totally worth it

so needless to say, our days around here have not been the best.  my initial assessment of the severity of our basement was nowhere near what it really is.  luckily, none of our things were ruined, but almost all of the basement was finished with carpet.  which has been a life-saver with these twins running around.  our deductible for insurance is more than what bryan thought we'd spend doing it ourselves, so he and my dad have been working for the last couple of days ripping up carpet, ripping out the super absorbent underneath pad and carting it outside.  filling a trash can 15 or 20 times with 80 or so pounds worth of water-logged styrofoam (or something similar), and hauling it up a flight of stairs to the street. yeah.  we've transferred the playroom to our office, which isn't child-proofed, about 1/3 the size of their play area downstairs, and has too many things for the boys to get into that they aren't appreciating being in there at all!  no limits, mom!

thank goodness my sister was here today, although it was still a rough one... can't go anywhere inside, so hot outside - but luckily, she took them on a loooonng walk so we were able to get some work done.  i cooked.  which i don't really do.  i found something that i knew they would like (parmesan-crusted chicken fingers - i mean, come on!) and crossed my fingers.  well, par for the course, they weren't having it.  so by the time bedtime rolled around, we were SO ready to put them down for the night.  diapers, pj's, replacing all the pacifiers and blankets that have been thrown out of the beds at naptime, brushing teeth.. normal routine.  i turned off the light, and turned on the fan as bryan was telling them 'night, night, i love you'.  and then, as we were walking out of the room, we hear 'uh-yuh-you'.  for the first time in liam's little life.
and the day disappeared...

i learned a few things today...

- we should always check the basement first thing in the morning after a giNORmo thunderstorm the previous night
- i shouldn't think things like flooded basements don't happen to me
- something i already knew, but appreciated even more today : dads are the best
- i wasn't as strong as i thought (apparently, carrying around 2 22-pound toddlers every day doesn't make you strong - what?!)
- the wet vac is a serious machine
- seriously, dads are the best
- and i'm sure, had he not been saving lives (i exaggerate, but only a little), husbands would have been the best
- i definitely take the men in my life for granted
- am grateful for the roof over our heads, but cursing whatever part of our house let all this water in
- am also grateful i chose a day last week to clean up a major part of our storage in the basement, putting all of the babies' clothes in water-resistant tupperware
- is it still called tupperware if it isn't holding left-overs in your fridge?
- shouldn't have chosen this particular day to paint our front door 'mixed berry jam' (more on that in a bit) and change the hardware
- if the hardware on your front door hasn't been changed since the house was built (1950s?), there's probably a damn good reason
- trying to force a brass doorknob out of a door jamb with a flathead screwdriver is not a good idea
- using a hammer to jam the screwdriver into said door jamb is definitely not a good idea
- mixed berry jam, i'm slowly finding out, is a fancy word for pink. maybe even hot pink. fuchsia.
- i still love it
- but i'm not sure how bryan will feel about it
- pandora is the best app for days like this (glee radio to be specific!)
- hoping mixed berry jam dries more than just a shade darker
- and even if stan at the home depot tells you you won't need more than one coat, count on more than one coat
- starting to realize why bryan is so obsessed with his drill

you be the judge

maybe tomorrow i will learn how to get the doorknob out of the door.

pond fun!

i don't know if i've ever shared that i grew up on a farm.  not a real farm, like corn and cows (although we have had other people rent our land from us to house their cows), but 62 acres of land in the country. a farm.  over the years, we had sheep, goats, chickens, a couple of horses (for a very short time), dogs, and a countless number of cats.  at one time, it was 14. 14.  on this farm are two ponds.  one of them was already there, and my parents put in our swimming pond a few years later.  it has a peninsula, and a dock, and we spent so many hours in it... and somehow, as i've gotten older, i haven't so much been into the whole pond thing.  part of it has to do with the fact that the sand guy didn't dump the right kind of sand a couple of summers ago, it's more like gravel and it's ended up more mud, less sand where you can touch.  slimy.  however, as the boys are getting older, i've been told a few times by my mom and dad that i can't pass my irrational fears onto them.  even though it's not a fear (eyes rolling), i'm letting it go and not thinking about the algae and ginormo catfish in there..  the boys got in for the first time last weekend and had a blast!! the first of many times, i'm sure..

finn with mimi

liam having a blast with poppy!

peter pan

love this pic of liam  

swimming with the bear

forgot to take the camera to the pool... but got a few cute pics of the guys beforehand.  seriously, i don't know of anything that is cuter than these three boys!

the stork house is a green house.

a huge part of our life is laundry.  a huge part of our laundry is diapers.  we decided way before the babies were born that we needed to figure out a way to use cloth diapers.  i went back and forth, doing research, reading articles in mothering magazine (which is a little granola for me, but still has a lot of good info), and we finally decided to do it.  we just kept thinking of the landfills filled with twice the disposable diapers of a normal family that wouldn't biodegrade before 500 years and couldn't be ok with that.

