Goodbye February!

Happy February 29th! I texted a friend earlier in the week and said that February felt more than one day too long.  I stand by this analysis. 

I started tracking things in February... then promptly fell off the wagon when life got hard:

That was supposed to be steps, workouts, physio routine and screen time.  I feel like I've been off the wagon on all of it for ages but actually it was about a week.

I did accomplish some pretty major things this month

• Passports - I got the twins their passports and got Isaac's passport
• Home Gym - I got my new mirror set up and rearranged the furniture
• New Computer - I got my new computer set up and I love using it!
• Race Album - I sorted my race medals and printed a race album
• Contact everyone about our will - I sent an email about the will.

Two of these things (passports and will) were on my goals for the year list so that's a great start!  The Will was on the list for the last 3 years so it's good to have it done done done now (in the UK, people need to know where your actual will is kept.  I literally needed to email people with the name of the solicitor. It still took over 6 months.

I did not finish writing thank you cards to the midwives who delivered Audrey and Nora.  I have done 3 of 5 and I have printed photos of the twins to send in the cards.  I still don't know one of the student midwives names so I may have to go with "Dear student midwife with three kids who lived in italy but now lives in West Wales" and hope it gets to her.

I read 5 books in February.

Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center (Audio) 
The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods 
I must betray you by Rita Sepetys
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (Audio)
Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau 

None were amazing but all were good.  I can't remember who recommended Mary Jane but it was fun to read a "coming of age" novel again - I haven't read one of those in ages.  Fourth Wing was excellent.  The Lost Bookshop was close to amazing but landed on "good".  I must betray you was also fascinating - I had no idea Romania was so oppressive so recently.  Happiness for Beginners I read instead of watching the Netflix movie and now I don't think I'll watch the movie... it wasn't exactly what I expected but it wasn't different enough either.

I am still using my lovely Ashley Shelley Planner.  Its a 2023 planner that I got on discount.  Normally I just cross off the day of the week and write the correct day on top, but I realised the leap year makes it a bit tricky.  Here is my bodged together 28th/29th page:

Overall I got a surprising amount done in February, mostly due to slowly plodding through things during Rachel morning.    

Also, twins were born on the 30th of October.  Does that mean they are 4 months old today?  On the 29th? It feels like I'm cheating them out of a day!

How was your February? Do you enjoy leap years? I think I will enjoy the next leap year but I'm done with February this time around.  Maybe I need to plan myself a Leap Day celebration for 2028!

Wrong side of the bed

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

There was no reason why - it just happened. Kids were awake too early after a fractious bedtime.  Babies slept till 3:30am (yay!) but that threw off my morning as I didn't feel like waking up at 5am after getting them down from their feed at 4:15.  

And the house was a mess.  I have tried to embrace a mentality of "it can be done later" and "don't spend all day on the house" but also coming down to a messy kitchen is really really unsatisfying.

Plus we had left the remains of dinosaur pasta in the pot counter and not in the fridge.  We have lowered our standards of kitchen cleanliness because our dinners transition straight to kid bedtime and then baby bedtime and then my bedtime... but last night it was really really not good.

This morning I spent over an hour sorting the house out.  Putting things in their right place.  I collected a bag for charity and dropped it off.

We finally set up the new crib in the baby room and now the small room looks like furnature storage.  That footstool is being collected for charity, but we still need to fit another crib in here.  That's a problem for future me

I spend a lot of time in the baby room and I think it looking like chaos is not helping me.

I also try to be hands off about the kids room, but last night their room was a mess and their behaviour was not great either and I wondered if messy room was creating messy feelings in them like it does in me.  Today I tidied their room.  Hopefully it will be an easier bedtime.

Also, This is our dinner.  It's basically all frozen.  It will be fine.  We ate real cooked food twice this week.  I can't tidy house and also make food in a day.

I was going to make grilled haloumi for the burgers but the haloumi expired in October 2023.  Oops.  I hate wasting food but that was beyond my comfort level.

We have a lot of white mushrooms in the fridge and a thing of Creme Fresh.  I feel there should be something I can make with this combo.  But what?

Babies calling. 16 minutes of Rachel Time complete!

Mental Load in two parts - School and Rubbish

School Emails 
Andy is the school boss.  I am the paid childcare boss. Our school has an email system which sends SO MANY EMAILS. They come to all of us via a shared email address. I could feel my brain cluttering up with emails - did Andy sign that permission slip for a school trip? Are we collecting toilet rolls for art projects?    I was trying to think of a good way to manage all these emails - maybe we could review all the emails at our Logistics meetings?  Maybe we could keep an email record of things the school needed?

I wanted to ask him and check, but I also knew that school was his job and he doesn't check on my jobs.

And then I realized the problem wasn't the emails, or Andy's job. The problem was that this was in my head at all.  So I created a filter in my email and sent all emails from the school directly into the archive.  Now I don't see them.  My brain feels lighter! If we miss something... well it wasn't me that missed it.  And he did sign the permission slip... without me asking.

