Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Snowed In

Is winter over yet?

This is just a small taste of Ohio, if you don't live here:

DAY 1:

DAY 2:

Nuff said?


Saturday, January 25, 2014

5 Ways To Recognize A Mother of Twins

I've never had a singleton baby (yet... if ever), so I have nothing to compare my own version of motherhood to. And while having twins IS NOT the hell that people make it out to be --mainly those that see you in the grocery store with husband, cart, double stroller AND two babies in tow and immediately feed you the obligatory sympathetic line-- it does, certainly, come with its own set of challenges.

I am the oldest of four, and ten years older than my youngest sibling, so I was granted the privilege of watching her grow up and experiencing infancy from the outside looking in well before I became a mother. However, having your own kids is different in about a hundred ways, so while I had a small bank of baby knowledge, the Stinky Twinkies still manage to surprise me on a regular basis.

Hubby and I have had to learn to be creative, times two. Here are a few things we've learned or developed as a result of double trouble:

A mother of twins constantly looks like she's heading to the airport for a long trip. Everywhere I go with my babies, regardless of whether Hubby is with me or not, I am carrying two car seats (soon to be gone when we upgrade to convertible... my blistered hands are cheering with relief, even though I have no friggin' clue how I will manage to carry two babies out to the car, lock the front door, buckle them in and get all our shit out the car WITHOUT LEAVING AT LEAST ONE ALONE. wtf???), a diaper bag, my purse, blankets and toys (which may or may not fit into that diaper bag and purse), and a double stroller.

Twin parents know how to feed two babies at the same time, for the sake of a lovely, beautiful, wonderful feeding SCHEDULE. They also know how to feed baby food to two babies at the same time, whether in their carseats, in their high chairs, or in their Boppys (ies?) on the couch. They ALSO know how to finish bottle-feeding one baby while burping the other, and spoon feeding one baby while bottle-feeding and/or burping the other. Additionally, we have learned to use our toes to grab the remote, change the channel, shove the cat away, pick up the lost binky or toy, kick a package of diapers down the stairs, toss things UP the stairs while we follow with a baby on each hip... the list goes on. Basically, we're master multi-taskers. I can only imagine what parents of triplets or more can do.

We absolutely do not give a flying bug-f**k as to what belongs to who. In the beginning, I designated certain things to certain babies for the sake of balance. To this day, there are some things that remain specifically Dexter's, or specifically Elijah's. We get a lot of shit in green and blue, partly because they're boy colors, partly because they're two different colors, partly because they go with the nursery, and partly because we can't find anything else. So, for example, Dex has a blue puppy dog Dreamlite in his crib, a puppy lovey and matching blanket, and a crocheted blanket with a green stripe from his great-grandma. Elijah has a green dinosaur Dreamlite, a monkey lovey and blanket, and his crocheted blankie has a blue stripe. They stay there, and never switch.

However, clothes are interchanged, sometimes daily. We'll put one baby in a giraffe onesie and the other in a Spongebob onesie, and aside from looking at any photos taken the previous day, have not a clue in hell who wore what. Binkies are interchanged about twenty times a day, whether by us or the babies. They've gotten to that age where they're better with dexterity and gripping, so while I'm in the kitchen and they're on the floor playing, I may suddenly hear a banshee squeal and run in to find, simply, that Dexter has snatched Eli's binky out of his mouth and popped it into his own.

WTF is a shower? Seriously... I do manage to wash my hair every other or every two days, and at the very least I'll sponge bathe the nasties every day to avoid smelling like a homeless man stuffing his coat with rotten cheese. But a full, daily shower? I haven't done that shit since I was on bed rest, and that was only because I didn't have anything better to do.

You may become slightly dependent on alcohol where you never really even drank before. Ever since I outgrew the childish drunken bar-hopping phase about five years ago, I've been a lightweight and a terrible drinker. I have, however, always enjoyed the occasional cocktail or glass of wine, but no more than one, MAYBE two if I'm feeling particularly adventurous. Now, there is a bottle (or four) of Barefoot Pinot Grigio in my house AT ALL TIMES.



Tuesday, October 8, 2013

When parents FB

Dad: "Why argue one of the two best human pleasures? Food. The other, I will leave you to answer."
Me: "LOLZ" *clears throat*
Dad: "And chocolate is a food, so try again."

He knows me far too well.

Friday, October 4, 2013

When you lick your own butthole, you forfeit the right to be a picky drinker.

Riddle me this:

Our cats have almost always had a strange aversion to a particular water bowl. We have two matching sets of bowls: one pink and white, one multi-colored, and we fill one of each with food and one of each with water. 99% of the time, the water in one bowl will go completely untouched, and sometimes, both will be untouched if there are floaties or kibble in them. Her royal spoiledness:


and her slightly less intellectually gifted sister-friend:


are puking, pooping, rug-tinkling, bug-eating, lactating-boob-licking, disgusting beasts. And yet, we somehow happen to have two Super Sweet Sixteen monsturds on our hands who will not have it any other way than theirs. It takes talent to be both disgusting slobs AND picky prissy bitches.

