it's amazing how friends can make you feel better when you feel like crying or topping yourself off....k, i didn't feel like topping myself off today, but i felt like shit most of the day.

i just got off the phone with katie, and feel so much better. it's just nice to hear a familiar voice, even if we're talking to our respective kids simultaneously, and then going: "were you talking to me?" it just makes me feel like i'm not alone. which i'm not anyway....who can be alone when they're well outnumbered by those under the age of a year?

i really am wondering about my roller-coaster mental existence. i really would rather just be riding a bus on a country road, you know.

on to the questions of religion....i know, i know. but i feel as though even that, which had up until the past years been such a mainstay in my world, has gone through an earthquake. and now i don't really know what is real and what is just trash. i've been around parents who lost children or who would never be right...i have friends who have cancer......it just doesn't make sense to me anymore. if there is a god up there, how can he go around picking and choosing like that? then again, i don't like the idea of there being no life after death. a friend of mine seems to avidly think this the case. this scares the absolute shit out of me. but then my mind wanders to what if heaven were just a ploy, thought up by people long ago, to make people more comfortable about death?

i don't know.....i'm just really confused right now. letting it out seems to be good therapy, too.... :)

on a much lighter note, i am happy to report two things of great interest and excitement to me. one is that i am the mother of an orange belt now! collin has really taken a keen interest to karate. he went through the first two belts with me. as life got busier, i decided to back out and let him go it alone. he has now gone through two belts by himself! i am very proud of him!

and, to my great happiness, i am proud to announce my retirement in the indianapolis german school. i just received an email from my boss saying that the enrollment does not warrant having two teachers, and that i can sit out the rest of the year. this is absolute music to my ears!!!! :) i feel as though perhaps now i will be able to concentrate more on my Leaving Prints business. WOOHOO!!! Katie! i'm coming down to play soon!! ;)

inferno-child is back today, but being fairly good. so is the three year-old. quiet day today, since the two year-old went with his part-time dad. the dad's not such a terrible guy...he just has no clue when it comes to being mentally supportive.

i'm kind of blase today. i just found out that one of my choir buddies has cancer, and they're only expecting her to live eight to twelve months at best. she was the first person to welcome me into the church choir. the choir was also a pillar of support during our whrilwind of fun last year. it pains me to see when they have their own trials. i just hope that God has a miracle up his sleeve for her.

off to feed inferno-child his cereal. this has truly been the best thing i ever could have done (giving him cereal/solid foods) twice a day. he's such a happier baby.

someone call me to save me from my lonely and bored misery!!! only about an hour before aaron comes home........

guess it's cereal time, so i could do that......aaaah the life

blah......Griffin is such a bad napper.....it really pisses me off sometimes..... :( oh well.....could be worse, i suppose. at least he sleeps through the night.

today's been a slow day. i had two kids out because of the snow and one kid was sick today, so i just had the two part-time girls.....made for a nice break, since they are both older (four and seven are ancient in the daycare world, you know! LOL) and they love the babies to no end. the twins have been loving the attention!!

why is it that kids will want something you don't have, and then decide they don't really want it after all when you go to hell for leather to get what they want? for instance, i made spaghetti today....i realized that i didn't have any sauce, which wound up being ok because the girls didn't really want sauce to begin with.....they eat their spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese, the seven year-old said. groovy, i said...until i realized that i didn't have any parmesan!! grrr....so, i call up the neighbor to get some, run my braless t-shirted self (i really can't be bothered with a jacket) over to her house (in the snow) risking life and limb to get the parmesan....only for the four year-old to say...'i don't think i want parmesan today....'.......gotta love it.....

grrrr...griffin is now so tired he can't see straight, but won't sleep......he's desperately trying to get me to pick him up, but i'm being a mean mommy and trying to ignore him. for this alone, i will probably go to hell.....that's ok, tho....because griffin will be joining me due to the fact that he keeps nipping at me while nursing.....

kids are such terrorists.......cute terrorists, but nonetheless............

