I'm fortunate to have family

The last 24 hours have once again reminded me how fortunate I am to be surrounded by the people I'm surrounded by.  Warning - this is a medical post so TMI ahead.  Also a couple of random kid pics.  Nothing to do with this post, but posts are better with kid pics.

I haven't been feeling well for a couple of weeks now.  I've had really bad gas and diarrhea, and I've been retaining water, waking up really puffy.  Part of me wondered if I was pregnant again (I tested, no), dealing with a major bout of PMS, or just my crappy diet and lack of exercise catching up to me.  I haven't been feeling bad enough to really complain a whole lot about it, but I've been running through my mind things I need to do to feel better, like drink more water, remember to eat in the morning so my body isn't running on coffee alone, that kind of thing.

Last night was our usual date night and my parents came over to watch the girls in the evening.  During dinner, I told K about some general crotch pain I've been having.  It's been feeling like when I was pregnant and some nerves were being pinched sending a weird, kind of funny bone pain through my vagina/labia.  We got home from dinner and a few walks, my parents went home, and we settled in for the night.  The pain started getting worse and began to spread into my hip and thigh.  I just could not get comfortable in bed.  Between midnight and 3am, I was up trying to find comfortable positions, trying to poo to relieve pressure, and my entire abdomen started feeling like it was trying to push itself inside out.  Probably from all the poo straining.  I was just writhing in pain.

K made the executive decision that it was ER time, and we had to figure out the logistics.  First, we had discovered earlier in the day that my van desperately needs oil and we had forgotten to pick some up on our way home.  So we weren't very comfortable driving with the girls knowing my car could break down if we did.  There's also the whole issue of not wanting to wake them up in the middle of the night and basically torturing them with hours of waiting around in a room where they couldn't do anything, and wouldn't be able to sleep.  He asked if I could drive myself.  It's only a 10 minute drive, but no, I was in too much pain and didn't feel safe driving myself.

So at 3am, I call my parents.  I felt soooo bad doing that.  But my parents have been very adamant that they will never turn off their phones on the off chance that one of their kids needs them.  Well, they were needed.  And at 3:15am, my dad was walking in my door followed a few minutes later by my mom.  I have no idea why they were in separate cars, probably my dad was ready to get out the door faster and they didn't want the delay of waiting for mom.

Off the ER we went.  They asked questions regarding possible appendicitis, maybe this, maybe that or the other thing.  They got me on some pain meds to help me get somewhat comfortable.

For a while, we were thinking that it was major constipation.  A big old giant blockage that would explain the nerve type of pain in my crotch as well as my constant need to expel.  Constipation would even explain the diarrhea - and I leave this info in case others experience something similar.  Apparently if you have a blockage, the more liquid fecal matter will escape around the blockage causing runny liquid stools like I had been experiencing for a while.  But after a quick, yet invasive exam, no blockage was detected.  So they gave me a cat scan to see if there was a blockage farther up in the bowel than *ahem* digitally accessible.

More pain meds, more waiting for the cat scan results, more trying to get comfortable and failing to achieve a 5 minute nap for either K or I.

They finally came back and found that I have a kidney stone!  A pathetic, 2mm, itty bitty kidney stone.  The good news is that I'm likely over the most painful part of it as it's already worked its way close to the bladder.  The bad news is that I still have to deal with pain meds because it's not completely over, and I have to strain all of my pee through a filter to try to catch this thing for testing when I finally pass it.

Shortly after the results came in, so did my nausea from all the pain meds.  I spent about an hour vomiting uncontrollably.  Even after discharge, I spent the drive home barfing up practically nothing into a little barf bag they gave me.

My parents had called at one point during the hospital ordeal to check and see what was going on.  I was able to tell them we weren't looking at anything life threatening and gave them the guesses we had at that point.  So they didn't get a whole lot of sleep either.  When we came home a little after 8am, they were each asleep on different couches and obviously very anxious to know what was happening.

I was so stoned and vomiting that I'm not entirely sure of what went down.  All I knew is that there were 4 very sleep deprived adults just wanting to crash and 2 toddlers due to wake up and start their day any minute.  I was sent to bed and calls went out to various family members to see who could come by and help out since K had to work at 3pm (though he called and told them he'd be late so he could get some sleep at some point before a long work shift).

When I woke up, the girls were in bed for their naps and my uncle D was in the living room.  I'm not particularly close to uncle D, I'm much closer to aunt D but she wasn't available at that time.  I gave him some general instructions on feeding the girls when they got up, how to determine whether or not Middie Biddie needed to get up (because she wasn't sleeping) or if it was ok to leave her to entertain herself in the crib.  Then I took some meds and tried to eat, and promptly barfed it all up in the sink because I couldn't make it to the toilet.  Had to call the nurse line to see if I could take more meds since I barfed them all up within minutes of taking them and I couldn't to be on the safe side.  So screw that, I went back to bed.  Uncle D, going above and beyond, cleaned up my vomit clogged sink.

