Hippity Hoppity

Happy Easter everyone....

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday, although I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I did not take one single picture throughout the entire day. Which is even more scandalous seeing as how we hosted my entire family for dinner and so the house was crawling with relatives and the photo ops were unlimited! How on earth could I have forgotten to take my camera out and snap a few? I mean, the only thing I can think of is that I was simply too busy trying to play hostess to 30 guests....excuses, excuses, excuses. We had a great time though, you'll just have to take my word for it since I seem to be lacking any pictorial evidence, and everyone left with a full tummy and a warm heart!

Of course earlier in the day our kids woke up ready to hunt for their baskets, the Easter bunny did an amazing job hiding them this year, and nearly everyone had a bit of trouble locating their loot!

Just for funsies I thought I would take this opportunity to post our Easter basket's from last year as well.....

Syrup

After it became quite clear that we would not be having left over pizza for breakfast we decided to take quick action to cheer ourselves up......

What could possibly have these babies literally licking their plates clean, you ask?

Why, syrup of course! 

Which went along just great with our french toast. Who knew that all it would take is a loaf of Texas toast and a dozen eggs to make our little Oscar happy again.

Singing The Blues

This rainy morning has brought a case of the blues to our house.....

Oscar and I were both EQUALLY distraught once we realized that 2 homemade pizzas had been left out on the kitchen counter all night long, what a waste!

Field Trip

Hooray for spring break!

For our first "field trip" we set out to a nearby children's museum. Finn opted to sit this one out and Micah and Maija were with their dad, but Sidhe and Ruari were more than happy to explore the museum with Oscar and Nuala. I think it is really sweet actually that the two older girls can still find a glimmer of adventure in it all, and everyone had a great time. This will make a wonderful rainy day retreat for us and I am glad we all got a chance to "re-discover" some of the simple joys the museum has to offer.

Of course once it was time to head back home neither baby was very thrilled as I am sure they could have stayed on through lunch time and well, who needs a nap anyways when there's exploring to be done?

Smiles N' Milestones

Flashback alert! Flashback alert!

Ha! Look at this "first smile" series I stumbled across today....

Oscar was very laid back as an infant, so easy going, his smiles came very naturally.

Nuala on the other hand was a bit harder to persuade....

But once she finally came around, she sure did light up the room....

Spring=Sand

So I have to admit that I have been a little nervous about how I would be able to manage two toddlers on my own at the play ground. At the close of play ground season last fall they were still strictly crawlers and so I had a fairly easy time of it at the park, but obviously they began walking over our winter hibernation and this has changed everything for us.

Yesterday morning was absolutely gorgeous here and I decided to bite the bullet and brave the playground on my own, two toddlers in tow. I have to admit it was a breeze and they LOVED every second of it.....Sand, slides, swings, the whole shoot and match!

Nuala was obsessed with the sand and could not take her eyes, or her hands off of it. By the time we were done, she had sand everywhere but it didn't phase her one bit.

Micah

This past weekend Micah turned 6 years old.

Hmmmmm.......

What can I even say about this? My thoughts are scattered.

Since his birthday fell on a "daddy day" and he would be migrating by around 10am, we decided to celebrate with a breakfast of french toast and bacon. There was powdered sugar, whipped cream and even some blueberry syrup to start the day off in sweet sticky style. The kids set "fancy" glasses (stem wear) at the table and we sipped our pineapple orange juice while toasting Micah's life and reminiscing about his actual birth. Although Micah got to choose the menu for this morning affair, he could barely make his way through one slice. I think he was a little bit excited about opening his presents. His favorite gift by far was a new Indiana Jones Lego set that he and Finn finished assembling yesterday afternoon. Even Oscar was drawn to it.

