not too shabby of a saturday so far. i got up and fed the babies, got ready to go, and went downtown to go out for lunch with my old work crowd. it was fun to see everyone again, as i hadn't seen most of them since i quit in august. while i don't miss the work i was doing, i do miss the commradery of going to work everyday to talk and laugh with these people. our work relationships were not something you just find every day, and i can honestly say they are friends. we picked up pretty much where i left off, and they had lunch just as if i wasn't really staying at home. was nice.

i'm hoping to end off the day with a date with aaron. it will be really nice to get out with just him to talk and be a couple. we haven't been out on a date since the summer, so i'm really looking forward to it. i hope that we go somewhere fun, but quiet so we can actually just enjoy eachother. he's been really down in the dumps lately, and i wish that there were more i could do to make his life a bit better. it kills me to see him so unhappy with life.

i don't remember when i've been so happy that a friday was here! yesterday was absolute 'shite', as the brits would say. life is becoming way too dramatic for my taste.

case in point:
the two year-old decided to find a steak knive that was on the kitchen counter (far enough back, i had thought) yesterday. he then proceded to stab my neighbor's boy with it, knicking his cheek.

thank god (provided he's there) it's friday. nuf sed

i can't believe that it's already thursday. not that this week hasn't been a toughie, but it has gone by quickly.

the two year-old is driving me crazy. he's totally two, and i've couched him for hitting, throwing and everything else in the past few days. i packed up all the trains and put them in the garage, too. i just hope that i can keep my sanity until this goes away.

the three year old turned four yesterday. part of the insanity of the week was surrounding this, too. i try to do special things for their birthdays. we make cupcakes (i made good icing this time!!) and do a special craft. yesterday, we made hawaiian type necklaces with foam flowers.

i don't know if this has anything to do with my hormones, but i'm feeling down again. i feel alone and unable to cope with all that's going on. today's much better than yesterday, but i still feel down, nonetheless. i keep telling myself that this will soon all pass, but sometimes it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. aaron knows how i feel, at least, which makes it easier to deal with, somehow. he does try to make things as easy as possible for me. i just wish i were as good at doing that for him, as i know that he doesn't feel right, either.

i finally broke down and told him my doubts on religion yesterday, too. getting this off my chest was a big relief, tho i know he seemed somewhat disappointed by it. he understands, tho, and sometimes feels the same way himself. who knows what i'll wind up actually believing. right now it's hard to believe anything. i don't know whether i believe, but it's a scary thought that life just ends at death. you work hard to be a good person, and then you die and that's it? that's no more appealing a thought. sometimes i think i just wish that life would make more sense than it does. that's all.

and the bitch in me comes out big style......

it bothers me to no end when people start playing the 'who had the worst situation game'. why must people always think they've had it the absolute worst and then try to give other people (that perhaps had it just as rough as them but in different ways), advice on their feelings? please, help me put into perspective how someone who had babies at 35 weeks, who were in the NICU for 3 weeks, whose mother had toxemia and HELP syndrome, could feel like their situation was any worse than mine? i do not go around toting the fact that the twins were preemies like a war symbol. if people ask how old they are, i tell them their chronological age. if they persist on why they look small, i tell them that they were three months early. most people do not know the severity of that, so they just drop it and move on.

we all go through shitty stuff. it's a fact of life. we all carry approximately the same load on our backs. it just takes a different shape. i just wish i could wear a sign on my back that says "please make no comment or give any advice about the load on my back".

make.the.nausea.go.away.

have.to.take.care.of.kids.

urgh....a weekend shot to hell by sickness....and this time it was ME. blah. i was so happy to be able to stamp/scrapbook, too! pout, stamp feet....

at least inferno-child will be home tomorrow. the poor little man has an ear infection, so when i called to say that i wasn't feeling especially well, they said that they'd just keep him home. i think i'll manage tomorrow, then.

times like these get me to thinking how fortunate i truly am. i had a friend in college who was a single mom with boy/girl twins. i can't even begin to imagine how tough life was for her. we hung out a bit, and lost track of eachother when i graduated. but i can't help but think of how hard it would be to be going it alone. thank goodness her parents let her live with them!