Rubbish
Andy is in charge of rubbish.  He takes it out of the house and he puts it on the curb on the right day.  He checks if we have enough bin bags and recycling bags.  He is in charge of it all.

Recently our local council decided to change our recycling scheme.  Not, instead of. collecting a trash every 2 weeks,  nappies every week, and combined recycling every week, they have presented us with many different bags to collect many different things on many different weeks.

This probably makes sense, but it does mean a fundamental change to our sorting system.  It was only a few months ago when I got my shiny kitchen bin with trash on one side on recycling on the other! And, as silly as it is, I really like my shiny bin.

Now we have four different sortings to do, and this is a two compartment bin.  Andy suggested we get a different bin system for the kitchen.  At first, I was annoyed because I just figured our our current system, and now I had to figure out a new system.  I did some quick googling, I thought aobut our space... and then I remembered....

Andy is the rubbish person.  He can find a new bin. He can order it! This is totally not my job.  His comment of "We need to get a different bin" was not "hey Rachel, order a different bin" it was the observation a new bin may be required.  

So I have left it.  And my bin is still there.  And someday Andy will find his new system, which he will check with me, and I can think about it then.  But for now this system works for me.

Mental load is real and very legit - but I do try to be mindful of what is really my load and what I am making my load for no good reason.

Wind Crazy, a castle visit, and winter babies.

I read once that in the midwest wind can make people crazy.  Is that a thing? I could google it, but as evidence it is very windy right now and it makes me feel very crazy.  I live in a place of constant rain so I get grumpy when the weather tries to attack me with something new.

It's been very wet as of late.  Yesterday, at great effort, I took the big kids out to a castle.  It's the closest mostly indoor castle:

We still had full waterproofs for exploring.  Although everything is hard at the moment, it's still probably a good idea to get out on local adventures.  This is the reason I live in wales right?

I also realized that it's been a while since I hung out with just the big kids.  At the end of pregnancy I was basically always at home.  And now these babies are *almost* 4 months old, which means it's probably been 6 months since I've done any adventures with the bigger two.  

I can see that bigger kids and bigger adventures are coming.  I'm starting to plan next fall.  I want to go visit my friend in cumbira, and take the two big kids on the 6 hour drive.  Last time we went Lilah was 18 months old, Isaac was 3.5, and it was HARD.  But I bet an adventure with a 4 and 6 year old will be fun?

Winter is rough, and this is my 3rd winter in 6 years with newborn babies.  Andy and I both agree this makes for better summers, but I do wonder what a summer baby would be like.  Have I set myself up for unbearably crap winters? What if the barrier to entry for outside wasn't wind and rain and waterproofs and cold? What would a baby in sunshine be like? 

I'll never know... but I'm looking forward to enjoying twin 6 month olds in sunshine.  Only a few months to go.

5 on Friday - Toys, Food, Meals, Schedules.

1 Toys:  Isaac has been enjoying playing with Lincoln Logs.  They aren't a big thing over here, so my mom brought him a set from the states, and then I found another set for £6 on Vinted.  Score! He's very creative with his constructions and Lilah is into them to.  Here they are posing with their babies:

2 Sleep: Sleep has been not good lately.  For whatever baby reason the babies have started waking up more than once a night.  I have not had Rachel mornings for a few days.  Today I had a Lilah morning when she came in upset at 5am after I put the babies down at 3:30am.  We had a family meeting about sleep with the kids where we reiterated they need to stay in their room untill 6:30.  This was after a particularly rough morning with a particulary bad reaction from me (I told the kids I had made french toast but would be throwing it in the bin because they woke up the babies.  Not my finest parenting! But, as per Dr. Becky, it was a great moment after to talk to kids about why we all feel better with more sleep and about apologising for behaviour and confirming that it's not always the other persons fault.)

3 Time Tracking:  I'm enjoying doing this again.  I've set a conditional formatting for baby feeds to see if there are patterns developing.  This is not a good nightime pattern (starts at 6:30pm, which is baby bedtime)

The babies are 16 weeks old now... so I know I am nearing a better schedule. But I'm not there yet. I need to get sleep again. 

4 Meal planning.  It's hard to plan meals when tired.  I did manage to make 1 massive slow cooker meal this week! I made vegetarian spag bol.  I have enough to save.  It has lots of vegetables.  And I put some in the freezer for later, so that we are actually stocking the freezer rather than depleting it.  We need to plan more meals for this week today.  Why does everyone need to do eating all the time? 

5 Exercise. I hurt my back and have done no exercise this week.  Good news, I can always do more next week!

Naming What Matters - Lazy Genius-ing my life right now

My life is fairly chaotic right now.  Halfterm just finished and Isaac (5) is back to school today.  Lilah (3) has three days of nursery a week (Tues-Thurs). The twins will be 4 months old at the end of this month, and while they're getting easier I still dislike certain things about twin babies... mostly burping, the amount of vomit I have on me, short wake windows such that I feel I'm *always* putting them down for naps, 7 feed a day (around 3 hours of feeding out of 24).  Actually, I like the feeding OK, but I'm not sure it's how I would chose to spend 3 hours of my own time.

