Friday, December 05, 2008

miscellany

First – on housekeeping – or the lack of:
My blogroll and sidebar have gone to shit. I haven’t updated any of it for months and months. I have people listed as pregnant who now have babies who are almost a year old. Bad, bad me. I should delete it all and start over. Sorry for being such a slacker.

And the whole twitter thing – I’ve completely slacked on that too. I have been intending to start twittering again though. So watch for me…

Cycling, envy? Or I don’t know…

It seems that several of my former cycle/pregnancy buddies are expecting again. I am very, very happy for all of them. and a tad bit green with envy. But that’s silly. I do want to be pregnant again, but not just yet. Ok, that’s not quite right – I guess there’s a part of me that would love to be pregnant right now, but we have a plan that we’ve agreed to. Next summer. It seems a long way off. I’m trying to figure out when to put in the call to the RE. I assume the whole process will take 2 – 3 months – to get my cycle coordinated, and I’m guessing that she may have a couple month wait list for an appointment, so my plan is to call after the new year. So pregnancy is on my mind a lot. We don’t plan on telling anyone that we are trying again, the whole thing will be a big surprise. We’ve gotten a few raised eyebrows when we’ve mentioned maybe having more, so we’ve decided that the process is none of their business, and they’ll be happy for us when they find out that it’s done.

There are times when I haven’t gotten enough sleep, that I wonder whether I really do want to do this all over again. It’s usually in the evening, when I’m exhausted from the day. But most of the time, I really do want more. These guys are so much fun that most of the time I think it would be great to have a whole house full.

So tell me this, my sisters:
How on earth do you manage to have a sex life? I simply don’t have the energy. I thought for a while that it was lack of drive. But I don’t think that’s it. Because I’ll think about it at points in the day, but by the time evening comes and we are actually in the same room together, I’m completely exhausted and want nothing other than to roll over and go to sleep. I don’t know how to find the energy to be willing to exchange the sleep for intimacy.

Because I’m lazy – I am copying here for you the update that I posted on my public/family blog, edited with a few additional details about Danny that I don’t share as publicly…

We got back late Tuesday night from our annual thanksgiving trip to San Diego. It was a fun visit, it always goes by too fast. It was great to see some of our family. We missed the family that wasn’t there, but it was good to see those that were. With the way we all live such spread out lives, I'm so happy that we have the magic of the internet to keep us all together. With email and blogs and digital photos, I really don't feel that far away from my family, even though we don't see each other or actually converse all that often. It's so great how we can all stay so virtually connected - I feel like I know what goes on with everyone's lives and that's really cool.

The travelling was mostly good – with a few exceptions. On the way to the airport in Seattle, Callie threw up all over the car. But alas, with the focus on getting us pulled together and into the airport for our flight, I neglected to take my traditional barf-covered-baby photo. Sorry that Callie won't have this one for the scrap book. It was a stinky mess, we cleaned it up as best we could and then had to leave it at the airport to ferment for a week. It is off being detailed as I type this. Hopefully they can get rid of the stench. On the flight home Callie had about 15 minutes of complete melt down, but then passed out cold and slept until the next morning. Danny is a breeze to travel with, he is so mellow. Jim got the pleasure of his company for the flight (the stinker wouldn't even surrender the sweet sleeping fellow to me to hold - selfish!), and said that he has travelled in first class with seat mates that were less amiable to travel with than this guy.

We’re trying to readjust to being home. Everybody is tired, nap schedules are totally messed up. And I think the babies are in the middle of shifting their nap schedule anyway, so that always means a few weeks of unpredictable napping. Hopefully by next week we’ll be back in a more normal routine.

Updates on the babies... (when do I have to stop calling them babies?)

Callie:
Walking like she’s been doing it forever. It’s amazing what can change in just a week. She went from a few tentative steps, to now practically running. She’s totally confident walking anywhere, carrying things while walking, bending over to pick things up. So cute. I have some video which I will try to post soon. She still crawls occasionally, but it's less and less every day and I predict that we will see the last of it within the next few days probably.

Her vocabulary is really picking up. Regular words and phrases include: hi dad, hi danny, hello, dog, daisy (mom’s dog), Harley (the name of our nanny’s dog). And I’ve occasionally heard her say all done and baby, and while we were in San Diego she even said Tabatha once. All people (except Danny) are callled Dad. She calls me dad, and the nanny. I think I got her to try saying Ian a couple times last night, but it's hard to tell. She has a small vocabulary of sign words too – all done, more, sleep, please, no. She loves to shake her head no to everything - she'll even tell Danny no if he does something she thinks it's not supposed to. She will definitely be the bossy sister. She pats her chest when you spell her name. Jim has been doing this for a while - spelling her name and pointing to her, and now she totally gets when you're spelling her name.

She gives hugs and kisses - so lovable. She is very interested in a little baby doll - it's the funniest little genetic girl thing I guess, you give her a doll, or talk to her about a baby, and her voice changes to this very soft little tone. We didn't teach her that.

We had been working on going on the potty before we left – we hadn’t really intended to potty train so early, but she seemed interested so we went for it. But I think the interruption of the vacation has been too much of a distraction, and she hasn’t gone on the potty since we’ve been back. So I don’t know if we missed our little window there or not.

