Leema, Lima, let's call the whole thing off

I'm eating a big bowl of fresh lima beans with butter and salt, courtesy of my Dad's garden. The girls didn't have much interest, and Ryan is working late, so they are mine, all mine! I saved the smaller, more-tender ones for last, and they've been swimming around in the butter, so I'm savoring them one-by-one, sans fork. I haven't been over to my parents' place to survey the garden lately, so I don't know whether more beans will be headed my way. I hope so.

Why do Americans pronounce the "i" in "Lima" like "eye" rather than like "ee" as in the city of Lima, for which the beans are named?

I think my city-based work has ended for a while, which is fine for now. The money is great, but it's exhausting to go in there 3 days a week, then come home and deal with the girls. No decompression time, as Ryan is rarely home by their bedtime. I think there will be more home-based freelance coming my way. I do some work for a creative director I met last summer when he was at a big agency, and now he's at a small shop that just won some more new business. He asked me to send my resume so the account team can put together a team deck, so I assume that means I'm intended to be part of the team. I'm happy to do it. He's a great guy, both in the professional and personal sense, and absolutely a pleasure to work with.

I think we need some girlie pictures in here, don't we? Yesterday we went to Adventureland, with my friend Leanne and her family. To say they had a good time would be a massive understatement.

Kate





Lilly







Mommy (with Kate) had a good time, too.

Working. A lot.

I've been doing a lot of work lately, for me. For the past few weeks, I've been in the city at my old agency job for 3 days (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday) and I've had conference calls for my work-at-home freelance stuff on Wednesday afternoons, plus assorted other stuff for that particular job in between at random times. It's been a bit rough! I'm appreciating the money, and the contact with my "old life" in the city, but I'm getting worn out.

Will try and come back and write more tomorrow. But other than being pooped out, things are fine.

Bless this mess?

Really, I could do without the blessings if someone would just come and clean the place up. I have a friend coming tomorrow for a short visit, and my sister-in-law and niece coming Tuesday and staying until Friday. No one who knows me expects housekeeping perfection, but still...

I'm just pooped out from having Ryan gone for 3 days at Siggraph in LA, doing some freelance work, and trying to keep up with everything in the girls' world. It's a cute world, but very exhausting.

My favorite moment of the week had to be on Friday afternoon. I was folding some laundry in my bedroom, and they were playing with some stuff on the floor. Katie looked at me and said "Seeya later Mom, we going to play!" and they both walked out of my room and into theirs. I am pretty sure flies were going in and out of my mouth, it was hanging open for so long. First of all, when did I become "Mom"? And since when do they tell me their plans? Since when do they have plans? Crazy! A little while later I poked my head in and found them sitting together on their bed, with about 20 books spread out around them. Damn camera was downstairs, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Not much variation on the theme

Sorry to be all preemie all the time lately. I don't know why, but sometimes the experience haunts me more than others.

Today I was in a local outlet-ish mall, and I saw a woman with a double snap'n'go, walking with a friend who had a single version. All 3 babies were peacefully asleep in their carseats, looking as angelic and wonderful and healthy as could be. I asked how old they were and the twin mom said hers were 5 weeks.

Five weeks. She was in the mall with her peacefully-sleeping twins at 5 weeks. Where was I at 5 weeks? We had just been moved out of nursery A" - the highest level of care. The girls had been co-bedded for about a week. They were both still on a pretty decent dose of oxygen via nasal cannula, and both had NG tubes. We were able to hold them, but we had to check with a nurse first, tangle with the monitors and the tubes, and endure the stares of the nurses when they felt the babies needed to go back into their isolettes.

They were awfully cute, though.



(That's Lilly yawning)



Still, seeing her threw me into a weird place. No matter how good life is and how healthy and delightful the girls are (and boy are they ever!) I'm never really going to fully get "over" this, am I?