***i'm warning you ahead of time that this post is a novel in and of itself......just sparing you the cost of the keyboard should you fall asleep reading this and slobber on it....i've ruined keyboards with liquid before, and i'm thinking slobber can't be good for the keys....***

sometimes i can feel myself on the downward spiral of bad mental well-being. this would be one of those times. not that i don't have enough on my plate, i guess. just a year ago, i was pregnant with twins and was doing fine. next week will be one year that my life went to hell in a hand-basket. i guess i shouldn't be so negative about my life, but i have had my share of stress in the past year. i had babies at 26 weeks. nothing can prepare a person for just how tiny a one-pound ten-ounce girl is, or a two-pound, two-ounce boy, for that matter. you know the beanie-baby bears? that was the size of my twins. they were both on ventilators, and both very easily could be dead right now. it amazes me to look at them now; they are so healthy and full of life. but this alone would cause some people to teeter on the edge of sanity. they were in the hospital for nearly three months.

ten days after the babies were born, i started having chest pains. at first i thought it was just water on my lungs from having surgery. i had a c-section with collin, and remembering having to blow on this stupid contraption to 'exercise' my lungs. well, no one gave me such an animal this go-around, tho they did tell me to take deep breaths. i had more on my mind than this at the time, so i forgot (for those of you who know me well, i'm the queen of forgetfulness). so, i thought this was just my body paying me back for not paying attention to this. i made an appointment with the doctor to be seen the next week, and decided to suffer it out. i started taking pain meds again (which i had stopped taking because the pain from the surgery had become bearable) and slept with a heat-pad under my chest. by the next day, however, the pain had become so unbearable that i could no longer stand it, so i made aaron take me to the doctor's office without an appointment. i would never ever do something like that, so that tells you how much pain i was in. the doctor didn't think it could be a blood clot in my lung, but she wanted to make sure, so she had me go to the hospital for some testing. for one test, i had to lie flat on my back. this was the most extreme pain i've ever felt in my entire life. i didn't think i was going to be able to take the pain. sure enough, the tests revealed some abnormalities, so i was scheduled for a pulmonary arteriogram (aaah, the fun terminology i've gained from this ordeal!!)......have any of you ever had that before? well, let me tell you about it....it was a real treat!! they snake a scope through an artery in your leg, THROUGH YOUR HEART (holy shit?!?) and into your lung. i got good sleep the night before this, let me tell you! so i had the test, and they indeed found two small blood clots. i always seem to get these serious illnesses that i downplay because i want people to leave me alone. this was one of them....i had no idea how serious a blood clot in the lung, formally called a pulmonary embolysm, PE for short, was. did you know that the largest number of hospital deaths are from PE's? so, i got five more days in the hospital for that one.

of course, those two alone are enough to test the strength and endurance of anyone, i don't need to mention that a high number of mothers of twins/multiples suffer from post partum depression, or that child-care workers suffer extremely high burn-out....

it amazes me to think back on the past year and to see where i've been. i've truly lived a thousand lifetimes in one short year. in times of crises, we often go into survival mode. our brain tells us that we can accomplish all the things that are set before us, and tricks us into believing at the time that things aren't as bad as everyone makes them out to be. it's nearly laughable to me now to think that i was actually thinking such things when i was going through it all. i had such a blind hope about the twins, and such ignorant bliss about the PE. these things helped me to survive it all, tho.

i really should be thankful for what i have. why is this so hard sometimes? i have three beautiful children that i get to see much more than some moms do. if i were doing what i used to do for employment, i wouldn't be seeing any of them right now....i'd be sat at a desk begging people to turn in their lousy tax documents, getting home in enough time to hop into bed and wonder how i was going to make it through the next twelve hour day.

i still wonder how i'm going to get through the next twelve hour day, as i'm working harder than i ever did before. but I'M the one who gets to be there to feed my children, I'M the one who can help collin with his spelling words. I'm the one my children want when they are tired. wearying and lonely as my life has become, it is very empowering to me that i actually get to be with my children. perhaps they will become upstanding citizens of the USA! ;)

snow day today....it's been weird having aaron home. with a snow day comes collin, and we finished the bionicle book that we started. only 30 more mins to read for the school-wide goal of 100 mins/or pgs per week! i'm hoping that we'll get it every week, but i guess i shouldn't worry so much about it always being me who does this stuff.

i get so jealous of aaron having the day off work....he wants to sleep in, and that just irritates me that he can. so i had him help me a bit this morning with the kids. i don't think it will kill him. i shouldn't really be so irritated at him...he does more around the house than most men i know.

the babies are toddling about the house now, eating everything they can get a hold of. this morning erin stole one of gage's poptarts....she screamed bloody murder when i took it away from her....

