New Beginnings

Holy smokes.  It's been 6 months since I've posted anything.  I don't think I'm even going to try to back-post 6 months worth of stuff.

We're currently in the throes of winter over here.  It's been pretty snowy already, which of course I love.  Though I do wish I didn't feel so unsure about taking the kids outside.  Somehow even in snowsuits, taking two 1 year olds outside to frolic seems like a bad idea.  It's also been pretty cold, especially in comparison to last winter where it almost never dropped below 40.  This is all to say that I've been spending a LOT of time not leaving the house.  I don't mind it nearly so much as I thought I would.  We do get out once a week for story time at the library, and I'm usually the one that does the weekly grocery shopping (though I let DS do it today because I was out yesterday).  That's twice a week.  Whoo!  Living on the edge!

So I love winter, and the snow is lovely and awesome, but I won't be too sad when it warms up enough that I can start taking the boys to the park again.  I do sort of miss our daily walks to the train station to pick up DS after work.

I can't remember if I've mentioned it, so I wanted to say that I've been sort of on the fence about how easily available I should be making photos of the kids on the internet.  I mean, it's the internet, so if someone wanted to get them they could, but that doesn't mean I have to make it simple.  So I might not put a lot here, but there are SO MANY on my Flickr account.  You just have to be signed in and marked as my friend or family.  (If you don't know how to do that and want to, just e-mail me.)  I will share this photo with you of them in their Christmas diapers though:

I love it so much.  I really like the way you can tell the difference in their skin color here.

We took them to the local children's museum last week.  DS's mom got us a membership for Christmas and I was anxious to get out of the house.  It's sort of geared for kids ages 3-7, but they have these slightly more contained areas with small features for the wee littles.  It was a lot of fun for them, and I was actually surprised we were able to stay an hour and a half.  That feels like a lifetime with a newly minted toddler.

In non-kid news, I've started doing a little writing for the site Rhymes with Nerdy.  Currently, I'm just recapping the show Reign, but perhaps once that is over I'll stretch my wings a little.  We'll see.  It's more work than I expected, and to be honest, these days I'm doing really well if I manage to shower.  My days are certainly full.

I also started a local Sci-fi/Fantasy book club.  I've been looking for a book club in general since moving here 3.5 years ago, but my efforts have failed until now.  This time I decided to bite the bullet and pay for the Meetup service, and that's been fruitful.  The first meeting drew about three people, and we average 3 or 4 for a bit with the members that came shifting.  Somehow in the last month though, it's just started to take off.  We're now up to 23 members on the site, with 13 of them saying they're coming to my house for the next meeting.  I'm probably going to need a new meeting place after this, which is nuts but so exciting.  Initially I wanted it here because it was easier with the babies to not have to leave, but I think we're getting to the point where I can slip away every now and again.  They tend to be scheduled after they go to bed anyhow.

Which reminds me, I'm also the recording secretary for the local moms of multiples group, which is a national organization that has local chapters.  I'm still not sure how they managed to rope me into being a board member, but despite the obligation it puts on me to always attend, I'm glad.  I've met a lot of lovely people, and it's always nice to have other multiples moms to talk to about this crazy life.

So here we are.  I'm slowly starting to integrate parts of my old life back into this new one, and hopefully that means I will be able to keep up with things a little more here.  Wish me luck.

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Whoa, this was my 700th post, and June will mark 9 full years of writing here.  That just seems crazy.

This is a conversation right?*

Life is weird right now.  I'm still trying desperately to finish unpacking things in our new house.  I'd really love for it to be done when my parents come to stay.  However, the boys are teething, so getting anything at all done feels like Herculean task.  I do manage a few things a day, some days more than others, so there's progress.  Just often of the snail variety.

I feel like I'm forgetting what it's like to speak with adults in a real language.  Generally the only person I see is my husband.  We're currently getting about an hour where we calm babies and feed them and often can't hear each other, then maybe, if I'm lucky, an hour to sit zombie like on the couch.  Then he goes to bed so he can get up with them at 4:30 in the morning.  I like to take this time to myself as a sort of cleansing time.  It's sacred, even though it inevitably means I'll be tired tomorrow.  I just don't think I can handle having my every waking moment be twin time.  Having time to myself at night lets me enjoy their company the next day, even though those days are filled with drool, puke, and tears.