Today, Hubby reads me something off the great intarwebz: domestic cats, evidently, have an instinctual aversion to water bowls placed beside food bowls. This is supposedly because cats in the wild will not drink water anywhere near a kill that they are eating, because the water might be contaminated from the kill.

You know, because cats are so much smarter than we give them credit for.

And because there's no possible way a dead animal, in itself, could contain potentially disgusting and dangerous bacteria.

And also because neither of the two aforementioned priss-pants have ever done anything less than sanitary.

Or clever.

I'm going to go move their food bowls away from their water bowls. And then I'm going to spend the day gradually adding small floating objects just to dick with them.

Monday, September 23, 2013

My kids are awesome...

said almost every mother, ever.

Seriously though, I thought in the spirit of dealing with depression and anxiety and stress rather than succumbing to it, I would make a list of everything I could think of spur-of-the-moment that I love about my babies... to counter the things that drive me bonkers.

1. They are practically incapable of being without me. Which, while extremely frustrating when I need to do stuff, is a bond that I am thrilled and grateful that my babies have developed with me. I am the biggest part of their world. My arms are the ones they want when nothing else makes them happy. My voice is the one they want to hear singing when they can't fall asleep. I am Mommy... to be that person to these perfect little beings I helped create, and protected, grew and nurtured inside my own body for almost 36 weeks, is a greater blessing and gift than I have ever received.
2. The once-gummy, now-toothy grins they give me. Sometimes it's for no reason other than the fact that I looked at them. I don't care why they smile at me, I just love that they do and every single one of those smiles is perfect and precious.
3. Baby giggles. They started as cooing, graduated to chuckles, and now are full-blown belly laughs that are so contagious they'll have everyone in the room laughing with them. Whether it's tickles or playing peekaboo through the bars of the crib (like I did with Dex tonight, who was sitting up in his diaper and squealed, laughed and fell over when I popped up to peekaboo), that laughter is the cure for any level of crappy day.
4. The now-rare moments when they sleep on my chest. Sometimes I have to sneak and pick them up while they're already sleeping to get them to sleep on me, but every so often, they will grace me with a warm, snuggly baby zonk by drifting off in my arms, and I can sit and watch their eyelids flutter and listen to their deep, even breathing. There truly is nothing in the world more relaxing and joyful than holding your sleeping infant(s).
5. How Eli likes to pat my face when I feed him. He feels my facial features (<- this, previously a typo, said "facial feathers". I want you to think about that long and hard, and how terrified you are now that you've pictured it) and pats my cheeks, and it's absolutely darling... when he doesn't poke my eyeball with a fingernail.
6. How different they really are. Dexter is already on the verge of crawling and is sitting up by himself. Eli is babbling in full, consonant-laden conversations with his toys. Their laughter is subtly different. Their cries are different. Their voices in general are different, as are their personalities and preferences While Eli is not yet mobile, and Dexter does little more than yell rather than babble, watching them grow and develop at their different paces is fascinating and beautiful.
7. The way their faces brighten up when Brian gets out of bed. They miss their Daddy when he has to sleep during the day after working all night, and seeing his face after missing him for hours lights up those big blue eyes in the most incredible way.
8. How mesmerized they are by the cats. They are starting to really enjoy the cats, more than just being aware of them, and will reach out to touch them and watch them walk by. The cats, in return, have started to become slightly more interested in the boys and will sit on the floor nearby while they play. The loose harmony between my babies and my furbabies is adorable.
9. When they cry, they say "mamamamama". Maybe my hours of smiling and kissing faces and repeating countless times "say mama! Say Mommmmmmy" is finally paying off. Hehehe (my Dad would be delighted if they said "grandpa" first though, so I do feed in gramma and grandpa in addition to daddy... I'm not totally selfish).
10. How much I really, truly miss them after being away from them for any length of time, whether it's an hour or 10 hours... no matter how crazy they were driving me before that. I cannot begin to imagine what life is like for military service members who have children and get deployed, or parents that travel often for business, or what have you. I can't imagine being away from my peanuts for too long, even when I do need a break.


Dexter and I: September 2013

Elijah and I: September 2013

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Selfie(-centered)

The Toledo Blade featured a news article on Sunday about "selfies".

Seriously.

A whole article.

INCLUDING INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO TAKE ONE.

Am I the only one that is totally blown away by how unbelievably, gut-wrenchingly stupid our society has become?