:( *sigh* i have to go......wild beasts are acting up again.......

nothing much new to report here. the weekend was pretty humdrum, with nothing exciting. i had german school (one down, ten to go!) on saturday morning. it went pretty well. the girl that i co-teach with is a crack-up, and we get along really well (wonder why). the bad thing is that if we don't have enough enrollment, we won't get to teach together anymore....that makes me sad, tho i will gladly step back and let her do it. her husband might be laid off from work soon, so this would give her some much-needed income if one of us has to step down. it would give me some much-needed rest, too!! i would love to have a day where all i have to do is take care of my own children all morning!!!

i didn't scrapbook much over the weekend. 11 page YTD, so that is pretty good for my goal of 200, which equates to about 17 a month....we'll see...i think i'll get some stuff done over the week, especially if we get hit with more snow and school is cancelled!!

off to tame the wild beasts....must appease them with gifts of food......

aaaah, morning......wonders what folding loads upon loads of laundry (and putting away my own clothes from the last laundry.....whistling, eyes darting back and forth, searching for the guilty party) and getting some sleep will do for you.

now that more people are reading this thing (waves to snapper!), i guess i have to let you in on my little family, since i don't know how to figure out how to make my blog really neat and pretty (waves to katie! hehe).....i'm 26, married to aaron, who's 27. we've three kids, collin, 7, whom we had in college. we got married when he was eight months old.....we waited, and waited, and waited some more, before we thought we'd have another baby. one more baby, then we were done. two's a nice, round, even number, you know. so, we decide to have another baby, and BAM.....twins! which winds up being a good thing, we get a boy and a girl. i find out at 17 weeks that there are two, only to turn around and have them at 26 weeks. (for those of you who go by months, that is roughly 6 mos pregnant) erin and griffin are nearly a year old now (their birthday is february 11). while there are few residual effects from their prematurity, they have physical therapy at least once a month (we're seeing if it needs to be increased, as well as adding occupational therapy to the batch.....we'll see). btw, snapper....these are the non-nappers of the group! :(

so now i've given up a job i was contentedly discontent with to stay home and baby-sit. so, i now watch a three year-old, elizabeth, who would talk a glass eye to sleep; gage, who is two and is acting it (need i say more? hehe); dante, the inferno-child, is six months old (yes, sign me up for that vacation with the men in white coats); luke, who is the pisser, is three and comes one day a week; caroline, 4, and katherine, 7, come one day one week, two days the next. it's a full house, but managable so far. it wears me out, because it's like working a tax busy season (my old job as a glorified secretary) all year long. i work from 6:15-6:00, and i'm tired. it's my own fault, really, but with a teacher for a husband, i didn't have many choices on jobs (unless greg needs a telecommutuing assistant). i couldn't expose the twins to the germs outside my home and i don't know as many people so i could constrict my hours to something reasonable. but we're plugging along ok, and i'll get by with a little help from my friends! :) (katie, mt. dew, gin, and scrapbooking!)

bahama breeze was cancelled.... :( aaron's sister had to back out of babysitting because one of her cheerleaders fell out of a mount and had to be taken to the hospital....and, Mr. Greg-with-no-money-because-he-has-a-jeep-wrangler-hiking-and-a-hockey-habit *cheeky grins* the bahama breeze was gift certificates, i didn't eat lunch yesterday, which would make up for eating mcdonalds' for lunch one day and wendy's for lunch today....*tongue sticking out at the boy who spent the week in florida while we froze our asses off*

so i'm a little sad.....and to top it off, inferno-child's dad decided (without asking, mind you) to take his car to be appraised and didn't show until almost 7.......

