This is just pitiful

Wow. Once a month? Really? That's all I can mange to post? Yeesh.

I have one post I've been working on for a while but it is now so sadly out of date that I'm just going to give up and start again. A quick summary of the non "baby growth update" part of that post -- my mother came to visit for a week and, as much as I love her, somehow having her here to help was more stressful and exhausting than having no help. As my husband says, at this point he and I are a well oiled machine -- having her here definitely threw a wrench in the works.

Anyway, moving on...

Um. Do you know that it is almost the end of September? Do you know what that means?

For one -- the boys are almost 5 months old and 3 months adjusted! Um, can you say "holy crap!?" I knew you could.

For two -- we're about to come up on the one year anniversary of their conception. Yeah, if they were conceived the "old fashioned" way, that might be a little "eeeewwww" inducing. But, with IVF, it just makes me cry happy tears to think of it. I keep looking at our timeline on the sidebar over there on the right and thinking of what I was doing each of these days last year. I couldn't have begun to imagine how my life would change one year later.

For three -- we're only a few weeks from midterm break. We're actually going to attempt our first out-of-town trip with the boys for a night. Also, the day of the break is our 4 year anniversary. We are taking the unusual step of taking one of our babysitters with us and getting a two bedroom suite (found an AWESOME deal) so that she can sit for the boys while we go out to dinner. I have no idea how this is going to work. We're not planning on visiting family (hence the BYOBS (bring your own babysitter)) because, if it is a disaster, we don't want the pressure of having to take them to family houses and will just head home. We'll try that chaos over Thanksgiving.

(The whole thing feels very bizarre to me -- never thought of myself as someone who would travel with a "nanny" -- but we just desperately want to go out to a nice restaurant for our anniversary (there aren't any in our town) and want to take the boys to a few of our favorite places in Iowa.)

Speaking of the babysitters -- we have three different students who come by at various times during the weekdays for somewhere between 1 and 2 1/2 hours. Sometimes it just allows me to take a shower (oh, I so love to get a shower) or do some laundry or wash bottles. And, having someone else (who isn't sleep deprived) interact with the boys for a while is wonderful. My current goal, on the two days I have longer "chunks," is to get out and go to the pool in an attempt to find my muscles again. We still have one sitter coming one night a week and sometimes a few hours on the weekend. I was resistant to this whole thing at first -- I feel like I'm SUPPOSED to be taking care of them all the time. (And, I love to do it.) But, I realized that if I don't get a few minutes to myself each day and sometimes get out of the house on my own, then I will just collapse into tears. Two babies is hard. wonderful but hard. There are so few times when they're both relaxed or asleep. (For instance, now. I have no idea how I've lucked into this long chunk of "alone time" right now. Highly unusual.) If we had any family anywhere nearby I wouldn't have hesitated to "use" them for the same purpose. But, we don't and I need help.

We have been very lucky with the sitters we've found. They're really great. And, they all really love hanging out with the boys. Sometimes we have to force them to take the money they've earned (if they stayed extra, for instance) because they always thank us for letting them hang out with our children! I think back to being in college and I could totally see that -- just wanting some time to get away from school and play with cute babies. A great stress reliever.

Uh oh... D seems to be waking up... Hmm... maybe not quite yet.

Um, I haven't had a chance to write a "baby update." Gives me a reason to try to fit in another post this week! :)

Meantime, here's my current favorite baby shot. Can you believe how grown up they're looking?




Oops, yeah, he's up now! Gotta go!! Love to you all!! :)

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