Party of four and not one more

A very lame, yet overly dramatic (on my part) pregnancy scare has been put to bed. That's a relief. I don't even feel that twinge of regret that I have felt in the past (before we were even trying to have babies) when a scare like that has turned out to be false. I really just feel like my family is complete. Aside from the practical considerations (I'd probably have to go back to work, we'd have to move or add on to our house, I'm scared of having another preemie) I just really feel like our family is complete as it is. There are times when I think I want to be pregnant or have another baby, but that's not really true.

What I want is my twin pregnancy back. I want to know what it's like to be so big and pregnant that people stare at you in public and wonder aloud how many babies are in there, for pete's sake. I want to know what it's like to drive to the hospital, happy and excited to finally be in labor. To birth my babies, have them placed on my bare chest, and have them nurse. To hold my newborns and smile for photos. To take them both home together, no oxygen tanks, no monitors, no trauma under our belt. To only use a breast pump here and there, so I can get a little break from nursing, or go out on a date. To go out alone that first year without an overwhelming sense of guilt and anxiety and the need to rush back home.

A third baby isn't going to solve any of that.

Plus, I love my relationship with my girls. It just works. Although they have to share me, somehow it works out OK. It's weird sometimes, when I realize that genetically, they are more closely related to each other than they are to me. But I love being their Mommy, their go-to-girl, pretty much the center of their world. I love being able to observe the amazing interactions between them. It makes me ache to think about diluting any of that.

I'm sure some of that is normal, and some is not. How much comes from the trauma surrounding their birth, I don't know. How much of that will subside with time and more therapy, I have no idea. But tonight, I'm relieved to be just me, not +1.

It's been a nice, dry summer so far

So of course the morning I'm supposed to have my "library friends" (we all met during a 10-week play class for the kids) over, we had thunderstorms at 7am and it's still raining on and off. The plan was to play in the yard. I have a pretty small house and no dedicated playroom. And I'm a lousy housekeeper. I have until 10:15 to hope the yard dries out, or build an extension on my house and clean it all up nicely.

EDITED TO UPDATE:

Everything went fine. The rain stopped, the yard dried out enough for us to play back there. The kids had a great time, the moms had fun, and I even got a good nap out of the girls afterwards. Then we went to see my parents, who hadn't seen the girls in over a week - heaven forbid!

We had a nice time there, got in the car (all jammied and ready to sleep) just before 9. I pulled into my driveway after the 20ish-minute drive, and Lilly was just-asleep, while Kate was staring blankly. I decided to just go for it, since Kate was clearly relaxed enough to go right to sleep. You see where this is going, don't you?

I open Kate's door, figuring I'll bring her up, ask her to wait while I get Lilly, and then maybe sit with her for 5 minutes as she passes out. She looks at me through bleary eyes, then spits out her binky, gives me this face, and cackles loudly, waking up her sister, who says "Ooh! We are at my home!" and giggles maniacally.

I should've driven around the block a few more times, apparently. About 30 minutes later they were both happily asleep anyway.

Sleeping beauties

I was coming up to bed and just peeked in on the girls. Something about the way Lilly was laying reminded me her as a teeny tiny baby in the NICU. I don't know really what it was, but I just got such a powerful feeling of looking back at her in those days.

We spent a lot of time watching them sleep back then. They didn't do much else, other than drink milk, and back in the very earliest days they didn't even do that (they were fed by nasogastric tube for about the first month). I couldn't really bear to be anywhere else most of the time, so we sat there and watched them sleep. They were the most compelling little sleeping people I could ever have imagined.

They still are. I went back to take a picture, but in the 30 seconds I was out of the room, she moved and I missed the moment. It's OK - that and all the other sleeping moments are in my heart forever.

That's right, just throw the camera out now

Because really, can it get any cuter than this?

Haven't posted much lately because I'm so burnt. The babysitter, Janine, is awesome, but the girls won't take a normal nap when she's here, and that is causing havoc with their entire sleep "schedule." The late summer nights (like tonight) at the beach and various other venues probably aren't helping, either.

What it means for me is a lot of cranky afternoons for all of us, because they are tired but can't settle for a nap (or it's too late for one) and I didn't get 10 minutes to myself all freaking day. Nothing good can come of that, ya know?