ALL THAT AND I STILL CAN'T GET MY BUTTMUNCHING BABIES TO TAKE A DECENT FUCKING NAP!!!!!!!!!!!!

can i cry now? i mean...i didn't cry the last time i really wanted to, so you think it would be okay now?

ok, so maybe i don't need to cry now, but i really do need to go to sleep....inferno-child gets here at 6:30 a.m......

hurrah! comments worked now!!

today's been a busy day.....three spoon-feedings in the morning and the evening, lunch date with my friend from the NICU, baby dishes washed.....laundry pushed thru.....

but i'm happy cos i've a date tonight!! we're going to the bahama breeze, where the bahamarita is yuuuuummmmmy!!! i'll stop at one tonight, tho! ;)

still trying this comments thing....i HATE being techy stupid!!!!!

k...i just tried to figure out the comments....we'll see if it works.....

k...headache is gone. kids are fed and changed, friend is coming by with lunch for everyone soon...hurrah! :) chicken nuggets and fry-fries two days in a row can't be too bad, can it?

if anyone has any ideas on how to get kids to run off energy in a very small space (we're talking nearly microscopic, here!), please feel free to pass them along....i'm sure there's a way to email me! LOL (yes, katie? you really need to help me get this thing off the ground! LOL)

the kids survived their shots ok. i really hate them, but it's way better than going to the ER every time we turn around.

the voices in my head are telling me to drink some mountain dew, so i'm off to appease them. if i don't, they just might send the headache back.

again, if anyone has any ideas on how to get kids to run off energy, please feel free to let me know.

make the headache go away, make the headache go away! LOL

nothing new to say here...kids get their RSV shots soon, so i need to get them fed. other than that, it's going to be a humdrum day.

I've pissed someone off big style, and I'm paying dearly for it.........

number of kids alive and kicking.....6
number of babies crying right now.....2
number of kids needing to take naps....6
number of kids actually taking naps.....3
number of girls not napping but playing quiety.....1
number of headaches.....1
number of pages done.....0, tho getting closer
number of loads of laundry pushed through.....1
minutes until my bedtime.........485

scrapbooking won out over drinking last night......nine pages MTD (month-to-date)....eight more to go for the 17 page goal....plenty of time! hehe

mcdonalds' breakfast to compensate for the big fight yesterday....we're going to be in the good again, i suppose. i do worry that aaron will someday hit me instead of breaking down the house.....oh, well.

busy ol' day planned......as soon as i get up off my lazy ass (being lazy after spoon-feeding three babies, making three glasses of chocolate milk and changing four shitty diapers (griffin's hit his two-shit maximum already....) and closing four doors to barricade bathrooms...why must griffin go straight to the toilet for fun? ) we'll paint pictures.....got to bust out the black and white to make gray for the preschooler......sighs.....

Goals of the day: to finish the baseball page that I started last night, push through all the laundry (I know, Greg, that's all I ever talk about....but it's the bane of my homebound existence), and keep everyone alive.....

so....aaron comes home and hops into bed...feeling much the worse for wear....this i sympathize with.....BUT...when he's going to bed just so he can stay out late and play computer games with his friends? somehow i cannot sympathize with this.....fight ensues.....i love my life sometimes....aaron owes me a remote control and some spackle.....i'm just sayin'.

i don't even want to scrapbook anymore....just drink and sleep.....the raw irony of that is that one of my lovely boob-addicts will wake up in the middle of the night, so drinking is out.....at least tomorrow everyone comes here at 7:30ish instead of 6:15-6:30.....aaaah the life

babies should have a two shit maximum per day......i'm just sayin'.
and somehow i've got to get griffin napping regularly....the little buttmunch.

i'm hoping that they'll go to bed early and i can scrapbook......or drink. drinking is preferred at this point. it's been a hell of a day......

back to the screaming babies........can i cry now?

*yawn* I'm really tired today. It was a very busy weekend.....I was all geared up to scrapbook on Friday, but burnt my hand on the pizza roll pan, so that destroyed that dream. I stayed up late to watch "the goodbye girl" remake on TNT. jeff daniels did too much research into the original, but otherwise it was a good flick. the rest of the weekend was pretty much spent taking care of the kids and scrapbooking a bit. aaron makes fun of me for all the scrapbooking i've been doing. he says that i'm a bit disturbed! hehe i suppose i am! but, i'm getting closer to the 17 pages for the month, so i'm not complaining!! :)

K...back from the docs. Never a dull moment in this house! I'm doing well with my psycho meds....we'll see. I also found out that I would have to have shots in my stomach during pregnancy, so as of today, this baby maker is officially closed. It makes me feel a bit sad to think that. Having twins and not being bound by daycare has made me think that I would like to have ONE baby, within the bounds of marriage, and to attempt to have it without complications. It saddens me to think that I'll never have a "normal" pregnancy. I know that I should be happy to just have the three very beautiful (I'M not an obsessed mom, am I?!) children that I have, especially given the fact that I know plenty of people who have 1) had miscarriages and 2) had problems with infertility. It still saddens me a little.

