After the park we went to the grocery store to buy nappies. We are reconsidering our grocery ordering because the current place we order from is kind of expensive for some things, and we can't get some things there, but the quality is generally good AND they score pretty high on Ethical Consumer. But they don't sell nappies, so we may end up getting deliveries from two stores on rotation, because this is definitely not a sustainable way of doing shopping (but it is kind of fun):After the grocery store it was home for lunch, twin nap, then I dropped Lily off at nursery school (my mom was at home with the twins). Then I had two hours to do whatever I wanted, except that I also needed to make sure I got everything done to keep the rest of the day moving. I had lunch and then prepped veg for dinner, made hummus, set up the smoothie for after school, put laundry in the drier because even though it's a Welsh heatwave (30c/86f) I cannot be pegging out 50 tiny kid clothes on the line, and then set up water play for when the kids got home from school.
June 20, 2025
Small life updates and a mini Friday DITL.
After the park we went to the grocery store to buy nappies. We are reconsidering our grocery ordering because the current place we order from is kind of expensive for some things, and we can't get some things there, but the quality is generally good AND they score pretty high on Ethical Consumer. But they don't sell nappies, so we may end up getting deliveries from two stores on rotation, because this is definitely not a sustainable way of doing shopping (but it is kind of fun):After the grocery store it was home for lunch, twin nap, then I dropped Lily off at nursery school (my mom was at home with the twins). Then I had two hours to do whatever I wanted, except that I also needed to make sure I got everything done to keep the rest of the day moving. I had lunch and then prepped veg for dinner, made hummus, set up the smoothie for after school, put laundry in the drier because even though it's a Welsh heatwave (30c/86f) I cannot be pegging out 50 tiny kid clothes on the line, and then set up water play for when the kids got home from school.
June 15, 2025
Habit Tracking - a perfectly un-perfect day.
- Daily Planning
- Floss
- strength
- cardio
- yoga/stretch
- Ate Veg
- Ate Fruit
- Vitamins
- Meditate
- walk
- Line a Day
I'm not sure I love habit tracking, but I'm learning some things about myself.
I don't eat fruit. I spend so much time chopping and preparing and serving fruit to the kids and then I will go days without eating fruit. I like fruit! Perhaps I need to start eating fruit whenever I make fruit for the kids. I think the problem with fruit is that it doesn't seem to fill any real need - I love strawberries but how many strawberries should I eat and why? I'm not going to reach for strawberries if I'm hungry. And I usually don't eat when I'm not hungry. Maybe 3pm needs to be "Rachel eats fruit" time, because eating fruit is good and I guess there's no good reason to wait until I'm hungry to eat fruit?
I also don't really meditate or floss. I floss more than I meditate though! But I feel like there's benefit in tracking the things I don't do, so I can tell when I do start to incorporate them or for how long. Sometimes I floss for like two weeks straight... then I just don't.
Yesterday - Saturday the 14th - was my first ZERO Habit day.
I had a dinner with friends on Friday which kept me out to 11pm (unheard of for me!) so did not get up early (ie before 6am which is the cutoff for kid/toddler wake ups) for exercise of any sort. I did not plan my day before it started. I did not eat any fruit or any veg all day (this was a big mistake, I was ravenous by the time we had dinner, which was macaroni and cheese, and I ate 3 bowls of it,.. although it have peas in it so maybe I did have veg?) I ate a bagel for breakfast, a cliff bar at 3pm, and half a scone for lunch because apparently moms eat like college students.
I did not take vitamins and I certainly didn't meditate. I did go for a walk carrying Clara and chatted with some neighbours but it was a 1/4 mile walk that took us 45 minutes because OMG are 19 month olds slow walkers. I guess I could count that, but I usually try and count walks where I maintain forward momentum for more than 50% of the time.
I usually do my line a day in the morning (because evening entries say "I ate x for dinner I am tired" and morning ones are slightly more rounded reviews). I did not do the line a day yesterday.
This was my first ZERO Habit day of 2025. It wasn't the worst day, but it certainly wasn't the best.
Also, as a 40 year old human, I really need to be eating some fruit and vegetables if I'm going to eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese for dinner. Habits are here to support good decisions... Macaroni and Cheese is always a good decision but needs some supportive habits to not feel like a bloat monster after.
I'm sure I'll learn something bigger and better from a year of habit tracking than "fruit and vegetables are good".... but apparently I'm not there yet.
Do you track habits? Do you eat fruit? Can you eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese?
June 7, 2025
Saturday in the Life
This weekend is totally not normal so let's do a day in the life!
5:00am - Wake up, think about getting up, fall back asleep
6:30am - Wake up again. Toddlers are shouting from next door. Andy says he will get them up if I sort breakfast. Sorting breakfast means I can make coffee so this sounds good
7:00am - Breakfast for all. It's peanut butter on toast.