They're getting to be more fun though.  Today Monkey was laughing as I threw him in the air, that's new.  I watched him play with this hole-y sphere thing with his hands.  Bear went from crying to explosive happiness when I brought him close to Monkey so they could interact.  These are lovely things and they make the crying times so much easier to handle.  But seriously, the teething is uncool.  It's not that it's the worst thing to deal with out of all the other issues we've dealt with, but more like it comes right when you feel like you've gotten a handle on the rest.  I thought we were there.  Parenting is kind of exhausting that way.  Other twin moms tell you, "It doesn't get easier, just different."  Yeah.  Awesome.  I see that.

So it's this weird mix of amazing things and exhausting things and kind of sad things.  DS took Monkey to bed when he finally stopped crying tonight and never came back.  He didn't even eat dinner.

This will be my first Mother's Day this weekend.  I want to sleep in.  I want to play Sim City for a few hours.  I kind of want brunch and a trip to the zoo, but I don't want to deal with other people.  I want a lounge chair so I can sit in my new yard and read a book and enjoy the weather.  I hope the weather is enjoyable.  If not for lounging outside, I'll take a strong thunderstorm too.

My mom sent me chocolate covered strawberries for Mother's Day.  They're huge and decadent and delicious and were totally unexpected.  I love them.

I have thoughts brewing for Father's Day; trying to narrow them down.

There's a fly in my house.  Sometimes I think I hate flies more than spiders.  Spiders might terrify me, but they keep flying by my face when I'm sleeping either.

A Song of Ice and Fire.. man.  I wish someone was reading at the exact same pace as me so I could have completely spoiler free conversations as I go.

Is there anything better than baby laughter?

I am so starved for human interaction that I actually got into a debate on the internet today.  It was about something I didn't even care about really, and I was just initially offering a possible alternate viewpoint because it bothers me when people think things are black and white.  Maybe sometimes they are, but usually they're messy.  I actually chose to continue debating this topic after I started getting queasy  which always happens to me during any kind of confrontation, even friendly debates.  I'm starved enough for conversation that I chose to be queasy.

I guess if you ever read this anymore Mom, you'll know why I call you so much, haha.  Love you :)

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*More like word vomiting.

New Pants, New Characters

DS and I really want to go camping.  We also want to start climbing outside now that the temperatures getting pretty nice.  Unfortunately, the weather has been playing mean tricks on us.  It keeps being sunny throughout the week, and then raining all weekend.  This weekend's rain has already started.  *sigh*

I read something about burning calories today, and how hard it is to actually burn enough calories through to make up for the things you eat.  And while that is true when you're looking solely at exercise specific totals (I would burn around 250 calories walking for an hour), that's not the only factor to consider.  I'd of course heard before that your metabolism matters, and I'm finding that out more and more lately.  I've been building a lot of muscle, and each of those muscles burn up more calories than before, even just sitting around.  I can tell, because as I mentioned yesterday, I've been starving for about a week and a half straight.  Even though I'm eating an insane amount of food, I'm always hungry.  And I lost another pound today.  I had gained a little bit of weight early on in my exercising, which I think is normal, so I'm about back to where I was at the end of my last exercising bout.  The hunger was especially bad after I did an intense leg workout earlier in the week.  Leg muscles are big muscles.  I think I pushed myself too hard though, because I was completely exhausted for the next two days.

More importantly, I am shrinking in size.  I bought a pair of jeans in a size 8 today, and they fit.  They're still a bit big in my waist, due to my pear-ness, but I'm super excited they fit in hip and thigh.  I'm both happy to be getting smaller, and sad at the idea of needing all new pants... Thank goodness for belts!  Also, I will be hanging on to all these pants for a while, because knowing me, at some point I will get tired of all this "work" and end up needing them again.

I have one episode left of Star Trek: The Animated Series.  Man.  I'd seen some of it before, so I knew it was bad, but boy is it ever bad.  Seriously seriously bad.  Though it is nice to see that they took advantage of the animated platform to introduce a whole range of crazy looking aliens that a live-action show would make difficult.  Check some of them out:

M'Ress

Arex

Aleek-Om

It was nice to see non-humanoid characters throughout the 22 episodes, but I'm looking forward to moving on to The Next Generation.