Her favorite food is soup. She loves to slurp broth from a spoon. If she knows you’re eating soup, she will get all worked up until she gets some, and she will not let you stop feeding it to her until she’s full. She goes crazy for soup. Last night I ended up putting broth in a bowl for her to drink out of, because my speed at refilling the soup spoon was not meeting with her satisfaction.

Danny:
Our little slowpoke is catching up! He is crawling like a super star – he even has a funny little high speed crawl that looks like a cartoon baby. He sits up and gets down great. He is starting to show interest in putting objects on or in things, taking off his shoes and socks, and pulling up to standing. He loves to pull up on his knees, and loves to be standing if you help him. He’ll even stand and stomp one foot if he has some support for holding on.

He seems to have a little bit of a cold today – a very runny nose. But otherwise he seems to feel ok.

His newest favorite food is peas. This is funny if you know me – I am not a picky eater at all, but peas are one of the very few things that I don’t like. And my kid loves them. Ah well, for him I will cook peas. That's how much I love him.

: Even though he’s making great progress, he’s obviously still way behind. He still has very little language skills or comprehension, doesn’t roll over, and doesn’t do a lot of fine motor things. I’d say he’s still at least 4 months behind, probably more in some areas. We have an appointment at our house on Monday with a nurse from the local clinic that is part of the early intervention program – everybody seems to want to do their own evaluation – who will then decide if he qualifies for their services. If he qualifies, then we may switch his PT to them and I think they’d add some OT and ST. If they don’t take him, then we’ll continue with his PT that our insurance covers and find out whether we need to add OT, and he has an appointment at that clinic for a speech eval in January. He also has an appointment in a couple weeks for a hearing test, and we still have the long awaited appointment with the neurologist next week.

Sleeping:
We recognize that we have very little room to complain - because with only occasional exceptions our babies have been sleeping through the night since they were three months old - but lately we have been struggling to get enough sleep. They used to sleep from about 8:30pm to sometime between 7:30am - 8:30am. But lately they've been waking up earlier, almost always by 6:30, often 6:00, and sometimes even a little before 6:00. That last 60 - 90 minutes of sleep we were getting in the mornings is sorely missed. Losing one hour may not seem like much, but over time it does seem to add up.

Regarding Christmas:
It's going to be low key for us this year. The last couple years we've had Christmas dinners with our friends Mimi and Michael and their kids. But they have gone and left us and moved to Australia. :-( So we have no plans for Christmas this year - I guess a very mellow day with the kids, hopefully spend a little time with Ian and/or Sean, and I don't really know what else. Maybe we'll make Christmas dinner, maybe not. we'll see. We're planning on going pretty light with the gifting this year too - mostly because there's very little either of us or the babies really need, and we're not inclined to buy gifts just for the sake of buying gifts. I have gotten a little annoyed at the excessive commercialization and emphasis on shopping, and I feel a little like rebelling against it. And, even though our incomes feel pretty stable right now, it just doesn't feel like the best time to be spending a bunch of money that we don't really need to spend. I am going to try to get a card out, just as soon as we get a family photo taken. We'll get a very tiny Christmas tree that will fit up on a table out of the reach of the small people who think that everything belongs to them and will stop at nothing to disassemble a shiny object.

Work updates:
Jim has started a new job. Still at , just a different role with more responsibility and (he's hoping) better opportunity for growth and promotions. I'd explain to you what the job is, but I seem to struggle with articulating (or understanding) exactly what it is that he does. Technical, brainy stuff. :-)

My work is going very well - I am really enjoying the consulting lifestyle. I love the flexibility of being able to work wherever I want, and also taking breaks to spend time with the kids during the day. The projects I am working on right now are interesting (working on mobile phones stuff - very cool). It's turning out to be the perfect balance. Consulting isn't quite the same job security as being a full time employee, but my current contract has just been extended through June, so things are looking fairly stable for the near term.

I think that's all I have to say for now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay, that's a lot all at once.

Glad your trip south was fun and hopefully the detailers can get the barf smell out.

We too have only a tabletop tree this year. The one really nice thing about it is that there won't be a lot of work taking it all down at the end of the season. In compensation, however, I put lots of lights out in our front yard including a little family of deer. There was a time when I thought these things were tacky, but the kids love them!

If it's any consolation, there are days I have mixed feelings about expecting another baby in four months. The hardest is that I too see my twins as babies still and am having a hard time wrapping my head around yet another 'baby' in the house. My first was a very independent 2.5yo when these two showed, and I felt completely different about it all. Perhaps it's a good thing you're waiting until the summer.

Anonymous said...

when you figure out how to have enough energy left over for any kind of intimacy, could you let me know?????????????

Oh, and we are so done with the idea of more babies. I thought about it for a hot minute but these two are just little a** kickers...... another one or two would kill me....

Ms. Perky said...

When I went to the perinatologist to ask his thoughts about me getting pregnant again, and what would happen if I had a multiple pregnancy (to determine whether I needed to consider doing ONLY single embryo transfers), he asked whether there was any possibility I could have a spontaneous pregnancy so that I could avoid the whole multiple dilemma. Hah! Aside from the whole six year history of never getting pregnant on my own, doc, who has time or energy to actually have sex with 1 year old triplets and a five year old in the house? You're not alone, babe. :) (BTW, I can't remember if you read my other blog... the answer was no twins for me, SETs only)

I figure we've got to have another kid before we remember what sleep is like. If we get too used to being really well rested, we won't be willing to give that up. :)