But damn, when they are cute, they are cute!

It's getting hot in here

But not too hot, thank goodness. Today I am grateful to my husband for putting the air conditioner in the dining room window this past weekend. It's 93 degrees, and although weather.com says it's only 38% humidity, it sure doesn't feel like a dry heat.

We spent the morning at a local play place. We've been there twice before, and the college-aged girls who work there now recognize the girls right away and like to play with them. The place is awesome, and has this great climbing thing at one end, which gives you access to a big curvy slide and the treehouse. When we first got there (as usual) it was pretty packed with the bigger kids, and mine were too intimidated to really do much - Katie more so than Lilly, but still, both of them kind of hung back. After lunch, the place really clears out for naptime. Rather than deal with the tantrums, I always let them stay until 2pm when they kick everyone out, and that last hour is heaven for the girls. There were maybe 6 other kids left, so there was plenty of space for all.

We got out of there at 2:15 without much protest, and by 2:18 they were out cold in the car. Luckily, they have developed the ability to transfer from car to bed for naptime without waking up. All I have to do is climb up all 26 or so stairs between my driveway and their bedroom. Twice. Then go back and grab the bags, or the giant McD's sweet tea I couldn't resist on the way home. Then sit back and enjoy the air conditioning and hope for a nice long nap.

I'm not sure what the rest of the day will hold. I don't really even want to go play in the yard, it's so hot. Maybe I'll take them shoe shopping. I think their feet may actually have grown another size. I wonder if Stride Rite still has any sandals left? Every other store seems to think it's September. Grr.

Do they know it's (not) Christmastime?

Is it Christmas already?
Originally uploaded by betseeee

We decided to hit the kiddie pool this afternoon, as it was quite hot and humid. I got the girls in their bathing suits, and before we went outside, they decided they needed to have their Santa hats (which are in their toy bins always, because they love them so much.) They wore them for at least an hour before getting them wet. Aunt Beth, Bobby, and Sarah came over and were greatly amused by the unconventional headwear.

In other bright news, we had the exterminator back in on Monday and have only seen 3-4 fleas in the basement and garage since then. I think there's definitely light at the end of that tunnel.

Reading is fun(damental)!

Did anyone else's school participate in the RIF program when you were a kid? I was an avid and early reader (according to my Mom, I taught myself to read at 4, and basically convinced my parents that preschool had taught me, and preschool that my parents had taught me) so for me it was primarily a way to reinforce an already-existing habit. I loved it, though - free books! Right up my alley.

So when I found this on Emilie's blog, I thought it'd be fun to do. Instructions are as follows:

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)"

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - I can't bold this but I've read a few of them
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving - my all-time favorite
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - I tried so hard to read this. One day I will succeed.
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Looks like 41 for me. Some (Jude the Obscure) I remember reading, but wouldn't know again if I tripped over them. Some (Anne of Green Gables, A Prayer for Owen Meany) are my "desert island" books. I could, and have, read them over and over and over again. Some (Watership Down, Lolita) I read when I was too young for them, and probably ought to read again. I only italicized a few on my "to read" list, because really I'd probably like to read all of these but don't imagine I'll have the time until I'm quite old.

If my blog suddenly stops one day

It'll be because all the "that took 5 years off my life" moments these children have given me have finally added up to shorten my life expectancy down to the present day.

There's a window in the girls' room, over their bed. They really aren't tall enough to sit in it if the bottom is opened, but I still never let it stay open at the bottom - I only open it from the top, which is virtually impossible for them to reach and fall out of, without some serious Cirque du Soleil action. Still, I worry sometimes.

Like today, when I came out of the shower, and heard Katie saying quietly and sadly "my stistah...my stistah...my stistah..." and I see that she's sitting alone on the bed. I immediately looked at the window, and the screen was intact, nothing had changed at all, but my heart still jumped.

Then Lilly popped out from under the covers and said "Here I am!" and they both laughed maniacally. I ran back into my room and tried not to cry.

