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.