another friend of mine has many children and a husband who doesn't share the domestic load as much as mine. i can't begin to imagine what sick days are like for her. does her husband let her sleep in when she feels bad, or does she just muddle through, filling sippy cups in between those wonderful bouts of dizzying nausea?

don't get me wrong....my husband is a perfectionist, who is sometimes very hard on me. everyone has downfalls, and i definitely fit into the category of everyone! but i really have a good husband who does his best to make my life a little more pleasant for me. he goes the extra mile to do nice things to make things easier for me. like bringing the babies into bed in the middle of the night for me to nurse, or letting me sleep in as much as humanly possible when i'm sick.

i will definitely need to remind myself of this the next time he pisses me off! :)

ok....while i am not exactly a lazy ass, i feel it. i never get anything done! LOL

i went on a late-night run to michael's and target with my friend jan yesterday. and of course, spent way more than i had anticipated. and, while i didn't get the flyer made for the upcoming crop, i DID get some paper takers (target is clearancing out a lot!! :( ) to organize the paper line for crops. this makes me happyj!

i do need to scrapbook more. i'm kind of at a lull right now. it's more that i'm so tired that it's hard to find the motivation to scrapbook. oh, well. i figure that in no time the babies won't require me to be there to bolt out to scrapbook or to lock myself in my space. so, i'm enjoying this aspect of their lives while i can. no problems there!

the weekend is nearly here! hurrah! i'm hoping to get some crafting in. i would like to get some pages done (15 more for the month! i think i can, i think i can!) and some cards made with my new stamps (do i really NEED another obsession??).

ponderance of the day: fisher-price is the anti-christ. anyone who makes toys that difficult to open has to be of the most extreme evil.

goals of the day:
--do at least two scrapbook pages.
--figure out a flyer for my scrapbooking business
--keep everyone alive and taken care of
--do all this while trying not to fall asleep!

ponderance of the day: do strained peas have anti-aging effects?

it was a pretty good weekend. the babies' birthday party was saturday, and they had a blast. it's funny how something like that destroys their schedule. at least today's another day, and they're back on track.

the babies each had their own cake, which was identical to the others except the colors and the names. pink and blue, of course. each had a teddy bear on top that was an actual cake that the kids could have for themselves. and we still have a bunch of cake leftover, as usual. it's ok, tho, because joan's cakes are the best!

i went with jan to wal-mart for a late-night, get everything we need before morning trip, and was looking at the clothes after getting diapers. i look at the preemie stuff and it's finally looking small to me. wal-mart has a nice selection of preemie clothes that don't cost a lot. i picked up the outfits and marvelled at how small they were and how they were too big for the kids when we were first looking into buying them. i used to laugh at a friend of mine who had a preemie baby and how she would comment on huge everything was that people were buying for her daughter, a miracle baby in her own right. then it was my turn. i seriously wondered how erin especially would ever grow big enough to fit into size 6/9 mos. and now, here we are, almost growing into the 12 mos clothes.

off to put a diaper back on griffin, who has figured out how to take it off. he's feeling like a king. he perks up the minute he's fully naked, the crazy boy.

in honor of the day, i have to take a minute and say how wonderful my husband is. today, he let me sleep in. today, he didn't fuss at me while i talked to an acquaintance in the middle of meijer while we were running late. today, he gave me a valentine that he wrote from his heart, not some valentine that was bought from a store. he's a wonderful man that i've been with for nine years now.

friday is finally here. finally a weekend to recover from the sixty-plus-hour workweek. i do this year-round now, where it only used to be eight to ten weeks during tax time. amazing how you would think being at home would make it ok, but it's very confining sometimes. the good part about working sixty hours in your house is getting to see your kids. i can't even begin to imagine what life would be like right now if i were still working at the accounting firm. not to mention the fact that life there isn't as fun as it used to be. amazing the changes that life brings your way.

amazing more so is the fact that you feel in your element at a new job after only being there a few short months. i've only been at home for six months now, but i feel as though i've been doing this for ages. just like i felt like i was at the accounting firm forever, and was only there three years.

