It Began with a BBFT

The twins and I spent 5 days in Chagrin Falls at my mom's over Christmas. My sister Laura also flew in from St.Louis and my other two sisters ( Megan and Amy) both live in town so I was able to spend lots of time with my sisters and their kids. My mom's house is kid friendly so we all settled in with the babies for a cozy 5 days. We had to practically take numbers for pack-n-play usage with 5 kids needing naps. The swing was a hot commodity as was the exersaucer (the twins don't use it yet but Charlie [6 mos] and Bailey [15 mos] traded off). My sisters decided we'd be brave and planned a photo shoot with the cousins at the local photography place. So, we lined up the kids and spent the next 30 minutes trying to get 6 kids to smile: Jordan, 18 (she cooperated of course), Hudson--3, Bailey, Charlie, Lydia and Grace. We were missing Troy who lives in North Carolina :(. It was hilarious to watch. The twins pretty much just sat there and soaked it all up. Bailey and Hudson wanted to be up and about playing with the cool toys there. We actually managed to get a few good ones as you can see above. I like the one where Grace is giving Lydia the 'stink eye'--I think because she's still mad that Lydia got to be the baby Jesus.

Hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas. Grace is lying here smiling and kicking and very excited about tearing through presents once Mommy finishes pumping and Daddy gives her her bottle. We've been having a great time with their cousins, aunts and grandparents here in Cleveland and we'll be loading up the family (including the dogs) to head to Cincinnati this afternoon to see aunts, cousins and grandparents there! I have some great pics which I'll add later.

Lydia made her debut as the baby Jesus this past Sunday. It was sort of a last minute decision. My sister Amy was Mary in the Christmas play at my family's church and she volunteered one of the twins to be the real live baby Jesus! I dressed both girls in white onesies under their outfits so that whichever one was more "baby Jesus like" at the start of the play would be cast as Jesus. Lydia beat out Grace by a narrow margin and did a fabulous job. It was hilarious. She had shepherds and wisemen bowing down to worship her. what an ego boost for her. She even laid in the manger for part of the play. She hammed it up and waved her arms about in a very Christ like way and waited to poop up her back until later in the day. We put Grace in the manger for a minute for pictures and you can see why Lydia made the cut and not baby Grace :). The last picture of is of cousin Charlie (6 months) squashed in the manger with the twins.

We decided to have a 'stay home' date last night of pizza and movie. one of our old favorite ways to spend an evening. I think the babies knew the plan and worked as a team AGAINST us--and they roped the dogs into the plan too! They were sleeping peacefully in their swings when we sat down to the movie. First lydia started wimpering--she rarely cries--so I picked her up, gave her a pacifier--crisis averted. Five minutes later Grace did the exact same thing. So, we're both holding a baby and trying to juggle our pizza at the same time while following the plot of the movie. THEN the dogs come tearing down the stairs and start making a big ruckus by wrestling and play-fighting. Things just kept happening and it really started to get comical--Grace pooped up her back not once, but twice requiring two wardrobe changes. Lydia pulled this shenanigan only once. Bocce chewed up a burp cloth and peed on the nursery rug just for spite twice. Things aren't usually this crazy with so man body substances flowing freely in our house, but I really think they all consipred together to thwart our relaxing time together and they had to use the resources available to them :). Hope any potential babysitters don't read this post because it looks like we'll need them.

The girls got their first visit from Santa this past week. They were relatively unimpressed :). Our neighbor John graciously made a stop at our place in full Santa garb. It went like this: Santa enters and the dogs immediately start jumping and sniffing (they want to get their requests in too--or maybe it's because Santa has a daschund). Hope that last sentence didn't ruin the magic of santa for anyone--I don't think I have any 5 year old readers. So, once the dogs calmed down we handed over the girls to santa for some pics. Grace was already in a little snit before he came to be fair to poor santa but her crying continued as he was holding her. She was calmed by her favorite pacifier, but she kept loosing it in Santa's beard! When she would cry she would flail her arms around and get her little fingers caught in santa's beard and pull it down! What a little stinker--she is already exposing the true identity of santa. It's a good thing we did this trial run in our house rather than have this fiasco go down in the middle of the mall :). Anyhow, Lydia just looked a little bewildered the entire time. When santa stood up to leave, 3 green pacifiers tumbled out of his beard. Grace fell asleep immediately after he left. All in all it was pretty entertaining.