My water broke spontaneously the afternoon before Micah was born. I was at home with Maija, who was 4 at the time, and we had just gotten back from school. I remember how excited I was even though I hadn't actually started having any contractions yet. The hospital still wants you to come in right away for fear of infection, and so that's what we did. I was admitted by 5pm and spent the evening roaming the halls of the hospital in an attempt to get things moving along as naturally as possible. I'd like to say that I avoided any interventions but that was not the case as I did wind up with a Pitocin drip since my labor wasn't progressing fast enough. Looking back, I cringe a little bit about this, seeing as how I wasn't even there THAT long before they started hinting around about giving me something to "help" speed things up a bit. Pitocin and I are not on very friendly terms, and I will never allow it to influence another birthing process of mine again. By 5:25am I was broken, defeated, and I asked (begged would be more appropriate) for an epidural. I never had one with Maija, but the Pitocin was making my labor with Micah nearly impossible to handle. The Anesthesiologist came into the room at 5:30am but it didn't matter since Micah was born not even 2 minutes later, no epidural necessary. I didn't trust myself, I didn't listen to my body clearly and I didn't speak up for myself loudly enough to be heard. I finally blurted out that I needed to push and the nurse took one look, saw Micah crowning and told me to "wait" in her best "please stay calm voice" possible before dashing to the door to yell "I need some HELP IN HERE" down the hallway to anyone who could hear her in a not so calm voice. The Anesthesiologist was long gone. A nurse and an intern were there when he rushed into the world (an intern who pulled his little head with questionable force...bygones) and we were soon joined by a roomful of medical staff who all clambered about getting things set up and plugged in and pulled out of closets and shelves. I don't remember too much about that part, just that he was here, finally here.

Here's what I do remember, Micah was very quiet immediately after being born, and not quiet in the scary something might be wrong sense, but just quiet in a more serene and tranquil sense. Although this may have been a little bit of faulty advertising on his part, because he hasn't really been quiet ever since and that's OK because we love him just the way he is. He's our wild man, our full speed ahead risk taker, and I wouldn't have it any other way even if it's exhausting at times, even if it gives me a million mini heart attacks. He is well on his way to something bigger than we could ever have imagined and I can hardly wait to see what it is!

Hiatus

Ok, we've been on a brief broadcasting hiatus here. I am exhausted and this week has been a complete drain for no other reason than the fact that I am pregnant and the babies have been sick. Things are looking up though and we are heading out for some fresh air momentarily. There is so much to catch up on, but it can and will have to wait. I have been spending all of my free time resting, sleeping when the babies sleep. Which of course means that every other aspect of my life, of myself, has sort of gotten put on hold for the time being, but I just can't help it, I NEED the extra rest this week! 

So there you have it, a rather flimsy excuse for the recent hiatus. We'll return to our previously scheduled programming shortly, I promise, but for now a couple of group shots will have to do.....

Resale

I love shopping resale and here's why.......

I just bought 13 items for less than $40! 

Sadly most of it was for Nuala, what is it with the blatant disparity between boy and girl clothing? I can always find cute stuff for our girls and yet it is like pulling teeth to shop for the boys in this house!

Don't get too upset, Oscar didn't walk away empty handed from our shopping trip.....and to be honest, I am more in love with his "new" shoes than all of Nuala's clothing combined! They are perfect in every way, the colors, the velcro (no tying necessary), the price ($6, what?) and the fact that they seem to be poking fun at labels and brand names in general.

Irish Twins

As any mom will tell you, newborns, babies and even toddlers attract a lot of attention when out and about in the world. Well, twin newborns, twin babies and even twin toddlers attract twice as much attention when out and about in the world and here's why....People love babies.

And when you just so happen to have two babies people are twice as likely to want to oogle them, touch them and yes, even ask you how you came to acquire them. The simplest trip to Target brings questions from total strangers regarding my family tree and fertility treatments. A quick run into the grocery store is always accompanied by the standard "Are they identical?". And no matter what, no matter the place or time or day I constantly have people telling me how busy I am and how full my hands must be. Now, for the record, none of this really bothers me. You know what? I AM BUSY and my hands are very full and it is a lot of work raising twins, it truly is. Sure I think it is funny when after learning that Nuala is a girl and Oscar is a boy people still ask me if they are identical. Yeah I think it is a little peculiar that complete strangers want to know how my children were conceived. And yes, sometimes I am in a hurry and don't have the extra ten seconds to spare when people want to smile and make cute baby faces at my twin wonders, but all in all I take it in stride and don't really let it get to me.