next week will begin the weekly PT with the kids. they will also have their first OT session. i am excited for this to start and for it to be regular. not only will it be another adult to talk to every week, it will be really good for the twins. i'm so busy with everything with the daycare that i often don't get to play with them or work with them as i feel i sometimes should. i don't feel too badly about it, tho, because they are doing things that my other friends who have babies around the same age/prematurity severity haven't even begun to do. most of them are stuck at rolling over. i feel bad about that, tho, and wish that their babies would do more to get caught up. it's kind of like when we were all pumping milk and i would get eight ounces from each breast and they would get hardly any at all. you don't even want to talk to them about it because you don't want to appear to be bragging.

i had my first LP party last night. i'm really excited about starting this. i've pretty much introduced all my family and friends to scrapbooking, so it's exciting to try to make a bit of a living off it. the stuff we sell is great, too, so it makes it fun for me. we'll see how it goes. i don't know that i'm much of a good business person, but i'll find out, right?!

i know that i've said before that i'm not a confrontational person. my husband would laugh at me for saying this, because i'm always confrontational with him! but i suppose i am a confrontational person. i'm just not good at being confrontational. i'm very passive agressive, and let things get to me too much before i explode. i ruin friendships this way, i know. some of the people i miss, and some of the people i don't. but you know what? i'm almost always glad that i've finally spoken my mind about things. i know i'm not perfect. most of the time i think of myself as the opposite. but when i think back on these relationships, i know that i've done wrong and handled certain things badly, but i do know that it's not all been me in the wrong. i should have just said something sooner before i handled it badly.

the twins had a very nice birthday yesterday, despite being sick. aaron's parents came over and we had pizza, cake and ice cream. they brought presents for the kids, and it's funny the difference between the babies already. griffin was tired (he's not doing as well as erin at this point), so he wasn't really into any of the celebration, poor little fella. erin, however, was having the time of her life, as if she knew it was her day. she has the funniest smile! it's really wide-mouthed and gaping. too funny.

watching a one year-old eat cake for the first time has to be one of the funniest things to watch. i would have to venture to say that most one year-olds do not have the luxury of getting cake and ice cream before their birthday. perhaps this is just in my rose-colored world! anyway, i digress. watching two babies eat cake and ice cream for the first time was a real treat. again, erin was in her element. sitting on my lap, she toppled over the cupcake, getting icing everywhere. then she dug into the chocolate (of course!) cake, loving every minute of it. griffin was very interested in the cupcake, but was too tired to really get into it like he usually does about food! i gave them each a few spoonsful of ice cream, which was even funnier to watch than the ice cream. they both screwed up their faces at the coldness of it, but kept reaching for the spoon.

all this continues to amaze me. last year at this time, we weren't positive that everything was going to be ok. i would sit at their isolettes and wonder why all this was happening to me and my little babies, each barely bigger than a beanie-baby, fighting for their lives. how blessed i truly am to have them! they are little fighters, strong-willed and healthy.

Happy First Birthday to the Twins! :) It's amazing that the time's gone by so fast. I set my alarm to get up by 6 o'clock to go out to the grocery to get cake mix for cupcakes for the daycare (a tradition i want to start for the kids when they have birthdays), but someone (probably a rogue kiddo!) turned down the volume on my alarm clock and i never heard it go off. so, cupcakes will have to wait for tomorrow. oh, well.....

the girlfriend whose daughter i watch (the one who brings me payments of the mint chocolate milkshakes, as i refuse to take much money from her for like two or three hours of letting her kid entertain the rest of the kids...hehe) got the twins birthday hats. one says 'birthday princess', and is light pink with feathery-type stuff on it. too cute, and i can't wait to get pics of that! the other isn't quite as cute, but is still a lot of fun (i mean, how can you top the birthday princess??). it is something like a top hat with pom-poms around the base (instead of a brim). it has 'birthday boy' on it, with some resin sports balls around the top. very cute.

my mother-in-law has a tradition of telling the kids their birthday story. every year she tells them about giving birth to them. it's really funny. i can't remember specifics of aaron's birth, but i do remember the fourteen hour labor she had with him! how can one forget details like that?! hehe i say this, because i think of telling the twins their birth story. what a story!

in this time of year, i suppose i will always have a measure of reflection of life's blessings. granted, the cookie crumbles, and the crumbs have a tendency to make a big mess, but sometimes you have to think of it as "hell, it's still a cookie.....pass the milk!!" yes, you get the times where the cookie is so crumbled, you don't think you'll be able to eat it. but then, after you've finished scraping up the crumbles and eating them (of course!), you pick yourself up, head to the store, and buy all the shit that it takes to make a fresh batch. and you know what.....they taste even better than the first one.

