[Onesie snapping is SO overrated.]

Eventually bedtime rolls around so we whip out the 6 oz. bottles, they chug, and they get parked in their cribs until they decide to sleep.  That’s also when I have my daily bowl of cold vanilla with chocolate syrup, Anthony inhales his second dinner, and we either sit at our computers – he studying, me fiddling around – or hit up Amazon Prime for a movie.  Sometimes I’ll go paint or glue or construct something or finish cleaning the “room of the day” (a whole post on my cleaning schedule later).  Adult bedtime rolls around and the hay we hit…until…

Nighttime:
Ohhhh nightime.  You didn’t think I’d skip this part of the day, did you?  When you have kids, “nighttime” becomes an actual part of your daily routine, am I right moms and dads everywhere?  It’s the most exciting and frustrating time all rolled into one little ball of no sleep.  Okay.  Maybe no sleep is stretching it but unless you have twins or two offspring so close in age that their teething coincides, than you have no idea what hell is like.  And maybe that’s a stretch too but, either way, no bueno.  no.bueno.at.alllllllll.  It usually goes something like dis.  Somebody cries.  I hear.  I stay in bed hoping, praying, begging she’ll stop and silence will resume.  She keeps crying.  Crying gets louder, and louder, and louder.  So loud she’ll probably wake up #2 if I don’t get my sorry butt out of bed.  I pry off the sheets, fumble around on my nightstand for my specs, and my feet hit the floor and pad 15 steps to the girls room.  I figure out who’s the offender, find her pacifier she just can’t sleep without.  Great.  It’s under her crib.  Not just under, way under.  I get my body down and do a drop and semi-roll, reaching my long arm as far as I can to reach that dang mouth device.  Got it.  Give it back.  Stand up and latch on to the railing lest the light-headedness I just got from that maneuver knock me under.  Hand the girl the teething ring she needs to hold onto to sleep.  Hit the sound machine button.  Pad 15 steps back into my bed.  Glasses back on the nightstand.  Head against the pillow.  I’m out.  And then half an hour later it’s the same thing.  All over again.  Different child.  Somewhere in there there’s some Tylenol administering and maybe a ride in the rocking chair but man, nights are killer.

Evening came and morning followed.  The next day.

.           .           .

That’s how it rolls these days.  Had I written this post the months after they were born it’d go something like this:
We (all of us) wake up for the 40th time and last time because it’s 5:00 and allllmost morning.
I nurse the girls, one-at-a-time or together.
I change two diapers.
One occupies a bouncy seat, one my arms.
Catnap time.
I feed them…I nurse them…I hold one…They sleep…I feed them…I nurse them…I change them…I hold one…One cries…The other cries…We all cry.  Daddy comes home.  I feed them…I nurse them…Daddy changes them…We each hold one…They sleep………….  No redundancy at all.  I loved those days but I would never go back.  I have pictures for that.  My head was in a constant fog and I sat in a dazed stupor staring at two screaming babies at least once a day, wondering who the heck to comfort.  Those days were crazy.
 

.           .           .

So anyway, now you know a little about what life is like with twins.  It’s a little crazy but I’m not running around with my head chopped off all the time trying to keep up with them and there won’t be any reality tv crews knocking on our door anytime soon because it’s not all that entertaining.  But, it’s an absolute blast as I see it.  For real.  I wouldn’t trade these two for the world.  Not them, not the time, not the energy (I don’t have), not anything.  And three?  Well, I’m sure he’ll add a good amount of good chaos to the mix.  You’ll be able to tell by either my blogging frequency or the quality of my english exactly how much chaos.  Cheers to then!