Pinterest play

So there are two main things that make me very uncomfortable in parenting toddlers - allowing them the freedom to get a few bumps and bruises, and anything that requires major clean up.  I'm working on extending my comfort zone in those two categories.

I'm proud to say that the girls were playing outside and far enough away from me during this last week of sunshine that Middie Biddie is sporting a couple of lightly skinned knees that she hasn't even noticed.  Yay!  I let her fall down!  Yeah, yeah, I'm pathetic, but I'm working on it.  Hopefully by the time they start forming memories, those memories will be of doing fun stuff rather than of Mommy trying to wrap them in bubble wrap.

Today I worked on my discomfort with major messes.  I found a recipe on Pinterest for "moon sand" and mixed some up last night.  1/2 cup baby oil and 4 cups of flour.  Makes for a soft sand that can be packed and shaped a little bit for sandcastles.  The girls aren't old enough yet to understand the concept of sand castles, but I thought they'd enjoy playing with it anyway.

We got ourselves an activity table last week partially so we could do messy play stuff and keep it somewhat contained.  I set them both on the table, gave them the bowl of sand and some dixie cups and let them go at it!  They had a grand time.  It was mostly just scooping and pouring and trying to catch what I would sprinkle out of my fingers, but they certainly enjoyed it.


Teeny Tiny had to make sure that a good pile ended up on the floor to see how committed I really was to letting them just play without stopping them from making a mess.

As far as Pinterest projects go, I think this was a good one.  There was some clean up of course, but it wasn't as bad as you might expect.  I was able to clean it up with just a broom and dustpan and it didn't take very long.  This project kept them entertained for about a half hour and then it was nap time.

I'm not very active on Pinterest, but if you'd like to follow me, here I am!

And I'm brought back down to earth

Showing off plastic bowl fashion
about a half hour before the carnage

Yeah, yesterdays post was a bit on the flying high side.  Middie Biddie decided that was enough of that and this evening barfed about a gallon of crap all over me.

It started with a small puke in the middle of the playroom that K dutifully cleaned up.  About a half hour later, I had her on my lap facing me when the floodgates opened and spewed forth.  And then spewed forth again.  And again for good measure.
K came and grabbed her off of me, and I grabbed the bottom of my shirt to hold as much of it as I could and toddled off to dump it into the toilet.  Then I just took the shirt off all together and threw it into the toilet as well to rinse off as much as I could, then I toddled off to the bathroom with the working shower to take off my jeans and rinse those off.  Then I even had to toss my underwear into the laundry because the vomit had soaked through my jeans and through my underwear.  I did a quick rinse of myself in the shower as best I could then threw a nightgown over my head so I could go back into the living room to help K.

Apparently while I was in the bathroom, she had barfed some more, Teeny Tiny had stepped in it and slipped a little bit, and now Teeny Tiny was going nuts.

Once Middie Biddie got it out of her system, she was actually perfectly fine.  Got her to do some giggling.  But Teeny Tiny was inconsolable!  She panicked, cried, and basically went ballistic for about 30 minutes!  Twin thing I guess?  I don't know.  Apparently she's just really empathetic.  She got upset when Elmo fell off his stilts too.  She sees someone else do something painful or scary and she reacts like it happened to her.

After the girls went to bed, we had to do some major cleanup.  My office chair got some of it and it's fabric.  Even though I've pulled out the carpet cleaner and steam cleaned it with the attachment thing, it still smells like vomit.  It's seen better days already so I might be shopping for a new chair.  We also had to steam clean the wood floor and of course do a dramatic load of laundry.

In unrelated news, I've done something to my thumb.  It's swollen and hurts, and makes it difficult to pick up the girls.  I've been icing it, but it really hurts!  Can hardly hold a cup.

Yesterday was a better day than today.

I still can't believe this is my life

Days like today are a shock to this bitter infertile's system.  I still can not believe I get to live like this now.  We're coming up on 2 years that I've been a mom and I still feel like it can't possibly be happening.  I actually get to have days like this!  I'm not just pretending, this is actually happening!  This is actually my life now!  I'm trying to put into words how it just seems surreal to me that only 3 years ago I was so desperate, so miserable, so afraid, so without hope and yet here I am, having days like today.

K got the girls up while I took a shower.  He gave them a small breakfast and then we packed them up for a big breakfast out.  The girls played with crayons at the table and dropped plenty of their food on the floor (we tip well).  We took a couple of walkabouts when the girls got antsy and needed to move, they each had a drum solo or two with their spoons when they were finished eating.  One needed a diaper change and K had to bring her back to me because there was no changing table in the mens room.  I take one in, do a diaper change, swap kids, do another change, and we head out while all the old people grinned and waved at our tiny twosome.

