Today we basically stayed at home. We did chores around the house and I went to Top Foods with Elijah to get us lunch. Michael tried out the backpack carrier we borrowed from Lorna and carried Rowan all around the neighborhood. He did pretty well in it. After I got back, I finally planted my astilbes! I’ve had them sitting downstairs for a couple of weeks, just imagining the rot that is going on. The plants were in pretty good condition, so I think it will be ok. Michael had to run to Molbak’s to pick up some compost for me at the last minute. Elijah had a hard time sleeping, so we brought him out in the bouncy chair and had him with me while I pulled weeds. He did good at first then he started really crying. I bounced him a bit and that put him to sleep. I brought him in and let him sleep downstairs while I fed Rowan, who just woke up. We then put Elijah in his hammock to sleep more comfortably and then brought Rowan outside with us. Michael put him out on the grass in the bouncy seat and he liked watching Michael rake up the moss. The lawn guy has been on our case to rake up the moss so that he can overseed. I’m like “hey, we’ll do it when we can”. After we get that done, Michael went out to get Indian food for dinner and I sat in the driveway playing with Rowan. We had a VERY long laughing session where I would stick my tongue out at him and say “bleeaah” and he would give me a big smile and laugh. We did this for probably a good 10 minutes, you can listen to it here. It’s so weird how he never got tired of it, and it was the longest he’s ever laughed. There were moments when laughter quickly turned into crying, I think when I got too close it scared him or something. It’s a lot of fun figuring out what makes them laugh, and they’re both different. Indian food was yummy! We found out that both of them do NOT like formula! We made the mistake of mixing about 70% of their milk with formula and they both drank about 30 ml’s and then wanted no more of it. They cried and cried and rejected the bottle everytime we put it in their mouths. Man, that stuff must taste horrible. We had to throw out that milk (ugh!) and give them straight breastmilk. They like that much better and finished. So now we have to be careful with mixing the formula to be less than 1/2. It was the first time they communicated to us something they didn’t like. I mean, up until this point it was only “I’m hungry”, “I’m tired” or “My diaper’s wet”. I thought it was interesting that BOTH of them didn’t like it.

I went into work again today. This time, I brought the boys over to Lorna’s house. No creepy babysitter today! I had to gather everything up for them and for me. It was quite a lot of stuff! I think I had to make 2 trips to the car and that was just for the stuff! I felt really good leaving them there, I know that they are in good hands. Lorna is a really great person and I’m so glad I have her as a resource. I cleaned out my office and met with Tim, who basically told me that I need to come in AGAIN to have an exit interview with HR. Grrr… But I’m thinking the meeting with HR will be so short that I can either bring the boys with me or Michael can take them out for a walk while I’m there. It was sad to close the door to my office, a chapter in my life has ended. Michael and I went home together. We picked up the boys together and had a lot of fun talking to Lorna and her husband Jim. I talked about the hospital and the nurses we had in common. It’s amazing that even though we had our boys 2 years apart, many of the nurses stayed the same. That’s great! Michael talked to Jim about all kinds of stuff - the house, kids, what not. Lorna said the boys were total angels, and was so amazed at how well behaved they were. They took a nice long nap and fell asleep really easily in their car seats. They both are still pooping a lot today, I’m thinking it’s the formula. We went out for dinner with the Tokumis’ at the Woodinville Cafe. It was so weird to tell the waitress “table for 7″! I gave Misha a t-shirt that I made and it says “Whoa, bubba!” on with with a picture of two golden retriever puppies under it. She says “Whoa, bubba” all the time and I thought it would be so cute for her to wear a shirt that says that on it. I oringally thought there should be a cartoon picture of a girl instead of the puppies, but I couldn’t draw one that I liked. Anyhoo, dinner was great and we all came home tired!

Here are pictures of my old work office, I will miss this place!

Home away from home

My MS Office

Here I am with my boss, Tim

Today I mostly spent the day feeding then we all took naps together. It’s amazing how fast the day goes by when you do this! Michael came home early and I went to class as usual. I didn’t want to leave the house, I tried to find every excuse, but alas, I had to go. I had great parking karma today because right when I pulled up to the “free” parking area, someone was leaving. There is never any open spaces in the free lot! I was late to class maybe 15 minutes, but it was no big deal. Today’s assignment that was due was the portraits I took of Michael and the boys. Mine came out ok, but I wish I had more time to play around. With the babies there, you just have to take stuff really fast, no messin’ around! A lot of people’s assignments came out pretty good. It’s neat to see what different people came up with.