Here are some of the things I have figured out since they were born by naming what matters (stolen from the Lazy Genius!) and letting go of the rest

Rachel Morning Time:

Right now it is my Rachel morning time, so I am doing Rachel morning stuff.  I can see the following things from where I am sat in the dining room:

• 2 dirty nappies
• the nappy bag on the floor
• a tumbled down lincoln log house
• a sticky floor
• a puzzle box lid (begs the question, where is the rest of the puzzle and box?)

Prior to these baby things I could have spent a quick 15 minutes sorting this all out.  However... I may only have 15 minutes of time for me right now, and I know that what matters to me is me time. So instead I am blogging, and assuming the mess will get cleaned up later.  The important thing about morning time is it's my time

Don't be precious about food:

There's a chicken carcass in a bag on the counter in the kitchen.  Why? I assume that was a forgotten Andy project to freeze for stock.  I think past Rachel would have been annoyed - are we a family that wastes a good stock-chicken?  But we can buy more chicken someday. Stock was an Andy project.  Seems a waste of a plastic bag, but we also have a lot of plastic bags.

I got a lot of chocolate and biscuits after the babies were born and my natural inclination is to save the best ones for "special" occasions.  I used to get annoyed if Andy at my Tony's chocolony bar because I love them! But they sell them at the small grocery store down the road.  I can afford a £3 bar of chocolate.  I am very lucky.  I used to have nice cheddar for eating and cheaper cheddar for cooking.  If someone uses the nice cheddar for cooking I can get more cheddar.  Just be happy someone else is cooking.  If someone eats the last bagel know I can buy more bagels.

Ask for help

I think this twin thing is somewhat impossible.  I have had to ask for help far more than every before.  One morning after getting almost no sleep I texted our neighbour (who I barely know) and asked if she could walk Isaac to school.  She did.  I texted people I don't know super well and asked if Isaac or Lilah could have play dates at their house.  When people were at my house I would ask them to get in the laundry or make me some food.  People like being helpful and they like being asked.  They can say no - but they mostly didn't. 

Be nice to Isaac and Lilah - the upset moment is not the teachable one

Twins is a lot. Isaac and Lilah have done really well, but when they are tired they *are* more on edge.  So am I.  I am always on edge.  I try to remind myself to approach them with kindness in the first instance.  This morning they were up at 6am (their OK to wake clock is 6:30) and instead of stomping up and saying "Get back in bed it's too early!" I started with a morning cuddle for both of them. Then we picked a book together and I told them I was so excited to see them downstairs at 6:30.  Did I have to go back upstairs 4 times in last 20 minutes to remind them to be quiet? Yes.  Would I prefer they just stay in their room till 6:30 LIKE WE HAVE TOLD THEM TO DO FOREVER AND EVER? Yes! But in the interim, avoiding crying and "I want to go downstairs now" battles is a victory for this morning.

Anyway, my real point is that if things look all la-de-dah on this blog it is definitely not all easy peasy here.  There are lots of compromises.  I will look forward to being in a season of life where my floor is swept nightly, where laundry is put away daily, where the table isn't sticky in the morning.  Right now I'm trying to remember what matters and ignore the rest - because as Kendra says, if Everything matters then Nothing matters.

PS - does matching pyjamas matter? Yes! Was this photo taken on valentines day? Not at all:

Race Medal Project

This project appeared from nowhere but fits perfectly in baby life - no time limit, can be done in tiny interrupted chunks, very low effort!

Here's how it started - too many medals I do not want to keep:

And here's what's in the mail to me now!

I managed to find some race photos in my photo collection - I separated photos by year on my computer.  I also moved everything off google drive and onto my actual computer, and will try to go through and delete and consolidate.  But I was so pleased that past Rachel had put some photos in date-sorted folders!

Also, when I look at these photos it's a reminder of the fact that I actually was pretty fit in my 30's! I always thought I was the out of shape poser just hanging on... but I ran with really fast people.  I wasn't a really fast person, but I was a decently fit person.  I wish I could go back in time and say "Hey past Rachel - you ARE in great shape because you are running half marathons.  Even if they take 2 hours and 30 minutes.  Not everyone can do half marathons!"

And I'm in the process of figuring out how to get rid of the medals - putting them in the bin seems a waste but I'm not sure they can be recycled.  Maybe add magnet on the back and make them into fridge magnets?  I have thrown away all the small ones and all the non metal ones.

Today I finished week 1 of couch to 5k.  8 weeks left to go.  I am excited to get back into running again.  It's not super fun here like it was in the US (I had such good running buddies there!) but it's still something I enjoy and want to enjoy again.