We finally had a nice sunny day here in the Pacific Northwest.  It's been warm enough that not everything was still waterlogged which totally negates the benefits of a nice sunny day.  We went to a park that's fully enclosed with a fence and we were the only ones there, so we were able to sit and let the girls roam without needing to do the helicopter parenting thing.

I'm trying to learn to let them figure things out themselves and to allow them to get a few bumps and bruises.  Part of our trip to the park was to practice that.  To sit on a bench and do nothing more than take pictures while the girls figured out what they wanted to do on their own.  Teeny Tiny went for the toys in the sandbox while Middie Biddie went exploring at top speed.  Letting them find their way without clearing the path is really hard for me, but I'm trying to get better at it.

Eventually we decided to introduce them to some toys that they couldn't get into without us like a rocking car.

We spent a good portion of our play time on the swings of course.

This is my life right now.  It's not just me, alone.  I'm one of four.

After the park and nap (Teeny Tiny slept, Middie Biddie chatted to her bear the whole time), they were in such a great mood!  We need to dose them with sunshine more often.  Middie Biddie just wanted to chat and laugh all evening.  She told me all her secrets, sometimes whispering them to me, just thrilled that I was listening.  I can't wait until those secrets are in English so I can understand them!

After plenty of play, stories, and secret sharing, we all had a nice dinner and we put the girls to bed.  As we hear Middie Biddie repeat "nigh nigh!!" over and over again (as in it's night night time), we close the door to their room and I'm so happy I just want to cry.  The "nigh nigh" fades out and they are both asleep with no fuss within minutes.

This is my life!  It's so simple, but it's so beautiful.  This is greatness.  My bipolar high school self can not believe I have achieved contentment.  My bitter infertile self can not believe I have achieved motherhood.  My self hating self can not believe I've achieved a happy marriage with someone who chose me and loves me.  I almost feel like I have whiplash from how dramatically my life has twisted and turned in the last 5 years.  Today was roses, so I'm here on my blog recording the smell.

Toddler play

We're there!  We're at the point that I always dreamed about.  They are old enough for more creative play and to really play with each other!  This is where parenting gets good.

Just look at those cute little toddler hands covering her eyes!

A fix for the funk

Moments after posting about my funk yesterday, the girls decided I needed some cheering up.  Something clicked with them and they must have looked at each other and suddenly figured out "I don't have to just play next to you, I can play WITH you!" and they spent the rest of the evening chasing each other and giggling like crazy.  It was my favorite parenting moment so far.

My sandwich went rogue!

I don't write a whole lot anymore.  I went through a couple of years where every moment was filled with deep, agonizing thinky thoughts that I had to get out of my head and I don't have a lot of those anymore.  As much as I'd like to provide deep meaningful content, I don't have a whole lot more in my head to put out there to the world.

Nowadays, it seems like I just want to jot down a few cute things that happened during the day.  But I'm also in a bit of a funk.  I'm feeling pretty down on myself lately.  Like I'm not doing enough with the girls, I feel like my pottery sucks and I can't figure out how to market it, a lot of my experiments end up looking like crap, and let's not even talk about whether or not I'm employable.  Yeah, it's one of those funks that I can't figure out how to get out of but it's not so serious that I need to get a bunch of swimming thoughts out either.  It could be that we haven't really had a chance to get out and do much because the girls have been sick on and off for months.  They'll get a cold, they'll get most of the way over it so I'll schedule playdates and stuff, and then it cycles around again and I end up having to cancel so we don't spread the plague to other households.  That and the fact that Middie Biddie now gets car sick if we go anywhere more than 10 minutes from home, my world is pretty small and boring at the moment.

Oh well, that's where I am right now.  For lack of anything deeper to think about, I'm pondering the question of whether or not to try for a third baby.  I feel like I missed out on the whole baby thing because I was so miserable and never got to just enjoy a quiet moment bonding with a baby because there was always a second one ensuring there were no quiet moments.

I've never been a baby person, to me the baby stage is kind of like pregnancy - something you have to get through in order to eventually have a kid.  They told me it would be different with my own, but then I had 2 at a time, PPD, PTSD, and wow, still didn't like the baby thing.  A couple of days ago, I was at a Moms of Multiples meeting and a new mom brought her 5 month old boys.  It was a really small group (just her and I for a while actually) so I offered to be a second pair of hands and to try to take care of whichever baby she wasn't tending to at the moment.  They were adorable little cherubs, perfect rolly polly goobers.