When I came home, both the boys were up and in their exersaucers. I talked to Elijah and I asked him if he had a poopy diaper. He gave me a big smile and laughed. I said “poopy” again and he laughed again. This continued for a few minutes. It’s so weird how that word cracks him up. Today both of the babies started pooping with more frequency. Maybe it’s the formula? Elijah poops once every 3 - 5 days. But today I think he had a poopy diaper (haha) 3 times. Very weird. It’s not a weird color or anything, so I’m not too worried.

Today we didn’t do much, I had to go to a checkup appointment with the doctor for my gallbladder. I packed the boys up and when I went to the car, the tire was low. A guy told me yesterday that my tire was low and I filled it up at the gas station. I forgot all about it until I went down to the car. I didn’t have time to change a tire or wait for someone to come over and do it, so I drove on it to the gas station, filled it up again and went to my appointment. I figured if it is flat by the time I get out of my appointment, I’ll just change it there. The appointment was really quick. As I was filling out the paperwork in the waiting room, some woman came over with splotchy skin and was drooling all over them. Well, ok, she wasn’t drooling, but she was touching them. I was cringing. I quickly wheeled them away to the opposite wall from where she was so that she couldn’t touch them anymore. Geez, people! Anyways, I saw the doctor and he removed the steri-strips and everything looks good. There will be very little scarring. When I got back to the car, the tire was still ok. I went home and called roadside assistance. They came out to the house and changed the tire for me. Since it is a full size spare, I have some time to fix the tire. Hopefully I won’t have to buy a whole new tire or 4! I tried to have the boys fall asleep without being swaddled and they just wouldn’t do it. I put them down and they cried and cried. Sometimes they would stop and I thought ok, they finally settled down, but then they would start again. I think I lasted about an hour of starting and stopping and then finally I swaddled them and they fell asleep in 10 seconds. I don’t know what we’re going to do when it gets too hot for blankets. I’m guessing we’ll just have to suffer through it. Michael came home late this evening because he went climbing with Theron and didn’t mention it to me. He always does this where he figures he shouldn’t waste the time to call and just hurry home. I reminded him that he should always call! I had to get out of the house, so I went to Best Buy to return some stuff and then to Babies R Us to get some formula. Since my milk storage supply has gotten so low, I decided to supplement with formula for our night feedings (or anytime we have to bottle feed) so that it will last longer. Once I get it built up again, then we can go off the formula. Probably when I get back from Hawaii we will have almost nothing. I will pump when I’m there, but it’s going to be so hectic!

We had our swimming class today and as usual, I was in a mad rush to get there. There was an awful lot of traffic on the 405, so I got there 10 minutes before class. Luckily, the weather wasn’t that great so there was lots of good parking. Now that we found a way to bring the stroller, getting from car to in the pool was much faster. The boys did good today, but because they still have a reaction to the water in their face, they couldn’t do the dip-face-in-water exercise. We felt left behind. Everyone else in the class was exclaiming and very excited to see their babies go under water. Now I’m worried that because they can’t do that yet, we’ll be just on the side for the rest of the classes, which would kind of suck. We’ve been practicing every day putting water in their faces at bath time and it seems like it’s something that they will outgrow(?) and not something that you can train them to like. At least that’s what it seems like. We’ll see what happens next week. We went to lunch at Oobas again, man that potato quesadilla is good! The rest of the day was pretty normal you know - sleeping/eating/pooping, the babies did the same! haha! ;)

I went to work today, I was hoping it would be my last official day, but my boss didn’t have time to meet with me. I have to do an exit interview and he has to notify HR and all that business. I left the boys in the care of a sitter from “Best Sitters”. She didn’t seem to friendly on the phone, but I figured, it’s only for a few hours. My assessment over the phone was correct, she wasn’t a very friendly person. I tried to be friendly and showed my appreciation that she was there, but she didn’t smile at all. I showed her stuff and explained everything and I wrote everything down (well, almost everything). The only question she had for me was “How do I work the TV?”. From that I knew what the boys’s day was going to be like. I was very sad to leave Rowan, he was in his car exersaucer and gave me a very big smile before I left. The guilt set in.

