Win/win.

I was going to write a love letter to my handsome hunk of man, but he's asleep and my blog posts are sent to his email, so maybe blogging is a good choice. I'll say it, kids, I miss blogging.
It's been ten weeks and five days since Max and Miles were born. I am 9 days away from my 12-week breastfeeding goal. I basically feel like a lactactional superhero. I'm sorry all of my posts are about the eating habits of my twins. It's all we talk about in real life, too.
The boys are settling into a nice little routine and I think I can say with about 45% confidence that we're hitting our stride in the 5-kids-under-6-3-under-2-no-nanny-no-housekeeper-gloves-are-off-lifejacket-is-waterlogged-coast-guard-can't-be-reached department.

We are finding a pretty good way of moving about our day at this point with the boys taking three or four naps a day and sleeping "okay" at best during the night. I love it when strangers ask me how they're sleeping at night. Well...they're ten weeks old. And there are two. I usually respond with, "uh, well, they're pretty cute so I try to overlook the rest of it..."
During the day Mo and Claire have a pretty strict routine of Disney channel, playdoh, floor puzzles, markers, marshmallows and multiple hot baths. Ah, winter! So the boys sleep in their rockers and Mama just keeps her shoes on. That would be one of my best pieces of advice in managing this many tiny kids all day. Keep your shoes on - preferably cross trainers. You're going to need the arch support, since you'll be on your feet 95% of the time, and you'll need the traction as you navigate any number of strange puddles.
More later, Zombie Mama needs to sleep real quick!

Couple recent cell pics

Stupid dog.

It's 4:20 am now, getting dangerously close to 5am.

It's 4:20am now. Getting dangerously close to 5am, which is pretty much morning. :(
The first baby woke up at 12:30 and it's been hell ever since. I have a meeting in 5 hours, but now I'm not sure if I should go, considering how little sleep I've had. This is the "incredibly un-fun" part of having twins. I just nursed for four hours straight and am completely raw, but more than that I'm completely alone and raw. I don't have time to go out and make more friends to help me through the complaints and tough parts of having twins. Since it took me six solid hours to find a moment to use the bathroom yesterday, I'm pretty sure a mothers of multiples meeting isn't in my future. And I will be clear, here. Having twins isn't as hard as nursing twins. Being up for so long in the middle of the night is rough. Your perspective gets screwy. Every time my eyes start to close, a babya wakes up looking for his pacifier...oh, my burning eyes! My plans to swing by target on the way to my meeting will definitely result in major caffeine. Maybe I'll buy a cup of coffee. As if I have ang idea what I'm doing ordering coffee. Maybe a Red Bull. Or four.

Adding Back to Lent.

I think that my friend Katherine put it well in her blog post, just how I'm feeling this year.

Life with littles is sacrifice. I no longer sleep, I don't eat full meals, I rarely get a morning shower, my body is not my own, date nights aren't an option, I haven't had a moment to myself in ages, there is no time for TV and Facebook, we live frugally, we endure harsh criticism for our life and I feel far from Christ and very near all at once.What is left to give up?

So this year I'm "adding in" where Lent is concerned. I can think of about 20 things I'd like to add to our already very busy life, but when? I have been searching high and low for things that we can do as individuals and as a family to enrich our faith and live more authentically as a young Catholic family. The things I've landed on this year are things we can do "as we live," so that the kids start to see their faith as a flowing part of their lives, rather than a Sunday morning event.

Here's what our Lent will look like.

• We will do one thing every day to make our home more visibly Catholic. We have the "usual stuff," but when I walk in the door I don't think to myself, "My, my. A Catholic family surely lives here!" So this year I'm going to work to create a more Catholic home in the visual sense. 
• We will give something to Goodwill daily. 
• We will park farther out in the parking lot when we go shopping in order to say prayers while we walk in and while we walk out. 
• We will create this family tradition. I hope that we can make it a year-long practice moving forward.

The idea behind our Lenten activities this year is to create practices that will carry us forward into the Year of Faith as a family. With young children time is at a premium and it's so hard to make the time to do everything we want to do. Adding these activities is a small way that we can teach the kids to live their faith daily. 

8 weeks of twin love.

Well, we're doing it. Life in our house is sort of like witnessing a major zoo mishap where the handlers are blamed at first for leaving the gate unlocked, but then you're like, "well they ARE wild animals..." and then someone else says in a very calm manner, "yeah, but what do you expect when you  assume those underpaid morons wouldn't screw up a task like running a zoo full of wild animals in the first place?" And everyone mumbles in agreement and nods rather sagely, sighing over the state of zoos these days.

