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For Eddie’s first Christmas, way back in 2004, we did a lot of things, thinking “Oh, hey! Maybe we will carry on this tradition for our other children!”. I was already pregnant with Caitlyn at the time, and I had big ambitions for having traditions the kids would remember all their lives. We bought Eddie his own tree that year–one that we could actually plant outside in the spring. Wouldn’t it be great to get all of our kids their own tree for their first Christmas? We could watch them grow in the yard! that tradition didn’t pan out.  We did plant Eddie’s tree, but it died a slow, horrible pine-needle-scattering death, and we never did it again. One of the traditions that did stick though was fresh Christmas pajamas. It’s not a unique tradition by any means, but it is one that I’ve really enjoyed through the years.

Of course, once I had 2 girls, I began matching their jammies. The girls would be in the same pattern and Eddie would sometimes have something similar, and other times something completely different, but decidedly not “matchy”. Naturally, I’ve been pretty excited about Eddie and Gus matching this year. How fun for the brothers to finally match!

Except, no.

Eddie is vehemently against wearing matching pajamas.  In fact, he’d rather not have Christmas pajamas at all, considering that he does not sleep in pajamas, and will really only wear them the one time, and wouldn’t it be kind of a waste of money? Besides, should a 10-year-old (you are not 10 yet, son!) really have matching clothes with a baby? No.  No he should not. Because how embarrassing. And there would be pictures! That I would probably put on the internet! What an outrage!

I just…I mean…GAH, this is frustrating.  I asked him if he would consider doing it just this one time for me and he flat out said no. Honestly, I am the parent, and I could tell him to suck it up and just wear whatever I tell him to, and to smile for the Facebook photos that his friends’ moms will likely see and share with their own kids, because I am the mom, and I am the boss, and I said so. I could. But I do get where he’s coming from. I understand that age 10 is a lot different than the younger kids, and that he has a reputation to protect now.

Let’s be real though; this isn’t about the pajamas.

My very first baby is rapidly growing up, and not in the “how cute, they grow so fast” kind of way. He won’t kiss Ed anymore, and he usually tucks himself in to bed. He doesn’t snuggle up next to me and twirl my hair anymore. He’s joined clubs, and is doing more things on his own and is really turning in to his own person–which is a good thing.  I think we all hope for our kids to be well adjusted, happy and independent kids. I guess I just didn’t realize it would happen so fast. And in case you are wondering, having other babies doesn’t fill the void that’s left upon realizing that your very first baby, well, isn’t a baby anymore.

I have to figure out this new dynamic, the one where my kid is still a kid, but maybe shouldn’t always be treated like one.

And I still haven’t decided about the pajamas.

• Ed and I went away without the kids last weekend, to The Fingerlakes, and did the wine trail.  It’s so pretty there in the fall, even when it’s late fall, but I forgot to take pictures because, well, I was drunk.  This is what I looked like most of the weekend:

• In addition to a lot of wine, I also ate an entire block of smoked gouda with bacon.  Thumbs up; highly recommend.

• Sunday night when we got home, a gorgeous Siamese cat followed us.  He’s been around on and off, and I’d been planning on luring him in, to live with us (after being checked by a vet, of course). Yesterday, he showed up with a collar and a handwritten tag.  It turns out another neighbor has also been taking care of him and intends to keep doing so, but wants to keep him outside. Now I don’t know what to do. I mean, look at him. But if I keep him, I may be stealing him from 2 people now.

• I volunteer in Hannah’s kindergarten class for an hour every Friday morning, and by the time I am done, I am Wrung Out. How that teacher does not go home and drink every night, I do not know.
• Eddie is going to spend Sunday with my parents watching football and eating snacks. They’re making a whole big thing out of it.  I think it’s cute.
• I am very much looking forward to this long weekend.  Work is BUSY. I’m kind of regretting using so much vacation time to extend my maternity leave.  The end of the year is dragging. I have 7 vacation days to get me through Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ugh.
• I’d planned on doing NaBloPoMo, and that…didn’t happen.  I figure I’ll focus on quality instead of quantity, as evidenced here obviously. (Ha.)
• Oh, look–I did take one halfway decent picture of the scenery

The babies turned 8 months old on Friday.  Eight. Months.  I mean, seriously. As the months go by, I am more and more in awe of these tiny people and who they are becoming. And as this age hits, we really are starting my very favorite time of babyhood.  They’re not lying around like lumps anymore.  They’re very interactive and engaged with everything we do. I feel like they are realizing their place in this family.