This is not so much a cutesy update as it is a brief glimpse into my everyday world so guys beware :) It's 5:15pm and I just got home from work. I'm hungry and I don't think I remembered to pee today, but first things first--I have to pump. This is the new story of my life. Background: the twins only get breastmilk (for the most part), but they only take it from a bottle--they aren't very good at taking it the old fashioned way so our pediatrician encouraged me to just pump it all. I definitely have mixed feelings about pumping. It's good for Lydia and Grace of course and I think it's supposed to be good for me too--oh and it's much cheaper than formula--but, pardon the pun, it's a time sucker. It doesn't sound that hard to do something every 3-4 hours, does it? Well, it is--at least for me. It's just the remembering and the stopping that can difficult. Sometimes I don't want to stop and pump--I just want to keep shopping or doing whatever I am doing, and adding another 20-25 minutes to pump in the morning makes it much harder to get out on time and I wasn't very good at it to begin with. However, and they don't mention this as a benefit of breastfeeding and I think they should, I think it's been beneficial for me to be forced to just stop and read, catch up on email, blog or even chat on the phone for a few minutes several times a day. Most of my picture organizing and blogging is done with the pump attached--I've gotten very good at it. I'm not sure Ryan even knows how to fall asleep anymore with out the whir-whir of the pump. I've even desensitized my female friends & family to the whole idea so that now I can just pump and continue socializing if it's a girls only gathering. I've pumped in multiple store dressing rooms and in the car too (as a passenger). I'd also like to make a disclaimer about formula--I'm not against it and will be feeding it to my girls when this pumping stuff really gets old. So, now that you all know about my feelings on breast pumping, I'll be sure to make the next entry cutesy, include pics and talk about the 'other twins' :).

One of the Hurst family traditions is to cut down our Christmas tree over Thanksgiving weekend. We make a day of it and drag everyone out to our favorite tree farm to run around the rows and rows of trees yelling out "I like this one!" and "No way, that one is way to ___ (insert adjective: skinny, fat, tall, sparse, bald)". I love it and since I am a huge stickler for traditions we have adopted it as our family tradition as well (Ryan gets bonus points for going along with this plan every year since he was raised with artificial trees which I hear involve much less work). Since we stayed in town for Thanksgiving we went to a tree farm here in Columbus with our new little family. We bundled the twins in warm blankets (complements of Jan, Suzie and Carnie) put them in their double bob all terrain stroller (which I highly recommend by the way) and picked out our tree. They didn't have much of an opinion this year, but hopefully they'll be more involved in years to come:). As always putting up the tree was a fiasco and ended in Ryan cutting off two feet from the bottom. It's up now and lit and it adds a certain coziness to our living room that really embodies Christmas. Pictures Top-Bottom: Lydia, Grace and I by the chosen tree; Lydia (left) and Grace in their Christmas hats knit by our neighbor, Becky; Lydia hanging out in her swing enjoying the lights and ornaments; Lydia and Grace again modeling the full knit Christmas ensemble.

We spent Thanksgiving with our good friends, the Taylors here in Columbus. They are our surrogate family here in Columbus and we enjoyed an amazing dinner and game filled evening at their house. The girls were held and cuddled by many, although they did have competition as there was a 2 week old baby there named Thomas. He weighed more than Lydia! We usually bring the dogs to the Taylors even though it never fails that one of them does something out of the ordinary that causes a big mess. This time we left the dogs at home to avoid any drama but Lydia and Grace decided to keep the tradition going. Lydia started first by puking her entire bottle up--she was like a geyser. There was a puddle of breast milk on the kitchen floor and all over Ryan and Lydia. 15 minutes later after we had cleaned up Lydia's mess Grace decided to compete with her sister and puked up her entire bottle. By this time we were out of outfits (Grace had peed on hers earlier) so Grace had to wear her birthday suite (plus a diaper) until a load of laundry could be done. Happy memories from their first Thanksgiving! The Taylors were understanding and gracious as usual and might even invite us back for future events.