The boys are not officially smiling yet. Max is getting there, but Miles sees no reason to smile at anyone who does not resemble a boob. Homeboy is here for the food. Max eats dutifully, and if it's going to sustain him, he'll eat enough to fill his belly.
Miles? That little egg is another story. Where Max would say something like, "That was delicious, Mother. Thank you for the lovely meal." and close his eyes for a little nap, Miles has a different approach. If I were to guess, I think if would go something like, "BOOOOOOOOOBIES!!! MILES NEEDS MILK AND BOOBIES AND BOOBIESPAGHETTI AND BOOBIEWAFFLES AND BOOBIEMIIIIIIIILLLLLLK!!! BOOBIESBOOBIESBOOBIESBOOBIESFOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!! FOODFOODFOODFOODFOODFOODFOODFOODBOOBIES!! BOOBIENUZZLESNUGGLECUDDLELOVELOVELOVEMILKANDBOOBIES!!!" And then he passes out for a marathon nap.

Yeah, lots of nursing in this house. At 8 weeks we are getting into a good groove and I'm not contemplating just buying stock in formula and stopping the whole breastfeeding circus. The first 6 or 7 weeks were really, really rough. I mean, enough to send me straight to the looney bin. But I think we're getting closer go seeing more sleep at night, we're getting a decent routine to hold us until that happens and we've sort of just hit our rhythm.

Now, Mr. Max is finally out after Daddy and I decided to keep them up to laugh at them. Bad decision for sleep, but dang if they aren't the cutest little boys ever! This post is over in the name of rest!

In Sickness and In Health. But mostly sickness.

It has been almost two weeks since my family left. When they left, Mom, my brother John and myself were all feeling sick. That was Monday the 28th. By the 30th I was down and out with the Cold From Hell, and the girls were all starting to run low fevers. By Sunday Lucy was very sick. Her fever crept up to well over 104 and we took her in to urgent care on Sunday morning. She tested positive for influenza A, and by the time she got home we had three little girls with high fevers.
Sunday night and Monday were a blur of Motrin, Tylenol and temperature-taking. Miles ran a low fever as well, and I was sick the entire time,  but the girls were a nice distraction for me. Andrew and I took notes and mostly communicated via dry erase marker on the bathroom mirror, as both of us were running nonstop for 48 hours! Thankfully we're both pretty patient with a house full of sickies and we work well together. We just keep moving.
Lucy went back to school Tuesday and Claire's flu peaked on Tuesday night. Molly was sickest on Tuesday, as well. Wednesday was calm with low fevers for Mo and Claire, and then Andrew took Thursday off because HE was sick. On Friday morning I woke up with Miles burning up next to me, so Claire and the twins and I took a trip to the ER where he tested positive for influenza A, as well. That was yesterday. Today he was looking pretty good and running a low fever about every 12 hours. It's been about a 48-72 hour bug for each of us.
So because of Miles, we canceled Saturday to lie low. Tonight we decided to run out to Target, mostly to get some air and stretch our legs. Lucy mentioned a stomach ache as we were leaving for the store, and when we got home she ran straight to her bed and passed out. We woke her up an hour later and she said she still felt unwell. As she walked into the kitchen to let Andrew know that she was feeling sick, his major Daddy instincts took over and he spun her around and flipped the trash can open just in time. Super dad!

As soon as THAT happened, we switched from "Influenza A" mode to "tummy bug" mode. That requires an entirely different skill set, you know. Stuffed animals and cuddling blankets were stripped from the beds, towels were stacked in strategic locations, bedroom rugs rolled up, bathroom prepared for middle of the night baths, etc. A well-oiled machine, I tell you. So now we wait. A contagious bug? Something she ate? A fluke? It's like a murder mystery dinner of the infectious disease variety.

The twins are now 8 weeks old, and we've spent the first two weeks on our own trying to just keep our heads above water and out of the ER.

I want to write more about them, but that'll have to wait. I think a child needs me.

You know that miserable moment at 1:40am where you can only manage to keep one eye hlf open and your little baby is grunting and squirming and has just startled back awake for the 23rd time and you realize it could be another hour before you can go back to sleep?

I'm there.

With two babies.

Lucy's 52 Tribute for Superbowl Sunday!

Go Ravens!

Watch it here:

A retail spectacle.

More tomorrow when I can caption from my laptop! Phone blogging is too much work, y'all!