Molly continues to be so joyous, sometimes I can’t even take it.  She seems to vibrate with excitement when she sees me.  She loves to sit on the floor and just play with all the toys, all at the same time.  She also asserts fairly often that she is the boss, and will steal Gussy’s toys right out of his hands.  I feel like she’s already operating with a toddler mentality–If I see it, it is mine.  MINE. But really, unless it is nap or bed time, she is just always so so happy. She learned a trick this month; she waves bye bye.

Angus is such a sweety love. He is a mama’s boy through and through. He will accept Daddy, Grandma, and a select few teachers at school, and that is IT. He is very cautious, very suspicious of new people and things, and is always looking over his shoulder to make sure one of us is there. He still startles very easily, and is terrified of loud noises–even laughter, sudden movements and the like. He really is just so sensitive, and this is different for us, since we are a family of loudmouths. We find ourselves having to adapt for him, which I wouldn’t say is bad, but it is definitely new. Still, he is just such a love. He learned how to clap this month, and to wave bye bye too.  Just last week, he pushed himself forward on the floor a bit and can just almost get back to sitting from his belly. He also sprouted his first tooth! He’s been a busy boy.

Month 8 Happenings:

• Babies are now eating 3 meals a day, and are working on sippy cups and some finger foods.
• Gussy puts everything in his mouth–in fact, he choked on a paper raffle ticket and I had to perform the baby Heimlich on him. It was maybe the worst experience of my life.
• Went to Letchworth for the first time, had their pictures taken on the stairs.
• Both became strong sitters.
• Gussy likes to sleep on his belly.
• Mol is really good at mimicking the sounds we make.
• Gussy got a tooth!
• Molly enjoys tasting everything we are eating and loves to chew on rolls, pizza crusts and other things like that.
• Gussy also likes to taste foods, but gags on non-pureed textures.
• Molly loves loves LOVES to take a bath.
• Angus…does not.
• We had an epic EPIC diaper rash that required a prescription to clear up.
• Had their first school photos taken.
• Celebrated their first Halloween as Luke and Leia

Month 8 Photo Dump:

Orchestrating 5 kids and costumes and pumpkins and anything else you can imagine turned out to be not so bad, mostly in part to my parents who handed out candy, and took over baby duty when the rain/up past bedtime proved to be more than they could handle. We carved pumpkins after school, because, you know, nothing like waiting until the last minute, and were on our way with one of Eddie’s friends and his mom by 6pm.

It had just started raining at that point, so Ed and I took the babies to see our neighbors and then brought them back home, while the kids stayed with our friends.  Ed caught up with them later.  Every year they say they’re going to do several streets, and every year they make it up our side and back down, and are done.  We live at the corner, so the warm house in the midst of a cold rainy evening is pretty tempting, I think.

Everyone was in by 7 and we put the babies to bed and ordered pizza & wings.  When I went to extract Ed from the neighbor’s porch, she began raving about the homemade wine she and her husband made.  The next thing I knew, I had a glass in my hand and in the 20 minutes or so that it took Ed to get the pizza, it had been refilled 3 times. It was good stuff.

We all ate our dinner in front of the TV, and put on the Toy Story Halloween special. My parents left, and everyone was in bed by 9.  It was a really good night.

And now for some fun photos:

Something that has been severely lacking since the (actually before) the babies were born is a meal plan for our house.  It was hard in those early months when there were sporadic schedules and never knowing when I would even have a spare minute to pee, much less cook a whole meal. Now though, the babies are mostly predictable, and the kids are in a really good groove of helping so I really have no excuse for standing in the kitchen at 5pm having no idea what we are going to eat.  We are all tired of sandwiches, and things thrown together at the last minute, and most of all, going to the store almost every single day.

So yesterday, I read the paper. I looked at the ads. Ed and I talked about which nights he would be home for dinner. And then I made a plan and dragged my butt up off the couch and went grocery shopping.