Many of you know we have a tradition every year with our college friends called "Malone Thanksgiving". We started the tradition after we realized that we never get to spend holidays with our roommates and friends from school even though they are like family . . . so eight years ago Malone Thanksgiving was born and it has been going on ever since. Coming to this event with our twins this year made an already special event even more monumental. When we got in the car to drive there I said to Ryan "It's Malone Thanksgiving and I have two babies!" One of my favorite parts of the weekend was seeing all of our friends holding the girls and pitching in to help with diapers and feedings . . . without even being asked. I would just look over and there was Lydia in all her glory getting a fresh diaper. The most special part of the evening is when we go around the table and say what we are thankful for which usually turns into a time of sharing what has happened in our lives over the past year--good or bad. It is an amazing thing (started by Wendy--there's your shout out Wen if you're reading this). I am usually cliche when it's my turn--"I'm thankful for Ryan, my family, etc" to keep things simple and to avoid getting emotional and my plan this year was no different--but when it came to be my turn it just hit me--how amazingly blessed I am to have Lydia and Grace--and things turned emotional real quick. Luckily Ryan saved me with his wit and took the attention away from me and my tears :). It was incredibly surreal to be at this annual event where we review the events of the previous year around close friends with my beautiful, perfect little girls.

This week was my first official week back after maternity leave. So far there haven't been any tears or breakdowns, but that could be because I worked only 2 half and 2 full days and I'm home with the girls today :) It could also be attributed to the fact that I'm leaving them in the capable hands of their dad. The rotation I am currently on is very laid back and enjoyable (I'm working in a suburban general pediatricians office 5 minutes from our house). I think getting out and going to work makes me soak up the time at home with the girls even more. I'm sure more emotionally distraught posts will follow once I am on more difficult months so I'll save it until then. On a more practical note, the girls had their 2 month visit which included shots and we all survived. They are growing wonderfully! I included a couple of recent pictures: Lydia having an "Aha" moment and Ryan holding Grace :).

I just got back from my first night away from the twins since they came home from the NICU. I went on a girls weekend trip to Chicago with some friends. I flew in Saturday morning and back home again on Sunday (today) so it was really only 30 hours away but I did miss the girls. I called home a couple of times and listened to them squeak on the phone. Ryan held down the fort without a problem. Friends Wendy, Jay and Sarah came down from Canton and helped him out to give him a little break. Wouldn't you know it that the first time I'm gone overnight and the twins slept through the night! I hope this is a trend that will continue. The trip was a success--we saw the musical "Wicked" (which I highly recommend) and had a fun night on the town. On my flight home when I was contemplating how I was looking forward to seeing the twins I came to the realization that this trip was the exact same length as some of my calls will be when I go back to work! I find that funny because I was all dramatic about leaving the twins and making sure Ryan was prepared with plenty of milk and lots of instructions, but really we'll be doing this routine on a regular basis this winter when I take call in some of my harder months. I didn't bring the girls back any souvenirs but I did bring them back a cooler full of breast milk that was pumped all over the city of Chicago which I'm sure tastes better than milk pumped in regular old Columbus :).

People often ask how the dogs and babies are getting along so I thought I'd show some pictures of their interactions:). O.K., so these are pictures of the forced interactions between the babies and the dogs. Bocce and Widget are actually doing well with the babies. Bocce was curious at first but now the babies aren't that exciting to her. Every once in awhile the dogs will get in a good lick to the girls heads or faces if we aren't paying attention, but it's always cursory and I think the real motivation is the constant crusting of milk around the babies' mouths that draws the dogs to taste them. Kind of like when they lick the crumbs off of the kitchen floor. Some people warned us that our dogs were going to fall several rungs down the ladder of significance in our lives but I don't think things have changed that much. If anything their lives are better because they're out of the crate all day now and every once in awhile one of the twins might just spit up on the floor where the dogs can reach it :)--hey, any kind of clean up help is appreciated. We even hired a dog trainer to help us with the dogs--more on that in another entry. Well, it's 7am which means feeding time and now that I've finished my morning pumping and blogging-- simultaneously I might add-- I can start my day (whatever happened to just getting up and getting in the shower?). By the way that's Lydia and Widget in the pictures. No babies or dogs were hurt in the making of these pictures :)

When we walk through public places with the twins we leave a wake of smiling people, most of them saying 'awww, twins' (at least the women). I like to call it the Rainbow Effect--it's like I'm carrying around a rainbow that makes everybody a little happier when you pass by. More often than not people will stop us to ask us the routine twin questions: 1. Are they twins? 2. Are they girls/boys (depending on the outfits) 3. How old are they? 4. Are they identical? 5. Do you have twins in your family? (a.k.a. did you use fertility Rx?) 6. What are their names? etc, etc. Then after the questions we usually hear about their closest link to twins or a new infant so I've heard lots about other peoples' children and grandchildren :). Last night at dinner we spent 15 minutes talking to a canadian couple at the table next to us and even looking at pictures of their 4 and 8 year old children. I don't mind all of the attention and the answering of questions and I'm especially happy to have it shifted off of my belly and onto my babies. Most people we meet are very kind and remind us to soak up every minute, enjoy the girls and they are always sure to congratulate us (although one lady said to me 'they're 5 weeks and you still have that belly there'? however, she was about 250 lbs so I didn't take to heart). I think it's really sweet of everyone to show so much interest, and I think I'll miss this 'Rainbow Effect' once the girls are older and they don't have that newborn charm that apparently makes everyone smile.