there are a ton of choices, from gdiapers (which are super cute and seem like a good idea, but are exPENsive) to the good old tri-fold with the plastic covers.  we landed on bumgenius.  at the time, we thought we were having a boy and a girl, so we got all different colors... which means that our boys wear pink undies.  whatever.  bumgenius diapers are either pocket or all-in-one, i still don't know the difference, but we have what we call inserts and outserts: the outserts are the outer cover that house the absorbent insert and wick the moisture away from their skin.  they're shaped like a normal diaper and have a velcro strip on the front, and velcro tabs on the sides.   we have two diaper pails, one for each part.  surprisingly, they don't smell... or we've just gotten used to it.  hopefully not that one.  

we have 40 diapers, which was a huge chunk of money in the beginning.  however, they will last until the boys are potty-trained.  when we came home from the hospital, they were 5ish pounds, so they couldn't wear the cloth diapers yet.  by the time we started using them, we had already spent more money on disposables than we had on our cloths.  pretty sweet.  at about a year, all of our velcro tabs started wearing out.  which means i got to rip off and sew on 80 new tabs... not cool, especially when we paid $16 a diaper.  but it was good, i got some good sewing experience.  one thing people always tell me is they would do it if they could handle the poo.  i understand this completely.  here's where the bumgenius diaper sprayer comes in - it's a tool you connect to your toilet that sprays the solid into the water, then you don't have to dunk your hands in the toilet water (which, apparently, is what my parents did- blech).  it has made this process so much easier! and i don't think more than one or two of our diapers is stained - after 14 or so months of using them!

after reading all of the message boards having to do with the velcro tabs wearing out, everyone suggested line-drying.  another something that was going to take up more of our time.  but again, these weren't cheap so we're going to get our money's worth!  bryan hung some line in the laundry room, and now we've added this extra step in the process.  we wash twice a week, a wash, a wash, and a rinse for the outserts and inserts.  usually after the babes go to bed.  lots o' water.  that's a whole other debate, whether it's better to use more water, because apparently, it's the same cost when it's all said and done - i just think of the landfills and can't possibly come to disposables as the better option.  

i bought two itso boxes at target, the diapers go in these on the second shelf of our changing table.  i didn't do this on purpose, but i thought the rainbow was particularly pretty.  as pretty as cloth diapers can be.  

a lot of people can't believe we do this.  i honestly don't think it's that big of a deal, and i guess i should have prefaced by saying that we aren't a completely-100% cloth-diapering household.  we use disposables when we travel, when we run out and haven't started laundry yet, even if i just don't feel like cleaning another dirty one...  one of my friends told me in the beginning, don't try to save the world all by yourself.  which i understood, but at the same time, i didn't really think i was trying to save the world. it just made more sense, especially since we were having twins, to do it this way.  it's our small contribution to saving the world.  

bye bye, facebook.

i don't know when exactly it happened, but i had an epiphany a little bit ago.  i'm 28, i'm a mom, i love being a mom, and i don't want any crap in my life.  my mom and i have had the same conversation a lot as i've gone to college, as i got a job as a nurse, as i got married and moved to a whole new place to make new friends, moved back home, etc...  as you get older, you realize that you don't have as much time as you used to, and there is nothing like children to make you realize that the time you do have is so extremely important.  which means things in your life that are not priority don't need to be there.  when i moved back home from fresno, i needed a way to keep in touch with my friends i'd made out there.  they all told me i needed a myspace page, i wasn't into it.  facebook seemed like a good alternative.  but not until i was on bedrest in the hospital did i join.  i was warned by my friends that i would become addicted.  i did.  it made me nosy.  and fake-interested in people who i wasn't that good of friends with in past lives (high school, college, etc.).  i was a different person in high school, someone who would definitely have a facebook account and have tons of friends and be all about it.  i look down my nose at that person a little, but what am i going to do, apologize for who i was? nah, waste of time.  so i joined facebook, and was connected to a lot of people who could now all see pictures of the babies and "stay in touch" with me from far away.  except now, as i'm older (and wiser?), i'd rather not. i'd rather not put pictures of my babies up on the internet on a website who's privacy policy is longer than the US Constitution.  i'd rather not read about someone who's going through a divorce because her husband is cheating on her or see someone's profane thoughts out there for all the world to see.  i know, they are allowed to put whatever they want, it's their own page.  and i don't have anything to do with that.  except i read it, and it gets in my brain, and it's negative, and i don't want negative things wasting my time in my brain.  i asked myself yesterday, i've been on it for a year and a half, how has it made my life better? . . . . . . it has kept me in touch with a handful (literally maybe 5 or 6) people who i've liked to keep up with.  a handful of people.  who know what my e-mail address is, and if they want, can contact me that way.  i think i sound a little snobbish saying that, but in all honesty, i'm not sorry i sound like a snob.  it all has to do with getting older, realizing what my priorities are, how important it is not to have negativity around, and not being sorry for how i live my life.  not to mention how much time i will save not being on it.  seriously.  peace out, facebook, i don't think i'll miss you.