Did some laundry today in the basement. There are still fleas down there. Goddamned fucking fleas. Not as many as before, that's for sure. But they are still there. On the upside, our basement floor is the cleanest its ever been, what with us having to vacuum down there every single day. We're also supporting the Eureka vacuum bag industry, what with having to throw out the vacuum bag after each vacuuming, lest some fleas should escape and lay more eggs in my home.

A little less itchy

I think we may be turning the corner in our flea battle. Last night Ryan threw out some stupid old carpet tiles that the previous owners had put down in the basement, and ripped some old junky carpeting off the bottom step of the staircase. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. I did ask him to toss the carpet tiles earlier in the day, but somehow I guess I thought the carpet on the step (which was really really old and crappy and only on that one step for some reason) was immoveable. Not Ryan - he attacked and vanquished that carpet!

About an hour later, he went down there barefoot and only found 2 fleas on him. Prior to last night, there would've been at least 20 within a minute. So, I think this is progress! I have not been brave enough to reproduce his experiment today. Maybe after the girls are in bed and he's back home.

Another good sign - I haven't had to use the hydrocortisone except for one time since we came back from the hotel Thursday night. Please let this trend continue!

I pick, you eat

That's apparently what Katie thought the sign said at the pick-your-own strawberry place today. She was grabbing those suckers out of the basket almost as fast as I could put them in, at one point.





Eventually she either got bored, hot, or full, and went off to play with her sister. Ryan caught a few spontaneous huggy-kissy moments while I was busily filling up our strawberry basket.






For kids out picking strawberries at high noon (that's what happens when you decide at 9:50am that strawberry picking is the plan for the day) they did remarkably well. Only a little cranky towards the end.

These beauties are waiting in my fridge for tomorrow, when I should have the energy to make jam with some, stuff our faces with some of the others, and maybe cover some with chocolate before stuffing our faces with those. Yum!

Overheard in the car

There's nothing funnier than listening to the girls chatter away in the back seat. I've gotten to the point that a lot of times I don't even turn on the radio, because I am having so much fun eavesdropping.

"Look at dat big airplane! It is a blue angel!"

"No Lilly. Dat is not a blue angel. Dat is a different airplane."

"Oh. OK."

(we drive past a daycare center with an outdoor playground)

"I want to go there! I want to go there, Mommy!"

"We cannot go there, Lilly. There are all the kids in that house. We do not have the key to that house."

"Oh. Hey look! Sliday's!" (TGI Friday's restaurant)

"We go there with Grandma and Pop-pop and we eat food!"

This was all one conversation. It's surreal. I remember when the only "conversation" I heard in the car was one baby crying and the second baby joining in, just for the hell of it. It's amazing how far they have come.

That was fun, but...

We still have fleas. I think I'm going to shoot myself. Or burn the house down. With the cats in it.

The exterminator used Ultracide and Suspend, which are supposed to be these awesome flea killers. He said he absolutely saturated our basement, which is where the problem was so horrendous. The Ultracide information did say we might see a few residual fleas because those that are in the pupal stage have to hatch and then die. OK, I was prepared for that.

I was not prepared to go down to my basement 24 hours after treatment (wearing white knee-high sweatsocks - I'm not stupid) and be attacked by at least 50 fleas. I swear, it seems like it was worse than before he sprayed. I think I may have a breakdown over this. I'm clearly going to call the exterminator company in the morning and find out if this is their definition of "residual."

It's a shame, because we really had a lovely time at the hotel and the rest of today. We went swimming after breakfast in the indoor pool (it was actually too cool this morning to swim outside), and then after the girls took a nap in the car we went to a local petting zoo/play place and had a really great time, followed by a pleasant dinner. I was on a big happy high until I went downstairs and became engulfed by critters.

I don't know what could have gone wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the spray doesn't work on unfinished concrete. All the label stuff I've found about it talks about using it on carpet and upholstery. But that feels like a pretty flimsy reason. There are other sorts of random dead bugs around, so I know we weren't completely scammed or anything, and this company has been around for decades. My friend has been very happy with their general services, which is why we used them in the first place.