this is kind of like how my life is going right now. i'm blessed with what i have, and know this, even if i don't always express it. it's so much easier to express the negative in life, isn't it? i should make it a goal to let the positive expressions of what i think about my life overshadow the negative.

ho-hum....another humdrum day in my house. it's not too bad, really, just is what it is. have you guys ever hear the song "the ballad of lucy jordan" by dr. hook? one of my uk friends told me about it....i think it's really going to be me.(well....if the theory that she really does commit suicide in the end rings true, then i can skip that part!!) and while i should be content with this (i have three beautiful kids, a pretty good husband, a roof over my head, etc), i feel that there is a life out there that i'm totally missing out on. it's an odd feeling of bitterness and shame. not that these feelings are dominant in my life, but i do get the odd wave of 'is this really what my life will be like for me forever?'

aaron's back from the doc's with the kids. they have a viral infection....wayhay....aaron got the antibiotic, too, just in case. the kids' ears looked red, but not pussy (is that really the same word?! LOL) according to the doc, so i think we're going to wait off on giving the amoxicilin before absolutely necessary. i'm not a fan of just using antibiotics a lot. when needed, dole them out, by all means, but if there is question, it's best to wait until necessary.

some might say we take the kids to the doc's too much, but griffin has asthmatic tendencies, so when they get colds, we almost always take them in, just to be sure.

i swear, i've never been to the doc's myself so much since these kids have been born. i grew up in a 'suffer long enough and it will go away' philosophy. aaron's family goes in whenever they sniffle, so i feel like i fall somewhere in between....until the babies are taken into consideration, that is. i got sick more when they were in the hospital than i remember being sick in the five years prior to that. it was hard, because when i was sick, i wasn't allowed to go into the NICU to see them. i lost a good 15 days or so with them that way.

the natives are getting restless. yes, folks, it's that time again....CEREAL TIME!!!

i must now adopt the blog mantra "breathe in, breathe out". i'm not sure how much more of the sickness i can take. thank god i don't have any more children of my own to deal with when they're sick. three's enough, man.

an exciting weekend to say the very least......at least the decorators finally left the building and i got laid! LMFAO

i really must have really pissed someone off in my former life. there are not many other things that would make you want to pull your fingernails out one by one......this would be sick twins. in my little family, i am the one who takes care of the sick kids. many a night have i laid on the couch with collin, listening for that distinct sound that only signifies the need for the puke bucket. many hours of sleep lost in the persuit of not having to clean up yet another mixture of half-digested hotdogs, french fries and red kool-aid. of course, aaron usually does the job of cleaning the puke. i just get the kid for the rest of the sleepless night!

there have also been the few sleepless nights in the emergency room, where i took the kid by myself (or, in one case, with a friend who took pity on me), leaving the sleeping husband at home, swearing that i've over-reacted and that all i was accomplishing was to get us a hefty hospital bill. once, the docs said they would have admitted the child, and once, the docs actually did admit the child. *sticking tongue out at aaron*

so, the weekend was full of the pitiful cries of the babies, following after me like lost sheep. looking at me with those woe-begotten eyes, that say 'c'mon mom, pick me up!!'

i'm getting to be quite the bulb syringe queen, too. aaron looks at me in awe as i work the magic of getting all the gook out of their litle noses while simultaneously holding them down.

at any rate, i'm getting behind with my scrapbooking goal!! you know....the IMPORTANT things!! LOL i'm hoping to get a few pages done while aaron takes the twins to the doctor to get a fix for their penicillin deficiency. (i'm secretly hoping that this is just a passing virus, though. i'm really not a fan of the antibiotics)

OK, off to spoon-feed three and hopefully help two giggling girls make snow globes! :)

today's been just like many other days. nothing exciting happening. and nothing much exciting will probably happen today (here's hoping, i guess! there could always be some sort of catastrophe!)