I finally had a chance to hold a baby without having to worry about the other one!  Ya know what?  I still don't like babies.  Yup, I just don't.  It's constant spitting up, rarely a moment of contentment that doesn't immediately turn into unhappiness, and everything around you is wet.  I don't even know exactly how everything gets wet, it's just the law of babies I guess.  If there's a baby, everything you touch is going to be wet.

We're thinking about using our last four embryos in natural cycle transfers.  I seem to actually have a cycle now and being so on the fence about having a third, that seems to be the closest thing to "leaving up to fate" that we could do.  We have those opportunities and I can't bring myself not to use them, but holy crap we do not want to go through all the rigmarole again, especially when we aren't desperate for a child like we were before.

Anyway, that's the closest thing I'm having to thinky thoughts lately.  And now on to random bits and pieces about what my kids are doing, besides sneezing out massive snot explosions that is.

The other day after their nap, I wasn't in the mood to set them up in their table and do the whole big meal thing for lunch.  I also needed to eat so I made up a couple of pb&js and figured I'd let the girls loose in the playroom and just eat myself.  They inevitably want bites of whatever we're eating so I knew they'd be eating about half of whatever I had.  I was planning on just giving them bites as they played.  So I ate half a sandwich (to make sure I got some!) and then got Middie Biddie up from her nap.  Got her diaper changed and let her loose.  When I came back from the nursery with Teeny Tiny, I see Middie Biddie running into the second playroom with a sandwich squashed in her hand and jelly all over her face!  I thought I had set the plate far enough back on the desk that she wouldn't be able to reach it but I was wrong!  By the time I got Teeny Tiny changed and set free, there was nothing left of that sandwich except for two small bits on the floor.  I can't believe she scarfed that whole thing down!  Either that or I'm going to find a chunk of sandwich rotting in some corner in a few weeks (I've searched so hopefully not).  Fortunately there was still another half sandwich so Teeny Tiny got her lunch too.

Middie Biddie is totally into stuffed animals right now.  She seems to have one with her most of the time.  She was so cute the other day when she arranged a pillow on the floor and put a bunch of monkeys night night.

Yesterday, she had two stuffed animals and was kind of running around.  Teeny Tiny picked up one for herself and started following Middie Biddie wherever she went.  For a few minutes, I just had toddlers running back and forth in the playroom.

She's also getting really good at feeding herself with her spork.  Still pushing some items off the plate, but overall she'll get a meal eaten and I don't have to help her much.

The other big thing right now going outside to blow bubbles.  Bubbles are a big hit.  Today was the first day it was nice enough to actually go beyond the deck so I took them into the cul-de-sac and braced myself to chase toddlers running in opposite directions.  One of the good things about this neighborhood, it's enclosed so no traffic, and my neighbors like my kids.  I generally only take the girls outside if the neighbors are home because most of time at least one of them will come out and chat and they'll help keep the kiddos from running off.  They'll also help me get them both back inside when the time comes.  The girls did pretty good.  Neither of them really tried to get into anything that I had to prevent them from getting into.  They mostly just wanted to catch bubbles and run around in circles.  No trying to run off to peoples back yards or anything.  Putting on shoes used to make them cry, but now they get excited to put them on because it means we're going to blow bubbles!

Teeny Tiny's speech is adorable, but kind of weird.  She says "bye" to just about everything and is now adding "gluhgull" to the end of it.  I'm not sure what that is, but she seems to be saying it at the end of everything she says kind of like a reflex.  She's also big on kisses and will put her hand up to other peoples mouths to blow their kisses for them.

She also has a love/hate relationship with her xylophone.  It's her favorite toy, but it also pisses her off so she'll go from happily pounding on it to crying and frustrated and then back to playing.  Take it away from her, whether she's happy with it or pissed off at it and she goes into a tantrum.



So, that's pretty much it.  I'm in a funk feeling like I suck at life, the girls are at a stage where there aren't new milestones every day but they are getting better, cuter, and funnier with the things they can do.

What the heck

Ok, I thought a year of breastmilk was supposed to keep them healthy!  I feel so lied to about that!

Once again I have two little snot monsters, one whose voice sounds like gravel.  At least the one that's dripping snot after every sneeze is now seeking out having her face wiped rather than fighting it.

Ya know, I hardly ever schedule much of anything.  Don't do much with friends, hardly ever try to get a play date to happen and it seems like every single time I do, I have to cancel.  I'm in a funk and I'm frustrated.