OK, that gone, I'm still a loser who didn't get anything folded or finished today! We aren't even having chicken helper.....Taco Bell to the rescue! yum!

I guess there's still time to do the laundry................NAH!!!

After going to bed before 7, I feel really "on it" today. Last night, after managing to get one page finished (three YTD!), I used up all my remaining energy to clean baby/kid dishes that don't do well in the machine (as one of my pet peeves is to have all the little cups that you get from restaurants turned over and filled with nasty-ass water in them when all the other dishes are clean....). After that, it was all I could do to remain awake!! So, I went to bed with all my clothes still on and I didn't even have to wonder how I managed to get there! (oh, the boring domesticated life I lead!)

I woke up this morning to a clean kitchen and living room, all the work of my dear and devoted husband. I am really surprised that he didn't nag me about going to bed so early. Nagging is one of his hobbies.

I'm feeling more and more like a normal person today...this minute...which is subject to change at any given second. I really feel like I'm accomplishing things today. All the kids are fed and over half of them are sleeping (my kids insist on keeping their own time....how lovely of them!). I am working with Inferno-child's mom to get a good feeding schedule down for him in hopes to make him a happy boy...which seems to be working....this minute...subject to change any given second. I've managed to unload the dishwasher.....all that, and the other kids haven't managed to kill one another!

Goals of the day: to fold laundry that's piling up in my bedroom (right behind me, as the puter is in my bedroom), push the other laundry through, make dinner (no good homemade stuff tonight....we're talking Chicken helper, here), clean up pile of thrown grapes and mac-n-cheese in kitchen along with dishes from lunch, and finally, to finish the layout that needs journaling and title page (aiming to do this without buying anything new....even though I would prefer to for the sake of the page....)......

stay tuned....will she be the usual loser, or will her streak of being 'on it' continue throughout the rest of the day?

OK, I really am a loser. The laundry was folded by my husband, and I spent yesterday wrestling with the baby of my daycare. He spends the majority of his time screaming, so I'm constantly trying to find ways to pacify him without picking him up. I move him nearly every twenty minutes. argh!

The real goal today is to fold the laundry I've got going (still....who knew that the difference in laundry between a family of three and a family of five would be so significant?!?!) and to finish those two stupid scrapbook pages!!! hehe Dinner's already in the crock-pot (beef stew, Collin will be happy and well-fed before karate tonight), so that's out of the way. I just need to clean up lunch/art mess and make sure all the kids are groovy for the next three hours or so. The days go by so quickly.

Still no laundry folded and scrapbook pages finished. I've journaled on one, but the other still needs some things....we'll see what I can do with the two hours I have left. I did get most of the kitchen cleaned, though, which is a good accomplishment. I need to figure out what to do with dinner. blah. Need something stronger than diet Coke or Mountain Dew. :(

HA, I'm such a loser. I didn't do anything on my list from yesterday! ho hum! hehe What to accomplish today? Let's see.....fold laundry, finish two unfinished scrapbook pages.....let me try that, and we'll see where we go from there.

I've been pondering when to wean the twins. In many things I've read, it says that Americans on the whole wean their children much too quickly. My thought was to wean them at their adjusted birthday (May 16ish), but don't know whether to wean them later than that......it's not like I want to really go anywhere by myself! (Correction: am able to go anywhere by myself!)

Off to tame the wild beasts!

OK, it's difficult for me to believe that it's been nearly a month since I've blogged. The holidays make the time get away from me!!

I have things I need to do, but am having a hard time making it away from the computer. It's naptime, so I have the right to sit my ass here, but I feel like there is so much else I could be doing. I guess I sit here in hopes that any of my friends who chat will be on to keep me company, but...alas, no one is on today. I spent a good portion of my time looking for a quote suitable for the scrapbook page of my friend and me making dresses and hanging out with our kids. You would think htere would be some suitable quotes out there, but I might have to wind up making up my own....we'll see....so much easier to use someone else's words!

Things I want to accomplish today:
kitchen cleaned
two unfisnished scrapbook pages done
fold laundry
get reprints of family/kids pics made

We'll see.....baby-steps, baby-steps! :)