Despite the fact that we could have arranged to vote absentee or even to vote early when things were calm in the Battles household we decided to wait until the last minute to exercise our right to vote--6:30 pm on election day. I had heard horror stories about the lines and I'll be honest-- I had a low threshold for saying "well, we tried" and walking away (like the toy story dinosaur when he is about to cross the busy street--sarah I know you're laughing at that image if you're reading this). Our two hour breaks between feeds are precious! Luckily there wasn't a line and we walked right in a caused a ruckus with the twins since the election centers are staffed mainly by matronly ladies. They were all a twitter about the girls and quickly offered to watch them which we politely declined :). After voting we collected our 'we voted' goodies which were free doughnuts at krispy kreme and free coffee at starbucks. It's always fun to think back to what we were doing the last election day and how different our lives have become since then. At the next election when they are four they'll have fun looking back at the pictures of when they were babies and did the responsible thing and voted--kind of :). [ Top to bottom: Ryan and I with our post voting goodies; Lydia looking very proud of her sticker; Grace bored with the process; The twins together with grace on the right]

I wasn't planning on dressing up the twins for Halloween since they're only 6 weeks old and don't have any older sibs to trick or treat with but my sister Megan bought the twins these outfits for dirt cheap last minute since her kids were dressing up (this is all while we were in HHI). Coincidentally the peapod costume created a great play on words :). So here they are on their first Halloween. Hudson was a pirate and Bailey was tinkerbell so we were quite a little troop of trick or treaters. The girls quickly fell asleep in their snuggly costumes. We don't have any super warm wear yet for walks so we're thinking they just might wear their peapod costumes for walks over the next few months--I'm sure the neighbors will get a kick out of that.

Well, we're back home. The girls are swaddled and tucked into their crib hopefully for at least a 5 hour stretch. They survived their first vacation and are no worse for the wear. We maximized our time complete with a trip through the smoky mountains, an overnight stay in Asheville, NC and a visit with all of the cousins and Aunts/Uncles on the Battles' side on the way home. I haven't uploaded the rest of the pictures yet but hopefully I'll get to that soon. We have all of our vacation stuff piled up by the front door that I have to dig through tomorrow before I can focus on pictures, etc.

Thursday morning Ryan and I went out for breakfast (with the twins in tow). We were highly caffeinnated and discussing how low gas prices were getting--then Ryan said "hey, we should take a road trip" and I said (kind of joking really), "well, we are currently jobless" and now we are in Hilton Head Island, SC feeding the girls from our balcony overlooking palm trees and the pool! I also had to use 2 weeks of vacation for this maternity leave so it made sense to actually take a vacation. Now I'll be honest, I'm more of a planner and never was really spontaneous to begin with so of course I was reluctant to plan a trip in 24 hours ( we left Friday night) but to prove I have small shred of spontaneity I went along with it. We got a great deal on a condo since it's off season and the weather forecast doesn't look half bad. We split the trip up into two days and stopped every 3 hours to feed the girls. The girls had a lot of firsts along the way--first hotel stay, first time in starbucks, mcdonalds and cracker barrel--pretty much everything is a first I these days. We plan to ejoy the beach and pools in between feedings. Why not be tired in a nicer environment ?:)

Yesterday Ryan and I got up super early, bundled up the girls and made our way downtown for the Columbus 1/2 marathon. I was a well rested (and warm) spectator while Ryan ran the entire 13.1 miles (in 30 degree weather) like a champ. His average pace was a little over 9 1/2 minutes per mile which I'm thoroughly impressed with. Several residents came out to help with the babies and to cheer Ryan on (bottom picture L to R :Stacy, Me, Jess and Eddie). Lydia and Grace slept peacefully in their baby bjorns and supported their dad from their dreams :). I'm sure next race they'll be much more animated. By the way, at their last doctor visit they were each up over a pound--Lydia was 6 lbs 4 oz and Grace was a solid 7 lbs.