7:30am - Get toddlers dressed
8:00am - Andy and Ezra leave for an overnight adventure(!!). Solo parenting 75% of the kids commences.
8:15am - I take Lily, Aubrey & Clara to the store to pick up some hats I ordered and some bagels and some other random things.
I'm taking part in a research study about the mobility impacts of having twins. Part of this study is recording things that happen in a day which make getting out harder. Going to the supermarket is a perfect example. I shop at a supermarket that has parent parking spaces near the door. The hardest part of going to the store is finding a twin trolley:
I end up leaving the twins and Lily in the car while I walk around the car park looking for the twin trolly. This store usually has at least 3 but they can be hard to find - they have two red seats up front rather than one.8:40am - Shopping done
We normally get grocery delivery because there isn't really room to do a family shop once you have a family in a trolly.11:00am - Leave imagination play center and head home. Getting out becomes really tricky when I remembered I need to put the pram outside (in the rain) before I can get the twins in itThis is actually the first place I've been where my twin folding pram doesn't fit through the door - since the pram is the size of a standard wheelchair I am usually OK. However, in older buildings it's not mandatory to have wheelchair access... but this entry is especially bad.
7:45pm - Chaos can wait, first eat cheese on crackers. Then get laundry from dryer, empty dishwasher, put out bag of dirty nappies, tidy and hoover downstairs.
June 5, 2025
Thursday Thoughts: Planner Debates and new planner day
Tonight turned into new planner night!
We always order planners from PersonalPlanner.com. I love them because they're super versitible, I can change layouts every year, and I've kept a birthday list so they get printed WITH BIRTHDAYS in it that also say how old the person is (if I remember to enter a birth year). It's great. This is 24-25:
Last year I ordered a 13 months version, so it started in September and ends in September.June 4, 2025
May highlights
We did a family trip to the local bike park again with all 4 kids. It went even better when the twins found this great slide / bike jump:
Ezra rolled some bumps:
We tried our first family "hike" in some nearby woods. It went terrible since Aubrey decided she hated nature. She is the first toddler I have ever met who hates the outdoors. She may have found the whole experience overwhelming... but it was a lot of crying. We will try again.
In May I took a cold water dipping course with my gym buddy. When I say my gym buddy is a gym person I am not joking. Doing arm workouts with a person who has super strong arms is great for building arm strength.
June 3, 2025
Hello June!
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What is the weather in this photo? Full waterproofs for Lily, jumpers for the twins, and shorts for Ezra. |
Our lounge set up has always felt awkward to me because we have a yellow chair which I love but also was in a super awkward place to sit. The orange footrest couldn't be used as a footrest because the toddlers would stand on it and Clara currently has a black eye from falling off it. Also, Clara had a super gross habit of putting her runny nose on it and it was just... gross.
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I could have tidied for better comparison but... oh well. |
May 30, 2025
The Bunny Saga - an emotional rollecoaster of lost and found and missing.
I have an emotional rollercoaster of a post for you on a Friday.
This is Bunny:
Ezra got bunny in April 2021 (I think Bunny was a present for Lily, but Ezra liked her more)
I got the following weird message
"Hi, I primarily sell for friends and family and this is the price at which I was asked to list this. I do not query their prices and so am unable to answer you as such. Thank you for your interest,"Andy got back from cycling then and I showed him the message and the bunny and the lack of any other bunny for sale anywhere and the fact that it was posted for sale 24 hours after losing our bunny. It was all too much! Had someone stolen our bunny?
I decided to buy it on ebay with a fake name and delivered to a third party address, in case this bunny thief was going to come after us. If it was our bunny we would know from the postage - if it was sent from our town I was pretty sure this was some bunny thief and we would *not* be paying ebay for it! Thankfully ebay has a lot of buyer protection so we felt OK about the purchase.
It was quickly posted from over 300 miles away.
Obviously it wasn't our bunny.
When it arrived it was not in good condition so I did manage to return it. We decided it was a learning journey for everyone. We had not told Ezra about the bunny sleuthing. He seemed pretty much over it. I sometimes forget that things that feel SO BIG to parents are quickly nothing to kids.
A few weeks later - last Tuesday in fact - someone texted Andy that his dog had found bunny in the woods behind the park and he had seen the lost bunny sign.
Bunny seems to have lost her dress, and she obviously needs a wash. BUT... it appears we might get bunny back tomorrow. I think I'm more excited than Ezra about this (although we haven't told him, because who knows what might happen, or whether we will actually get bunny back).May 28, 2025
Line a day journaling, yoga update, and also giant sandwiches.
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Photo has nothing to do with post, but kids do love a shower crayon |
I have a line day journal that I had filled out daily since 31st December 2020. I feel it says a lot about my personality that I didn't start it on 1st January 2021, but instead went for 31st December. This means that I am now in my final year of the 5 years. On each page, above me, are 4 years of memories and I just need to fill in the 5th year.