I had to bring the babies because Ed and Eddie were working in the yard, so the girls came along to help. I’d plugged my list in to my phone app and pretty much organized it by aisle. I had the babies in the stroller, and Hannah pushed a child sized cart while Caitlyn pushed the regular cart.  Hannah would put the items I grabbed in to her cart and then deliver them to Cait’s main cart. It worked out pretty well, and while grocery shopping with more than one kid usually stresses me out, it wasn’t a bad way to spend our afternoon. I don’t know if it’s a plan I can stick to every Sunday, but it’s nice to know that it was doable.  And best of all, we are 100% set with meal ingredients through Friday and should only need to pick up ancillary items like milk and bread. I feel like such a grown-up!

So! Here is what we are eating this week:

Sunday: Sweet and Sour Chicken

Monday: Hot turkey sandwiches with gravy and fries

Tuesday: Crockpot Beef and Broccoli

Wednesday: Smoked Sausage, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes

Thursday: Halloween.  Take-out.

Friday: Italian Goulash

I feel so good about having it all planned out, and ready to go.  It’s also all stuff that I can throw together during the day while I’m working and have ready whenever we decide to eat.

What are you eating this week?

• Before 9am today, I’d gotten 5 kids to their respective places, picked up some letters for Ed from the printer, stopped at Panera, and completed a Target trip.  This afternoon, I have kindergarten volunteer duty and I have to drop E and C off at different parties on different sides of town before picking the babies up.  I’m BUSY is what I’m saying.
• Speaking of Target, when I went in the other night to pick up formula, they were completely out of the big containers I usually buy.  The associate in the area told me they were getting another shipment in the next morning. I stopped today, and rather than the nice plastic containers we are used to, they had the tall cardboard ones that were around when I was buying formula for Hannah 5 years ago.  Anyway, really, it’s no big deal.  But then, I read the little sticker on the canister. “10% more than 36oz container for the same price!” This confused me because the plastic containers of regular formula on the shelf (we buy sensitive) were 40oz and the cardboard container is 39.4oz.  Obviously, 39 is not greater than 40.  When I got home, I checked the container we had, and sure enough, it was 36oz. I had noticed in the past that the sensitive formula was the same price as the regular, and I’d given mental props to Target for not up charging for something I consider more of a necessity than specialty item. Now though, I’m questioning if it’s been a smaller container all along and I was just too dumb to notice and if that is in fact the case, is this what Target was counting on? Maybe I’m over thinking it.  Who knows.
• I am struggling a lot with Caitlyn and her attitude and the way she speaks to me.  She is 8.  Not 13. And she is so full of sass. I don’t really know what to do about it, especially since my instinct is to grab her and shake her. And if it’s this bad now, what will it be like when she actually is a teenager? The fact that she only does it to me says something too.  I’m not sure what, exactly.
• I read this yesterday.  You should too. Sarah has a real way with words.
• And speaking of a way with words, I’m planning on doing NaBloPoMo again this year, and I’m hoping to focus on some actual posts with meaning instead of the drivel and minutiae I’ve posted over the last year or so.

This is probably my favorite current photo of the twins.  In Ed’s words “It blows me away that they sit there.  And play. With each other! They are like little people!”

I went with Caitlyn’s class on a field trip today, and she packed my lunch for me.  Salami with spicy brown mustard on wheat, a water bottle, cookies and a granola bar. She’s a really good kid.

Eddie has decided to play the tuba in the school orchestra. Music was so important to me in school for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which was that I was socially awkward and very shy, and music was safe for me. Eddie is neither of the above, BUT is a kid who is just “meh…” about a lot of things, so it pleases me to see him be passionate about something so cool.

Hannah is learning to read and is sounding so many words out, and can figure out how to spell things based on sounds, and it is really cool to watch. I still think of her as my baby, but she really is one of the big kids now.

I turned 35 this week, and Ed went out of his way to make sure I had a really good day.  He even let me take our picture.

It’s not a secret that my time in the hospital after the twins were born was not a happy one. They were separated; Mol with me and Gus in special care. Nobody would talk to me, and when they did, all of the information conflicted. I had horrible guilt for spending so much time with Molly, using her to build up my milk supply, while Gus was physically unable to eat. The entire time I was in the hospital, I held them together exactly twice–once, right after birth and once when a nurse who acted like she was doing me a favor let me wheel Mol in to special care to be with Gus and me. I’m still not over it.  I still don’t think I’m ready to talk or even write about how bad of an experience it was for me regardless of the fact that my babies are 100% fine, happy and healthy 7-month-olds today. Hell, I’m still not over my experience with Caitlyn, and that was more than 8 years ago. So.