I have heard from a lot of twin moms about this particular aspect of raising twins and a lot of them don't have the same patience as I do with regard to facing the public, and I understand why, I really do. It does start to get repetitive when you begin hearing the same questions day after day from the same well meaning strangers who of course all have a distant cousin or a best friend's sister in law who have twins. But honestly, I really don't mind it. People are curious, twins are fascinating. Even in this age of Clomid and IVF and Jon and Kate and the Duggars. People want to know more about twins and I don't blame them, I hardly knew anything about twins myself until we found out that we were having some of our own. So I know why people ask questions and make comments and why they are drawn to the double stroller and even why they don't know too much about twins to begin with. Which is why none of the comments or questions are enough to truly irritate me or get under my skin, that is until recently.

I recently had a mother tell me, TELL me that having Irish twins is just the same as having twins. In fact, she flat out told me that having Irish twins was even HARDER than having plain old regular twins. For those that don't know, Irish twins occur when a mother gives birth to 2 children within a year of each other, basically having back to back pregnancies and a newborn along with a 9 month old. I can only imagine that this is a very hard road to journey down and must be a challenging role for any mother to take on, however......

However, the more I have thought about this the more it has started to bother me, really REALLY bother me. I have come to the conclusion that there is no way you can really begin to compare the two completely different experiences, but for what it's worth Irish twins are not in all actuality twins, and for the record raising twins is accompanied by all sorts of challenges that ONLY twin parents will face, run from, perhaps cry over and hopefully overcome. And what's more, we deserve a little bit of credit for this! I don't like to think of myself as one of those uber competitive parents striving for the gold medal or the shiny trophy, our kids are reward enough, but (and of course there's a but) on the other hand there are ways in which having twins is completely different than having Irish twins and no matter how close in age your children are, unless they shared the womb simultaneously then they are not twins.

For starters, I did not get a say in deciding to have twins. No one took my vote, it wasn't planned and I really didn't even know that it would be a possibility (naive, in hindsight). Whereas Irish twins, while not always planned, are definitely always a possibility since we've all been schooled on the birds and the bees for some time now, and if you have recently given birth to a precious little one, then you know exactly how you came about acquiring them!

Secondly, carrying two babies to term at the same time is incredibly taxing on your body. I was fortunate to have a very seamless pregnancy with our twins, but there is in fact a reason that twin pregnancies are considered high risk. My twins had separate sacs and separate placentas, they were the safest variety, but this isn't always the case and there are plenty of stories out there regarding the risks involved with twin pregnancy and twin births.

Thirdly, and this is the BIG one, having two NEWBORNS move in with you is nothing like having one newborn move in with you and your well established 9 month old. Most nine month olds that I know are sleeping through the night, meaning that these parents of Irish twins are getting up with one baby while big brother sleeps soundly for at least 8 hours, if not more. Guess what? Two newborns do not sleep through the night, nor do they wake up at the same time. When we brought the twins home and I was rotation nursing, none of us got much sleep at all and I mean AT ALL.

So, in conclusion.....well I am not actually quite certain what the point of this post was, I started it months ago and it has been sitting here marked as a draft ever since. I'd like to tell you that I have calmed down about the whole thing and have let it go completely. But that's not my style generally and it still irks me a little bit, even now a few months later, and I think it's because of the way this woman, this stranger choose to share her opinion with me. Having Irish twins was HARDER therefore SHE was the better parent, she was the one who worked harder raising her children. Why must it always be a competition between us women? What are we competing for and what is the prize? Do we really have so many insecurities as parents that we need to make ourselves feel validated and powerful by comparing our situations, our families, our children to those of others? Let's take a few moments to rethink our motives before falling victim to the dreaded trap of competitive parenting.

Besides I already lost more sleep than you and secured the gold medal months ago, so nannie nannie boo boo!

*Any moms of Irish twins who care to disagree, feel free to chime in any time!*