And I am writing once every 3-4 days now. And I am almost never reading the previous days. There are blanks and I have almost no interest in continuing it. Every day for the previous 4 years I would write an entry. This year... I don't want to.
Here is the headline theme of my previous 5 years
2021: 6 month old year old and 2 year old at home during lockdown
2022: work/nursery, reemerging from covid
2023: Pregnant with twins
2024: newborn twins
I know I chose and wanted close-together kids but also reading my 5 year journal is not really nice. Which is odd, because reading this blog which covers the same time period is sometimes nice! And I feel like maybe it's odd that when I write a journal for me it's a bunch of complaining (I mean, it's legit complaining, but also complaining) or even worse is the entries that are *not* complaining but should be.
For instance, April 28th 2021:
Lilly (6 months old) only woke at 10/12/3:30 & 6:30 but only had two feeds. Yay but I'm still tired? Pubs are now opening for outdoor pre-booked drinks only, no food.
So... my curiosity at why I'm tired with that awful sleep schedule means that somehow that night of sleep was better than previous nights? Also, I forget that the idea of buying a drink outside 14 months after covid started (4 months after vaccines) was new and exciting.
Anyways, I am sort of excited for the next 5 year journal. Maybe I need to do a better theme or writing prompt or something. Also I will start it on January 1st next time rather than December 31st.
Yoga Update
As expected, my daily yoga practice finished the first day I couldn't get my daily yoga in. Last week I got up at 5:15, got up to yoga at 5:35, and Nora woke up at 5:40am. I turned off yoga and haven't started it again. Instead, I've been sleeping until nearly 6.
The problem with my yoga practice (which I knew from time tracking) was that I went from averaging 7.5 hours of sleep a night to 6.5 hours of sleep a night. Since I need more sleep than 6.5 hours I knew something was going to give. We have a guest visiting and it's half term holiday in school (in Wales schools finish for the summer in late July - very different than the US!) and so I'm spending all day with kids and evenings with guest and yoga or exercise is just not happening. Oh well, there's always next week.
Big Family Benefits
One kind of satisfying thing about having such a big family is that food comes readily portioned for our group. Earlier this week we packed a picnic. Here is the sandwich I made for the kids and adults:
There was some cheese left, but not much. Also, white bread and brie is a pretty good sandwich (we added chutney to the adult side)May 25, 2025
Hoover tales on a Sunday.
- A Henry hoover is pretty good at hovering, despite looking so... odd.
- I am not good at hoovering (I knew this)
- There is a reason one picks everything off the floor before hoovering
- We should probably find a new cleaner
- I probably need new workout socks
May 22, 2025
Things that are working / things that are improving (part 2)
Hello from 12 days after my last post!
I can see I posted that at 6:40am on Saturday the 10th. I was feeling somewhat tired from my ride, but I was also excited because I had booked a swim at a reservoir about 3 miles from my house. The kids were all coming to meet me at a cafe after my dip, so I decided to run there for a bit of extra adventure.
I ran with a camelback carrying the minimum for the dip (jumper, swimsuit, travel towel, goggles, swim cap) and my back started to feel a bit... bad. During my ride I felt I needed to stretch my back a lot but it's been a while since I've ridden that much and even longer since I've tried to do technical riding over drops
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This is a drop. This is obvs not me. |
And do a lot of yoga. Every day. (this was not really medical advice)
- I am much happier now being a not-in-pain person
- Yoga is a really nice way to start the day
- Core muscles are very real and useful
- Recovering from a mild injury quickly is great for feeling much better about life
- Sleeping on my back sucks and is also really good for my back
- Mountain biking is great fun and probably worth 10 days of back pain but the run probably wasn't worth it
May 10, 2025
Saturday - Things that are working, things that are improving
I had the most wonderful day mountain biking yesterday. It took a lot to plan and it was a lot of fun. I have exactly one photo of me eating a post ride hot dog.
During the biking we thought of loads of FLOM (or family meetings) worthy life updates which I didn't record very well. And by the time it was bedtime I was so tired we didn't really cover any of the things. but the takeaway was that Andy and I are both up for more adventure and are aware this will be a slow start due to the number and ages of kids we have.
Also, I would like to take a moment for things that are working right now, since I feel I've recently started using this blog for things that are not working.
Things that are working
Having a big car. We have a S-Max 7 seater and it is great. It's from 2017 and is the newest car we have ever owned
Our two day a week nanny who is starting 4 days a week. She is lovely and so good with the kids and so incredibly calm as a human. It's great for me to see what an inherently calm person is like because I am not that and I could definitely learn.
Our kid patio
The weather. I don't have any impact of this but OMG does it make a big difference
Is anything distinctly "working" or "improving" for you right now?