recent events of note are that the kids' therapies have increased. they will now do physical therapy once a week and will now have occupational therapy once a month. while in fact they might not need it, the therapists and i have agreed that it could only help to get too much therapy. they do things with the kids that i hadn't even thought of. i didn't think that they were necessarily ready for the push-toys, but there she was yesterday, getting the kids to stroll around the living room, pushing along a shopping cart of sorts! i can't tell you how happy this makes me. she also put the kids' shoes on and got griffin to stand alone for 15 seconds. watch out world, they might just be walking soon!

i can tell you that when i went to the developmental ped's office, i wasn't exactly thrilled that they had recommended the increased therapies. it felt like just another failure to add to the mix. the pregnancy failed and now i failed them with the developmental stuff, too, but i have since gotten over that. hey, it's someone to play with the babies and push them a bit more than i had thought to, so how can that be bad? they are still doing remarkably well considering they were half-baked in the first place! if they were nine months old as they should be, we wouldn't be thinking that they should cruise the furniture already! so i have now come to terms with it, and now see it as a good thing that is being given to my babes.

why do boys love gross things? griffin's awe-inspiring item right now is the toilet.....when he learned to crawl, the first thing he did was crawl to the bathroom. at first it was just to flop his feet on the floor to hear the slapping sound. now it's to go right to the toilet and find whatever he can to put right into his mouth. (remind me again why i kiss that mouth?!) yesterday was the best, though....he is pulling up on everything nowadays, and figured out that the toilet had water in it. he loves the bathtub, so i'm sure he probably just assumed that it was a smaller bathtub, but he starts splashing around, playing in it! (sigh)

boys will be boys, i suppose!

on the whole, i feel as though i am a non-confrontational person. but i tend to take what everyone says to me to heart....which is not good when you don't feel as though you can put up a good rebuttal. people have opinions, and i can say that i am one of them. i mostly try to keep them to myself, even though i do find myself giving out my unsolicited opinion sometimes. but i feel as though people often dole out their opinions to me when they have no idea what i've been through. take parenting, for instance. how many of you out there have had babies born at 26 weeks? i didn't think so. how many of you had to wait for a month and a half before you could hold your daughter, and even then, it was a baby who was three pounds and on a machine that helped to keep her alive? i didn't think so. how many of you had to watch as nurses drew blood for the not the first time that day? or stuffed a feeding tube down your kids' nose, giving milk to them that you had to pump eight times a day because they were to small to nurse? or watched your child turn blue right before your eyes for not the first time? i didn't think so. so, how many of you now have the guts to tell me that i shouldn't keep treating my children differently than you because they were so small at birth? there really is no comparison. while i do not keep my children in a complete bubble, i do need to treat them differently, so please don't tell me that i shouldn't.

another tuesday....it seems as though the days go by so quickly. pretty soon it will be the weekend again. at the very least i have nowhere to be on saturday! :)

i did quite a lot yesterday.....mostly menial stuff around the house. what else is there to do? i pushed through much of the laundry and unloaded the dishwasher, in addition to feeding kids and putting out the occaisional fire. hehe

last night i did two scrapbook pages and worked at finishing another two. all within two hours. not too shabby. i really seem to get into the zone early in the month and then peter out towards the end. i've got to stay with it for the entire month. i really want to get a bit more caught up. we'll see! :)

todays goals: scrapbook collin's first school-friend birthday party; keep all kids alive; push the rest of the laundry through; keep kitchen relatively clean (not necessarily in that order, of course!)

my friend is bringing me a chocolate-mint milkshake for payment for watching her girlie. that is always something to look forward to! also, the sis-in-law has a snow-day, so we'll be dining on totino's pizza and mountain dew for lunch.....aaahhh, the gourmet life! ;)

had a good weekend. saturday i got to sleep in until 11:30! it's been ages since i've been able to sleep in like that. i usually have to get up to feed the babies, and then wind up staying up, so this was a good treat. i had stayed up until 2:30, so it was much needed rest! :)

we went to aaron's parents' yesterday to watch part of the super bowl. aaron has been wanting to make jumbalya for his family for a long time, so he made a huge pot of it for everyone. he wound up burning the bottom of the pan, so it tasted a little smoky, but it was good.

erin was up half the night...i'm not sure what her little deal is. she's got something wrong with her if she's up crying like that.....i think that she's either teething or has another ear infection. i know we're bound for tubes with those guys. it could be worse, i suppose, especially with them.

natives are getting restless....it's my cue to get up and moving!