One college student featured in the article said, and I quote, "Selfies are so stupid, but then I'm sitting here taking 25 at a time". Cell phones have been developed with front-facing cameras. Social media sites have been birthed to utilize and glorify the selfie phenomenon. The how-to guide included in the new article detailed the following steps:
1. Hold steady (because, as an 11 year-old kid says, if you take one that's blurry, you should retake it. NO. FLIPPING. SHIT. COMMON SENSE)
2. Try, but not too hard (.... what?????)
3. Mix it up: No duckface every time (OR HOW ABOUT NEVER, EVER, NOT F***ING AT ALL?)
4. Keep it appropriate (as opposed to Facebook porn?)
5. Amateur mistakes: arms included in photos. (How come nobody mentioned that self-conscious, attention-seeking girl you know that takes LITERALLY A HUNDRED PHOTOS of herself in the same exact pose tailored specifically to hide the giant gut that she's ashamed of? While those specific poses she uses are supposedly to be attractive and sexy and illicit the tens or hundreds of "likes" and comments she so desperately wants to validate herself? So, basically, the point of a "selfie" is to hide everything but your face anyway? WTF)

I seriously read this entire article with an open-mouthed look of disgust on my face. Maybe I should have selfie'd that one.

Is that SERIOUSLY what this world has come to? NEWS ARTICLES in the Sunday paper glorifying vanity and attention-seeking?

Make no mistake. I've taken my share of them. And sometimes, there are moments when selfies are acceptable. For example: taking a picture of you and your kid, if there's nobody else around to do it for you. Or posting a more recent, smiling, duckface-free photo of yourself (notice: I said "a photo", not a f***ing hundred). I've gone through and deleted a fair number of my former selfies simply out of shame.

Am I the only one that has grown up enough to realize how freaking stupid they are? Oh, yeah, I guess so, because the article talked about a grown-ass adult man doing the same thing. Gargh.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Rave: The body lotion NO WOMAN should be without

It's not terribly often that I come across a product that makes me giddy. And let's be honest... as a non-working, full-time mother and housewife, there aren't a hell of a lot of things that make me giddy aside from my husband, my babies, and a really phenomenal sale at Kroger.


However, yesterday, I made a rare impulse purchase in the beauty section that CHANGED. MY. LIFE.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you the wonders of Organix products... behold, the most fantasmic body lotion I've ever used in my life: Organix Moroccan Argan Oil body lotion.

This is for realsies. Shit's expensive, not gonna lie. You could probably buy a bottle of Suave or something for the same price and get three times as much lotion. Suave, however, is not capable of making you feel as though you just frolicked through a meadow laden with Pomeranian puppies, down pillows and unicorns. I received a rare lotion rubdown from the hubbs (he used to do it every night while I was pregnant because my skin itched all day, every day, so badly that I came dangerously close to pulling a Red Pyramid and ripping it off my body) and after he finished my right arm and moved on to my right leg, I sat staring in awe at my hands. The right hand was perfectly silky and smooth without being even remotely greasy, and it actually glowed. My skin was glowing. Not creepy glittery vampire glowing. Not radioactive Alex Mack glowing. I'm saying mesmerizing, perfectly healthy, moisturized bikini model glowing... just without the hot body or bikini. [EDIT TO ADD: Also, I had dead, busted-up blistered skin on my left hand from carrying 50-pound carseats. Post-lotion? Completely gone.]

I have been a not-so-hot mess the last few weeks. We moved into our townhouse during the last week of July, and I still don't have everything in place. There are DIY projects that must be finished, small things here and there that must be purchased, etc. So, needless to say, with a messy house and infant twins, I have little time for myself, and when I do, I usually use it to go grocery shopping or diaper shopping or whatever needs to be done. But last night, after the boys went to bed, I poured a glass of Pinot Grigio (granted, that happened initially because I was about to bust down the walls to get the kids next door to stop galloping and jumping up and down the stairs), climbed in the bathtub, and did some much-needed grooming. I got to shave my grizzly legs, exfoliate with an olive oil/sugar scrub (thanks hubby!... almost gone though if you need more x-mas present ideas!), and file the shit out of my feet. I washed my hair twice, scrubbed my skin raw with my Softsoap Spa Radiant body wash (another major favorite... I'm pretty sure the first thing that attracted me to it was the bright, pretty blue color... because I'm sometimes THAT girl. But seriously, it smells like the ocean and it makes me forget I live in East Buttf***, Ohio) and when I got out, I literally felt like a new person.

Until the lotion. Ohhhhh, the lotion.

It's been more than 12 hours since I first put the Argan Oil lotion on, and I still catch myself creepily caressing my own skin. It's that good.

If you're not terribly opposed to splurging on something for JUST YOU, I highly recommend this stuff!!! Organix Moroccan Argan Oil lotion... and apparently it's a body wash, too. On top of everything else I've raved about, it smells like a bottle full of heaven... which, depending on your personal definition of heaven, could be pictured as anything from the meadow full of puppies and unicorns, to Ryan Gosling half-naked in the sand, to... well, if you're me, the biggest, baddest, beastliest (yes it's a word... now) computer system ever created that would make Bill Gates pee his pants running everything from old-school Wolfenstein to modern-day COD, on a desk laden with Golden DoubleStuf Oreos and milk, coffee, Argan Oil lotion, and Stacy's Pita Chips with Greek tabouli salad.

Don't judge me.