Work was pretty fun, I didn’t do any actual work, I just walked around and talked to folks and cleaned up my office. I went to lunch at Oobas with Michael and then we had ice cream cake to celebrate my birthday. I didn’t quite finish cleaning up, but since I have to come in another day anyway, I figured it can wait. It was a little sad, I’ve been in that office awhile now. Closing the door on the work world was harder than I expected, but I know I’ve made the right decision.

When I came home, no one was crying or anything. The sitter was feeding Rowan and watching COPS on TV. I don’t know, but if someone was paying me to sit with their kids, I would at least put on the appearance that I was working. She wasn’t holding Rowan - it was very strange, I guess she maybe was too big to carry the baby and feed, but she had Rowan lying in the boppy pillow and she was just holding the bottle and watching TV. She just seemed detached from Rowan, like she didn’t want to be there. That’s alright, I was ok with that. She said that the babies were very well behaved and that she wishes all the babies she sits for was like them. That’s good. But then she told me that she dropped a WHOLE BAG of my milk (300 ml). I nearly lost it. I didn’t really say anything though because what would be the point? I also noticed that she left some dishes in the sink that she used… Thank goodness I don’t have to have a daytime sitter very often!

We didn’t plan to do anything today except for the balloon ride. Something lit a fire under Michael because he was just a cleaning/mowing/raking machine! When he decides to clean up, he really goes to town! He filled a car full of junk, took it to the dump, went to Best Buy to pick up my present as well as a new printer (!!!) that can print directly on CD’s and DVD’s. The only bad thing was that they didn’t have any DVD media that had “hub printable” DVD’s. The only brand of printable DVD’s was Memorex, and they really suck. So, I had to order online, can’t wait to get them. I’m learning a lot about DVD’s and burning and that it really makes a difference which brand of DVD’s you get. Much different than CD’s. From what I’ve read, Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim are the best. Anyhoo, I’m up to my eyeballs with new toys. I’m such a techno gadget freak! And Michael likes to endulge me. He also heard about how much I liked the car exersaucer and went ahead and bought it! I immediately had to put it together (and ignore *my* brand new toys). It is a complicated piece of machinery! Lots of parts and wires to hook up, it was fun! The boys both really love it, they are so cute hanging out in their new car! It is quickly getting covered in drool. Both of them are drooling now, not super bad, but it’s there. Elijah does this really funny thing when he’s in a bouncy chair, he will use his left leg to bounce himself! He’ll be sitting there, then all of a sudden, his left leg will kick circles and his chair will bounce for a little while. Whenever it stops, he’ll do it again! It was so cute, I wonder what is going on in that little head of his. Rowan has gotten really good at grabbing stuff, he likes to hold on to these little bugs/rattles that I got for them awhile back. It’s really cool to see them look at something then reach out for it.

In the evening, we went out to the hot air balloon site and waited a bit. After about 30 minutes, they decided to call off the flight. I was like “I can’t be doing this every weekend”, so they scheduled me for a day in June. Watch, the weather will be freakishly bad that day. So, we packed back up in the car and headed home. We invited Theron over for dinner and he brought Frankie’s Pizza - mmmmm mmmm good! We watched an episode of Season 3 of “24″, but I was too preoccupied with loading software on my new laptop to pay attention!

Of course, I stayed up super late trying to figure stuff out on the machine. I kept getting a blue screen due to one of the Windows hotfixes, so I had to figure out how to get SP2 first. That was a pain, but then everything worked ok.

This morning we all went to the photography studio to do my photo assignment for the week. It was good to have Michael there since he could calm the babies down while I set up the equipment or whatever. The babies were a little fussy, but because I’ve already been through this a few days ago, it was manageable. Michael, on the other hand, was sweatin’! The shoot went fairly well, we’ll see what the teacher has to say. I got some really funny ones, Michael knows how to make funny faces. I’ll have to post them on the site as well. I’m getting so lazy! In the afternoon, I was supposed to go on a balloon ride, but the weather was bad. I was so looking forward to it! I had Michael reschedule it for tomorrow. So, the rest of the day we didn’t do much. I went over to my cousin Eric’s house to pick up an exersaucer. It was a fun visit, but short since both his kids were getting over colds. I went to Babies R Us and picked up a few necessities since I was in the neighborhood. It took me everything I had to not get the “Jitter Buggy”, which is an exersaucer shaped like a car. It’s really cute. I went to L and L to pick up dinner. It wasn’t as good as I remember.