When I woke up again, both aunt D and uncle D were there, the girls were up and fed and I was able to spend a little bit of time with them.  Then my dad showed up and uncle D headed out.  I was also told that cousin R was also on call if needed.  Aunt D had brought me some foods to try for dinner and fortunately I was able to keep it down, yay!!!  Aunt D informs me that uncle D has hardly ever babysat before so she was a little surprised it went so well and that he was very impressed with how well behaved the girls are.  After an hour or so, we put the girls to bed and the parade of family left with cell phones on in case I needed more assistance before K came home.  Fortunately, the girls crashed with zero drama and I haven't heard a peep from them all night.

A friend of mine is going to come over tomorrow shortly after K goes to work to help out and my mom will likely come over when the girls get up from their nap.  These are the people I'm surrounded by.  People that will show up at my door if I call and say I need them at 3am.  Relatives I don't even see very often rearranging their day to spend it watching the girls in my living room and cleaning up vomit in my bathroom.  Friends who are checking in to see what they can do to help.  All of this, and I haven't even exhausted the list of potential friends and relatives I could call if these people were unavailable.  All of this emergency going on and I'm pretty sure that to the girls, it was nothing more than a day of extra people to play with.  I'm very lucky to have been raised surrounded by these people because not only are they there, but they made awesome people my normal so as an adult, I choose awesome people to bring into my life.  I'm a very lucky person indeed.

Photo Bomb!

Just cuz I wanna!

And so it begins

I was sitting on the couch with the girls today, playing with a toy.  I had Middie Biddie on my lap and Teeny Tiny snuggled up next to me, both engaged with the toy.

Then Teeny Tiny got up and also sat on my lap, straddling Middie Biddie from behind.  I thought "this is so adorable!" and called out to K to come look.  That's when Teeny Tiny shoved Middie Biddie firmly and I was barely able to catch her arms to prevent her from hitting the ground.

With the way she steals toys* and now shoving Middie Biddie off my lap, I'm thinking of changing Teeny Tiny's nickname to Bossy Britches.

I'm plotting elaborate ways to kill you

*She often exchanges one toy for another with Middie Biddie.  Awesome that she at least gives her a replacement toy, but she still doesn't give her victim any choice in the matter.

We all have those moments

On blogs, it's so easy to think that the writer is awesome all the time or overcoming some major obstacle because we tend to only write about the great little things or the horrible big things.

But that's not daily life.  I'm a big fan of the minutiae of daily life.  The little things that happen every day that aren't anything worth writing home about, those are the things that truly create a life.

So I offer you a bit of minutiae about my day today where I started off being kind of crappy, but I think I recovered well.

I have a medical bill sitting on my desk taunting me.  My husbands insurance now has this credit card thing that you can use to cover copays and other out of pocket medical expenses from some sort of account.  A flexible spending account I guess.  I haven't used this card yet and the bill that's taunting me doesn't have a means of paying via credit card online and it's kind of a large bill.  So I wanted to call and double check that I can fill out the credit card info and mail it in and to see if there was enough money in the account to cover it.
I got far enough into the phone call to find out that yes, I can do that and I was trying to listen to the various prompts to find out if there was enough money in the account so I could go ahead and do that.  That's when Middie Biddie started whining at me and trying to crawl on me.  I tried to set her down and separate myself but had to have the prompts read to me again, and I was getting frustrated at trying to do one thing while she was pulling and whining at me to do another so I gave up and hung up the phone.

I was so pissed off!  I started to yell at her "I can't even finish a fucking phone call because of you!!!!"  The words "I can't..." got out of my mouth before I stopped myself.  Yes, I was pissed, yes I wanted to release that anger by yelling at the source of my anger, but she didn't deserve to be yelled at so I stopped and walked away.  It's ok.  I can make the phone call again during her nap.  It's fine.

So yeah.  This blogger gets pissed off.  This blogger has moments where some of that pissed off escapes.  This blogger pulled it back and walked away before more could get out.  Not a shining moment of parenting but not a horrible one either.  Just another moment that we all have, no one bothers to really mention, but is a part of life.

It's nap time.  I have a phone call to make again.

2nd Birthday

Can you believe my babies are two???

Today was so filled with exhausted happiness.  Not only because the girls had a great party, but because the weight of my horrible house was finally lifted off my shoulders today.

I'll talk about my house and then about the girls.  But first a couple of pictures because, well, because.

We bought this house primarily because it's a big open floor plan and we pictured kids running from one end of the house to the other.  Lots of space to play, we could have people over, it's great that way.