We were trying to take a picture of the girls in their matching "daddy loves me" outfits. I think the pics just keep getting worse :). Don't judge my kids looks by these pics--their lack of head control at this stage makes photo shoots challenging :).

So, last night I did something I haven't done in months--I slept on my stomach! Sounds like no big deal, right? To me though it's a milestone in my recovery from pregnancy. Every day I realize little things that I am able to do again now that I am closer to a normal size. I can't believe the reductions in trips to the bathroom--and walking without a waddle really is a perk. I never thought I'd say this, but sometimes I do miss being pregnant. I don't miss the aches, pains and awkwardness that came with carrying a 35 lb medicine ball around, but what I do miss is being a little threesome with the twins. It was kind of fun to have them around all of the time and now that they are out in the real world , mom and twin cuddle time doesn't happen nearly enough with all the daily demands of raising newborn twins.

Yesterday Ryan's family came to visit, including his Grandpa Battles. We enjoyed the great weather and went to Inniswood park with the twins and the rest of the family. It is hard to get used to being tethered to our home by these two little ones unless we bring them along. The weather has been amazing lately and before we had the twins we would have been out riding our bikes, taking a long hike in the park, or enjoying a date at a restaurant with a patio. It's easy to miss the lack of responsibility we had before Lydia and Grace came along, but I know that we really maximized our time together without kids and we're entering into a new chapter. We have these two beautiful babies as a trade off and sitting around giving them bottles and hearing them burp loudly has become our new mainstay of entertainment :).

We've survived our first week of parenting! The twins seem to be no worse for it. They might smell a little more like spit up and dirty diapers than when they were in the NICU, but at least they are growing and thriving. We've settled into our routine for the most part. Ryan is sleeping as I am taking the morning shift. It's only 9:45 and I've fed and burped two babies, fed two dogs (and refereed their eating since Bocce is a bully and eats Widgets food), pumped breastmilk (while feeding a twin--hope that didn't give you a visual) and finally fed myself. I'm still in my bathrobe though--a shower and real clothes are my next task. Today Lydia and Grace are 3 weeks old. We took them on their first walk in their stroller yesterday. They weren't too excited about the walk--they slept through the whole thing. I'll have to attach a photo to my next post that our neighbor kindly took. My friend Jess volunteered to babysit the babies last night so we took advantage of it and went on our first date since the girls have left the NICU (within one week--pretty good). She's a pediatrician so she was way overqualified as a babysitter. Well, I'm off to the shower before the next feeding rolls around and we have to do it all over again.

Titles put the post in a box, so no title today for this post. The babies had their first pediatrician appt yesterday and were given a clean bill of health and they both gained weight. Ryan had to work and I planned to do our appointment solo, but one of my resident friends, Jess, graciously came over early to feed/diaper/dress a twin and to help me out with the appointment. The visit was so successful that we decided to try out the mall. Jess played 'defender of the babies' to aggressively ward off any people who tried to touch them and the girls had their first taste of fashion (although they both slept through banana republic so I think we'll have to work on their fashion sense). We were also given the green light by their pediatrician to let them go 4 hours between feedings at night which is especially good for Ryan as he is the nighttime guy--it's part of our new arrangement. I wish that meant that I was able to sleep for 7 straight ours, but I still have to get up every 3-4 hours to pump. I get the morning shift so he can sleep in.
It's weird to not be able to go out for dinner whenever we want or just run to the store but for now I think we're o.k. with that. We are enjoying spending time together at home, feeding the girls, burping, changing and especially cuddling the twins.

The twins are officially home. We had quite a busy day yesterday. My parents happened to be in town as well as my sister (Laura) and her baby, Charlie so we coincidentally had lots of help. Ryan spent the morning running errands like made since again we were unprepared for these two while I tried to complete last minute details around the house. After several trips to the car for forgotton things (those darn car seats--are they really that crucial?) they finally let the girls leave the hospital. They looked so tiny in their carseats! We have uploaded new pics onto the picassa album, but I've added a couple to this post as you can see. Our wonderful neighbors made us a sign that read "Welcome Home Lydia & Grace" and put it up in our front yard and my mom decorated the porch with two pink balloons.
We survived the first night in one piece--mostly because the girls are still on their NICU schedules and we are trying to keep it that way. We actually braved Babies R Us and Target with them in their double stroller and of course we got quite a few comments. They currently burritoed (our term for swaddled) and lying next to eachother in Grace's crib. So cute.