FIRST. A long time a go (like, months, sorry!) I got the most awesome lighthouse postcard from Elisabeth and Kyria! It was so exciting to get mail, AND to tell the kids it had come all the way from Canada. Thank you Elisabeth and Kyria!
This week felt mostly like this:
On Wednesday our nanny made a super tasty tuna pasta which the kids would not try, and then did a bunch of weird stuff with plain pasta. On Wednesday I made a enchilada lasagne (a million times easier than this version). And the kids only wanted to eat tortillas and cheese. How long can a small human survive on just bread and cheese? I told them they had to have a plain bean and cheese wrap, which one child ate, and the other child picked all the beans out then said they were done. BUT also my kids aren't done in the "I'll go upstairs and play" done - they're done in the "I'll make everyone else miserable whether I stay at the table or get down from the table" phase.
Also, the babies didn't like the enchilada casserole, which is super annoying because they loved it last time and it was delicious. So I shoved an entire dinner down me with grumpy babies and grumpy kids and then I was so grumpy as well.
My TBR is a bit meh at the moment and the ones I want aren't coming through fast enough. I need to get on goodreads best of the year list and start picking some more.
Also, Audrey is still waking between 4:30 and 5. Sometimes she used to sleep till almost 6 and in my head I thought she slept till 6 but I must now admit, like I did a year ago when they were 7 weeks old, there is no sleep after 5. Never rely on getting sleep after 5am.
So besides being tired and annoyed, my week was fine?
Reading
I finished One Day In December and it was nice. I dowloaded Real Americans but I'm not sure I have 11 hours to spend reading a book.
Sports
I decided to try a Peloton challenge of exercising every day this month!
- Monday
- 30 Minute Hip Hop Ride with Cody Rigsby (Peloton)
- 10 Minute Core Strength with Adrian Williams (Peloton)
- Tuesday
- 20 Minute Pop Ride with Kendall Too (Peloton)
- 90 Minute Hot Yoga with a friend (this was hard!)
- Wednesday
- 30 Minute Pop Ride with Jen Sherman (Peloton)
- Thursday
- 1 Hour gym session (upper) with gym buddy
- 20 Minute Focu Flow: Hip with Chelsea Jackson Roberts
- Friday
- Nothing, goodbye streak
- Saturday
- 30 Minute Indie Rock Ride with Mayla Wedekind (Peloton - Live!)
If I can do a "almost every day in Day in December" that's also good.
Also on Saturday I was really pleased because I had the babies by myself and I saw a class was starting live at 9:30 (which is baby first nap) and I managed to get two babies changed and in bed for nap and change myself and get on the Peloton in 6 minutes. After Peloton I managed to shower and change in perfect time to get the babies up at 10:15.
This whole twin thing is super easy if you can live at 100% effort 100% of the time and be comfortable with success only 10% of the time even with all that effort (case in point - I wanted to ride during afternoon nap on Friday but Audrey woke up early and there was no other time in the day I could do exercise).
[Alternate phrasing to that paragraph: this twin thing is basically impossible]
Sleep
Until Thursday I was at 7.1 hours average sleep, after an exceptionally painful 6.5 hours on Tuesday night (which resulted in me being so tired I missed a call in work because I knew I would be too tired to focus or be of any value). I did other work in that time, but told the meeting attendees that I had a clash. The clash was that I was too tired to pay attention ton an hour long call.
I decided to to revert to newborn life and start going to bed at 8pm again, so I've managed to claw my average back to 7.42 average, but 8pm bedtime is no way for a human adult to exist.
My line a day journal indicates that this time last year was the steep slide into twin baby horror; so while I am glad to not be reliving 7 week old twins, I am pretty sure that next year I will think "Man, I'm glad to not be reliving 13 month old twins!"
Maybe next year I will just plan not to leave the house after 6pm from November to Feb? Maybe bears and other hibernating animals have it right.
How was your week? Have you ever avoided a work thing because you are too tired? Why is "I'm too tired" not an adequate reason to cancel all evening activities as well?
When you said, there is no sleep after 5, it made me think of the "no sleep till Brooklyn" song and now I have that in my head. You should do a weird Al rendition that sings about twin babies and the lack of sleep instead of whatever the Beastie Boys were talking about (drugs, I assume).
ReplyDeleteMy parents used to make all the kids (and adults) sit at the table together until everyone was done eating. I now look at that and wonder if that was sheer torture for them for a while, before we became sullen teenagers rather than rowdy kids. I know my brother was a VERY picky eater and for a long time would only eat white rice, and he would put ketchup on it (gross). I, of course, was a perfect child, except that I did not care for green peas. You are going to have some great stories with four kids to contend with.
I think next year you will glad not to have two one year olds, and then the year after you will be very glad not to have two two year olds..and so on. Just keep doing one day at a time!
Haha! I wish I was clever enough to do parody songs.
DeleteI want to do a post sometime (if I remember) about family dinners! Because my husband's family had the same rule as your family and that sounds terrible to me. We were allowed to get down if we asked to be excused and our parents said yes. Honestly, if kids get down happy and before us then that's great. I can't imagine wanting *longer* dinner times with small kids who don't want to be at the table.
It's true - next year will be better. Until Eventually I forget what this time was like and miss it :-D
Gosh, no two kids are alike but I will say when the kids were little we faced additional medical/sensory/neuro issues, and I just flat gave up on the idea of a full family dinner. Felt all the guilt, all the failure, got over it, moved on and...realized about 4 months ago that now we all are, in fact, sitting down to dinner together multiple nights a week (not 7, but enough to count). And I wonder why I beat myself up for so long when the truth is my people just weren't ready for it yet.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm tying to say is that how dinner is now is certainly not how it will be in 1 year, or 3, or 5. So do whatever you need to do right now to stay sane (feed the kids first? have pancakes every night?) because you will get to family dinner eventually. You are a super woman, but you are stretched thin right now. No need to make this phase harder than it already is.
Yay! I'm so glad the postcard arrived.
ReplyDeleteSome weeks just...suck. And some REALLY SUCK. Having little kiddos in the house is overwhelming even when everything goes perfectly...which it rarely does...I feel you! I will admit I am really enjoying most aspects of having my kids be older and more independent. Though they still don't always love what I serve them for dinner...
Co-sign the idea that life with little kids is baseline overwhelming. -rachel
DeleteI real "Real Americans" a month or so back. It was well written, but I kept waiting for it to get going and mean something...and then it took a speculative fiction turn that did not feel earned or relevant to the other threads left dangling. So, enjoyable while I was reading, but dissatisfied once I finished it. -Rachel
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed 'One Day in December' too. I think it would make a cute movie. I reviewed 30+ books on my blog for NaBloPoMo, maybe you'll find something you want to read there? Though you might have to wait for them, which doesn't help you right now. Good job on the daily exercise!
ReplyDeleteOoh I was so overwhelmed during NaBloPoMo that I didn't see your reviews but have read them now and picked up some titles for my list! Thank you for the top tips! Also we have liked a lot of the same books recently and then some of your books are already on my holds and I am doubly excited now.
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