But then my cats got a hold of it.  A few years after we moved in, we replaced the carpet that was here because it wasn't all that great and my cats had begun to pee on it.  We were going to do so well at keeping it clean and not let it get gross again, cleaning up any urine spots instantly and really trying to redirect the cats back to the litter boxes.  But my cats are simply more powerful than my carpet cleaner (not to mention they're total assholes) and within a year it was disgusting again.

Then I had twins and the house got awful.  We started using about half of the house has just a perpetual storage area, throwing shit in there that we didn't want to deal with.  When the girls started spending time on the floor, we slowly began to pull out the carpet and put down laminate flooring.  One room at a time that we could then completely baby proof and turn into a giant baby cage.

Just before the girls first birthday, we finished the main area of the house.  We put up baby gates to blockade the room of perpetual storage and just let it ferment.  It's been so gross, and so buried in general crap and stuff that I've been feeling buried and caged in to this one big room of the house.  All the crap was within eyesight and all of the gross was within smell distance.

The last few months it's really been getting to me.  I've been almost depressed because of the buried feeling.  Couldn't really invite anyone over because even when in the decent part of the house, I was always paranoid that the person was just holding their nose and counting the minutes until they could politely leave.  And of course, I wondered if it lowered peoples opinion of me, like the gross became a part of me.

But no more!  K has been off work the last week so he could spend time with his father who is in town from Florida for the girls birthday.  Between day trips with him and life in general, K and I (mostly K) have been working our asses off getting the house ready for a birthday party.  Several trips to the dump, completely redoing the backyard to make a nice play space for the girls, and of course pulling up that horrible carpet and putting down laminate.

It's done!!!  The house is almost completely opened up to the girls now.  There's a small section that's still gated off because my parents treadmill is taking up space until they move it in a month or two, but for the most part the house is open!  OMG and it's fucking cleanable!!  The carpet was so bad and there was so much garbage that it just wasn't cleanable.  Now, I can sweep real quick, do spot wipes of the floor where needed and take the steam mop to it every few days to sanitize and de-sticky.  I can have friends over!  People can walk through my door without me apologizing profusely for living this way!  And the girls can run!

Today we had a great party for the girls.  I honestly didn't think many people would be interested in coming over to watch two toddlers eat cake, but a lot of people did.  I think I have to accept that more people enjoy our company than I tend to realize.

The day just went right.  The girls went down for their nap about 1pm and were both asleep within minutes.  That NEVER happens.  Especially Middie Biddie, but it did today!  They got up around 4pm so we were able to give them some dinner before people started arriving at 4:30pm.

We had their new water table and sandbox set up in the backyard and once some of the kids were here, everyone went outside to play.  All the kids had a great time, Teeny Tiny required 2 wardrobe changes from soaking herself with water then getting in the sandbox.  The kids were aged 2-9 and all played together with no meltdowns.  It was awesome!  K fired up the grill and his father brought over some awesome seafood and everyone pigged out on burgers and scallops.  I wish I had taken pictures of all the kids playing in the yard, but I was so pooped from prepping the house that I just wanted to live it rather than bother recording it.

About 5:30pm, we got out the cakes - two small ones for the girls (because they were so dainty with their first year smash cakes, I wanted a second shot at it) and then a big one for the rest of the party.  We set them up in their table, stuck hats on their heads and I informed the party of how we'll do the happy birthday song.  We sing it twice, first for Teeny Tiny, then again for Middie Biddie.  We sang and presented them with their cakes and let them do what they wanted to do while we served cake and ice cream to the rest of the party.

Teeny Tiny refused to let go of a Dorito chip and sometimes used it as a scoop for her cake.  There was a hysterical moment where Teeny Tiny slid Middie Biddies cake over to her and I thought "Oh crap, here we go, let the cake flinging and toddler meltdowns begin" but then she immediately slid her cake over to Middie Biddie!  She swapped the cakes a few times and it was so funny!


Then the girls opened presents and there were new toys and paper shrapnel everywhere.  Middie Biddie and her cousin played a chasing game and it just thrilled me to watch her truly playing WITH another kid and not just in the area of another kid.

The party wound down, we put the girls to bed after everyone left, and they spent about 2 hours laughing their heads off before finally falling asleep.

One other little home making thing we did today.  On either side of one of our closets, there's a small amount of white wall.  I assigned one side for Teeny Tiny, the other for Middie Biddie, and I had them stand in their spots, put a book on their head, and marked their height.  It's a little thing, but it's a quintessential "this is our home" kind of thing that I finally started today.

I've said before that I'm not a big fan of babies.  Never liked them, don't think I ever will.  But I like kids. I've always wanted kids.  After 5 years of struggle, 2 twin pregnancies, lots of IVF, loss, two newborns at a time, post partum depression, struggle and strife, I actually, finally have KIDS.  It's a great day, let the games begin!