Here are pictures of the lighting studio where I have my class

Today was very sunny and hot. The morning was very cool and cloudy and I wasn’t sure if the sun was going to come out at all. But I was wrong, wrong, wrong! We stayed home for most of the day. In the late afternoon, I went to the DOL to get my driver’s license renewed. The boys were perfect little angels! There was this little girl who came over and loved looking at the babies. She and her 2 brothers hovered over them while their mom got was with her oldest son. The girl went on and on about how her birthday is on Monday and she’s going to get a lot of Barbie and Polly Pocket stuff. She was really cute. And then she went on about how she is going to get married and have babies herself. Her brothers were rolling their eyes. Her brothers were really sweet too, it was nice talking to them. Their mom came over and said hello and I found out she had 5 kids. I think she is one of those who wanted a girl so she had 4 boys and the 5th was a girl and decided to stop. All of her kids were very well behaved though, it was nice to see. Since there was hardly anyone in the place, everything went very quickly. I blinked in my picture and the lady was nice and let me take another one. It’s all digital nowadays. No more weird boxy camera. We went home and Michael and Alex came back. We tried to put the boys down for a nap but they were just too hot. Rowan was crying and crying. I fed him some milk to calm him down and he was just dripping in sweat. We moved them to our bedroom since we don’t get the hot afternoon sun on our side and Rowan fell asleep but Elijah was still fussy. It was cooling off by this point, so I put him in his bedroom and he was able to sleep. Poor babies! The combination of needing more milk with it being hot is just too much for them. We are looking into getting an air conditioner for their room. Hopefully we can find one that isn’t too expensive. They have the ones that you can roll from room to room, maybe that’s one for us. We usually scoff at buying an air conditioner since we usually can take “air condition” weather, but after what we went through today, we are open to it. I’m a little concerned about how the thing is going to vent. We’ll see. Michael went out and picked up Indian food from Shamiana. mmmmmmmmm!

I have been watching 24 like crazy and it must’ve rubbed off on me because I stayed up 24 hours today! I started with getting up and pumping. After I was done with that, I got involved with cleaning up my office and getting more organized. The key to my sanity is to write everything down. I now put everything in Outlook so if anything happens to my computer….well…I’m screwed! I put in all my appointments, when stuff is due, when stuff is happening, etc. I fully utilize the calendar and task features. Anyways, I did another pump at about 4am. I HAVE to pump twice nightly because we are just blowing through the milk storage supply. Since I had the surgery, the boys’ intake is increasing and I’m not keeping up, and other misc things, I am concerned about my suppy for when I go to Hawaii. I think Michael will have to use formula, at least for some of it. I watched more of 24, I’m almost done with the 2nd season. Michael is having a hard time keeping up with me! I did more organizing after that, then it was time for the babies to get up. I spent the day going shopping at Target and Safeway and the babies did great! They cried just a little towards the end since they were getting tired, but for the most part, they liked looking at all the stuff in the stores. It was hard for me because I had a shopping cart in one hand and pushing the stroller in the other. I couldn’t push the stroller the normal way because with one hand it goes all over the place. So what I did was pull the stroller by holding one of the car seat handles. It worked pretty well, sometimes a wheel would catch a corner when I turn, but other than that it was fine. Thank god for the snap n go! Whenever we got home, I put them down and got my stuff together for my class. It was very important that I leave right when Michael gets home because I have to pick up my film before class. Michael got home right on time and I left. Traffic was a nightmare, but that’s normal. I got to Ivey at 15 minutes before closing and picked up my pictures. A wave of relief came over me when I saw that my pictures were not an utter failure. I went to class and survived it. It was really fun when he set up the portrait lighting, it’s amazing how it transforms the person. I was able to try out another safe sync on my camera and sure enough, mine was faulty. Meanwhile, Michael left to go climbing with his friend Alex, and we got Lorna to watch the boys. I really like it when Lorna comes over, as opposed to anyone else (except family, of course). I came home and the boys were in bed already. I chatted with Lorna a bit since I haven’t seen her in awhile. I did my first pump of the evening and then fell asleep at around midnight. Whoa, 24 hours. I think mine is more exciting than the one on tv. I mean, isn’t sitting at my desk and getting organized *way* more interesting than finding a nuclear bomb?