Anyway, with that all being said, when the link to the hospital photos was emailed to me, I couldn’t bring myself to actually look at any of them. I didn’t want to remember the hospital stay at all.  Time has passed though, and as they get closer to a year old, and I get closer to maybe putting baby books together for them, I decided to figure out how to log in and see my babies as they were then.

It still hurts a little bit to look, if I’m being honest. But I did enjoy seeing their wrinkly 6lb baby faces and remembering what strangers they were then. I didn’t know them, but when I look at those wee faces, I can see glimpses of them now; how they were already SO themselves, even if I didn’t know it.

So, anyway, after 7.5 months, here are the babies’ first photos:

Molly Olivia

March 1, 2013

5:07PM

6lbs 2oz

Angus Westley

March 1, 2013

5:11PM

6lbs 13 oz

They are as ornery as they look

It would seem that my tiny infants have gone and turned 7 months old, and I would really like to protest, except that I can’t because they are just so fricking delightful. I tell people all the time; babies are my thing.  I love babies.  And while it certainly can be hard with 2, especially when it comes to bedtime, I really really enjoy almost every moment with them.  And it’s not just me, either.  Ed, the big kids, my mom, EVERYONE just loves these babies.  They are fantastic.

Thankfully, whatever sleep regression we were in for the better part of 6 weeks resolved itself recently, Just as I was starting to really feel like it would never get better and that we would never sleep again, BAM. Sleeping.  And thank God.  I had many visions of Hannah, who stopped sleeping at around 4 months old and never started again.  I almost fear writing it, but they are back to their regular sleeping patterns.  Gus has even taken to going to sleep on his own, instead of being rocked while fighting me for 15-30 minutes.  They are growing up!

Eating is going better as well.  We are doing some purees and they are so so about them.  Molly likes to gnaw on things.  Rice rusks, pizza crust, things like that.  Gus enjoys throwing his food on the floor for the dog.  So.  It’s fun. My other kids were all eating well and self feeding by now, so this is different.  I have to remind myself of their adjusted age, AND that Gus especially has always been slow to feed. It’s fine.  They’re fine.

Month 7 Happenings:

• Molly can sit up really well; Gus does ok (big head and all)
• Babies have eaten bananas, applesauce, carrots, sweet potatoes, and green beans
• Molly holds her own bottle.
• Gus talks from morning til night. Mostly dadadadada noises, but a lot of expressive sounds and grunting.
• Both are obsessed with the cat and dog
• Molly finally started making some consonant sounds, and her favorite is mamamama.  Yeah it is!
• They LOVE their jumparoos.
• I can’t be sure, but I think Gussy tries to give me kisses.
• Molly will grab your nose if you look at her and say “honk honk!”
• Went apple picking for the first time
• Had official 6 month photos taken, just under the wire
• Both seem to understand some specific words.  Bottle, night-night, kids
• Both are such Grabby McGrabbersons.  Nothing is safe.  There is no more lap eating around here.
• Gus loves music and imitates singing
• Molly growls a lot.  It’s hysterical.

Month 7 Photo Dump (There are a lot.  Sorry, not sorry.):

Totally whispering about how bad our photographer’s breath was

This happened 11 years ago tomorrow, on a Saturday that started off dreary but turned in to a beautiful pre-fall day.   Before doing his reading in church, my brother quoted A Tale of Two Cities and while it wasn’t planned or actually meant to be insightful, but more to make me spit my teeth out that he was deviating from The Wedding Script, it kind of was.  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”. Our priest actually ended up working it in to his homily. As a married couple, we should prepare to experience both the best and worst times together. Forever. We had our pictures taken that day in a local park, that was still kind of new.  Today, that park is hands down the kids’ favorite to go to play. After pictures, and some ill advised limo bus drinking (Ed), we threw a kick ass party. By the end of the night, my face hurt from smiling, I’d barely had time to eat or drink, but I danced my ass off.  It was truly the best night of my life.

Dancing like Elaine

And now we are here, 11 years, 5 kids and so many other things later.  We’ve had the absolute best and also the absolute worst times.  The constant though, is that we’ve had them together. Ed has been my partner in everything for nearly 20 years, and I could not be any happier.

1996, 2002, 2013