We need to solve this, fast. I'm going through 1% hydrocortisone cream faster than any human ought to.

The Exterminator

The guy who came out to our house today was really nice. One of the first things he said when he looked around my livingroom was "Wow, that's the most beautiful ketubah I've ever seen! Ours is nowhere near that cool!" That made my day. He was also kind enough to call my cell a few minutes after I left and let me know I forgot my camera, and he'd put it on the front porch. What a mensch!

Right now we're in the Hyatt Regency, where the girls and I enjoyed a quick but nice dinner in the hotel restaurant (we were the only people there for most of the meal, which is always good when dining with toddlers). The only mishap was when Katie grabbed my placemat and spilled my strawberry lemondrop martini all over my pants. Bleh. The waiter was sweet and got me a new one.

Ryan didn't get here until nearly 9:30, and given the excitement of him arriving, being overtired and in a strange place, and generally being crazy, the girls went to sleep pretty easily. Right now they are parked on the bed and we're headed there momentarily. Smart move of the week goes to Ryan for saying we should just get the king bed and sleep with them, because if we got 2 doubles they'd never stay in theirs if we were in the room, and then we'd all be squished in one.

Tomorrow, the plan is to swim swim swim! The girls saw the pool and went nuts, so it's got to be done. There's an outdoor pool and an indoor one, so very little could foil that plan, right? (Why do I tempt fate this way?)

Scratchy times

We've been attacked by fleas. It's partly my own fault. We have 2 cats - Cleo, who goes outside a lot, and Serena, who hardly ever does and spends most of her time in our basement. Stupidly, last month, I put Frontline Plus on Cleo, but not on Serena. Well, surely Cleo brought in a couple of fleas, they found Serena in the basement, and set up shop. I went down there late last week and they swarmed me. I have never seen so many fleas on my feet. Absolutely horrifying.

Over the weekend we put down some herb-based powder on our only rug upstairs and on the furniture, and we bombed the basement. I went down there the next day and was hit with only a slightly smaller (and seemingly angrier, though I am probably anthropomorphizing with that last bit). So, we called the professionals.

I am not thrilled to have to do it, but they are coming tomorrow afternoon to treat the basement and the lower level of the house. The inspector guy recommended not treating the bedrooms right now, because the big problem is in the basement. He tried really hard to find some fleas in our livingroom rug, and couldn't, so he figures it's not too bad up here and it'd be best to avoid chemicals in the bedrooms if possible.

Normally, they require you to stay out of the house for 4 hours. But because we have kids with a history of lung disease, we get to stay out for 24 hours. We can go to Grandma's, or we can find a hotel. Ryan wants to find a hotel with a pool, which would be fun if he's actually going to take the day off - otherwise it's just a tease as I cannot go swimming with 2 toddlers all by myself.

Still, as much as it'd be cheaper to stay at my parents', I kind of like the idea of a hotel. I love hotels. I'm going to try and convince him he needs to take the day off.

Happy 5th Anniversary, Happy Father's Day

June 15, 2003

I'd do it all again, even the hard parts. And now that we have our two beautiful daughters, it seems even nicer that we got married on Father's Day.

It's been a whirlwind, like late May/early June always is in this family. Mother's Day, then Memorial Day, then my birthday, my mother's birthday, our anniversary, and Father's Day, all within a 4-week period. I'll try and get back to regular posting now that the madness has passed for a while.

It's my birthday and I'll blog if I want to

I already had the day mentally planned, nothing too exciting, but some time for myself. I have a noon appointment with my therapist (made without noticing the date) so my parents were coming to get the kids at 11, and I figured I'd grab a quiet lunch, maybe do a little shopping or go up to the beach for a bit, then meet them for dinner somewhere. But Ryan ended up taking the day off at the last minute, so now I am thrown for a loop! It's a nice change, but I'm not sure whether I should cancel my parents' coming to take them or not.

I'll figure it out later. Right now I am enjoying sitting upstairs with my laptop, quietly checking emails and posting, rather than what I'd normally be doing right now, dodging flying yogurt and oatmeal bowls in the dining room.