I've painted such a horrible picture

So far, I've had a lot of complaints about parenthood.  I stand by every bitch and moan I've put out there, but maybe it's time to mention the few good things that are happening.

We're out of the worst part of it I think.  I'm not wanting to throw myself through a window anymore, and when a baby wakes up when I just got the other one to go down for a nap, I groan in annoyance rather than burst into tears.  That's some major progress right there.

Once we get them down for the night (still waaaaaayyyy too long of a process, but we're working on it), we can count on anywhere between 5-8 solid hours of sleep for ourselves.  Even though each girl will often sleep 10-11 hours, you can only count the time that their sleeps overlap and nobody wakes up to eat.  In awesome husband news, I don't even know what to expect from them during the night time hours because K takes care of it most of the time.  It's very rare that he'll ask me to take care of a night time feeding.  Looking at the records in Baby ESP, it looks like there haven't been a whole lot of night time feedings so yeah, he's getting some sleep too.

For the most part, I feel like myself again.  When the zoloft prescription ran out, I didn't bother to see the doctor for a checkup so I could get more.  While I'm tired, and my body aches (I never used to be on my feet this much or carry anything), I'm not afraid I'm going to fall down at any moment anymore.

So that's how things aren't as bad anymore, here's what's actually good.

They are displaying hints of what their personalities are going to grow into.  I think their personalities are going to take after the person they got their looks from.

Tina is going to be more like K and be really social. Not to mention a total ham.  She just loves attention and interaction, and is go, go, go all the time.  Now that the harness is off, she's talking a lot and just seems so happy.  When I tuck a blanky around her in the swing, she acts like I just gave her a million bucks.

Charlotte seems more like me.  More contemplative, observational.  She loves to play the games, but feels awkward if she has to fully engage with you while playing them.  She pretty much only smiles looking me in the eye when I approach her to get her from the crib or swing.  Once she's acknowledged that she's glad to see me, it's time to smile about other things.  She'll coo and grin while looking at something over my shoulder rather than look me directly in the eye.  She talks a lot so I think she's going to have command over a lot of words, but I think she'll prefer to use them in a format that doesn't require direct interaction (like, oh, I dunno, maybe blogging?  Sound like anyone you read?).

Charlotte's elusive big smile -
not looking at me of course

The girls are smiling a lot.  Tina has the biggest smile ever.  Her whole face crinkles to try to pull the sides of her lips up as high as she can get them.  Charlotte is a little more reserved, and she does NOT want her smile caught on camera, but when she smiles, she sure means it.

Tina's full face crinkle

The biggest thing is that lately they see me coming and they smile because of it.  I get this "Oh goody, you're here!" look as I enter the room.  Can you believe that?  They actually want to see ME!  Grouchy, ornery, ME!  Still shocks the hell out of me.  Charlotte actually gets excited to see me walking towards her.  There are babies in this world that know me, recognize me, miss me when I'm gone, it's just so totally surreal.  If someone else is holding or feeding them and I'm walking around the room, they are watching me.  I still can't quite believe this is true, but I'm the one they want.  It still just shocks me that one will be upset (in the swing or something) and when I walk in to check, that's all it takes to make them smile.

Fortunately they recognize and want K too.  If they didn't, we might have a real problem cuz Mama needs her alone time.