Merry Christmas!!!

I can't wait till Christmas!!!!

Hope the twins have been good so Santa will come!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving

Vegas

We had a fun filled October, including a trip to Vegas to meet up with Justin's family. Me and Justin got a night out and we went to the Bodies Exhibit. We've been once before a few years back, but now that Justin is taking an anatomy class he was way more into it than last time.

The twins had lots of fun as you can see! We pretty much spent most of our time in the pool. It was a very fun long weekend and always good to see the family!!

Happy Halloween!

A Halloween tradition: visit Hogwarts and Dumbledore

(aka Dr. Hartman who delivered these munchkins!

Last year with Dumbledore, 27 weeks. Look how huge I was and

I still had 8 weeks before I delivered!

Happy Halloween! (just a tad bit late). And no, the twins were not chewbaccas, they were lion cubs.

Mofit

Finally! Something that is working for me post twin pregnancy! Justin's friend from growing up in Cali, who now lives here, is a personal trainer and has started an awesome business! It's called Mofit, short for mobile fitness. They come to your house and are cheaper than if you signed up for one at the gym! It's been so perfect. I don't have to feel like I have to get ready for the gym, I don't waste time going to the gym, and I don't have to make sure there's someone to watch the twins so I can go. And most importantly, it's working! I signed up to come 3 days a week but they can come 2-5 times a week. They bring the equipment needed and seriously kick our butts! Yes, Justin is doing it too, although he doesn't have 50 pounds to lose, he's trying to GAIN weight! Dang men and their metabolisms. He's gained like 4 pounds and is getting buff and I've lost 11 pounds and 3% body fat which I did in 2 and half weeks. They do your measurments, make a nutrition plan and teach you how to change your lifestyle to lose the weight and keep it off. They also make you VERY accountable which helps so much more to stay on track. Their website is mofitnow.com and it's super easy to have them come do a free consult to see where your at. So if you have 5, 10, 50 or even 100 pounds to lose, these guys can do it! Or, if you don't have much weight to lose but would like to get more toned they can get you quick awesome results and teach you how to maintain it. Look them up! And tell them I sent you :)

URBAN

One of our best friends has the cutest kid! This is Urban. She wanted some pictures marking his one year since birth and I wanted to practice with my camera settings so we went to the splash pad! I can't wait till my twins are old enough to go to a splash pad because it was so awesome capturing the water blobs in the air! I just had to share some of these to show off his cute face!!!!

We LOVE Bathtime!

My sweet Mercedez

She has been hamming it up lately for the camera!

My tender hearted Sawyer

Bathtime gives you a good look at how different these babies

skin tones are! Sawyer is totally olive with darker hair and

Mercedez is a pinky! Her hair is super blond!

What's Happenin

I'm free!!!! This was my pumping zone. Oh, how much time I spent here. Bought this glider for the twins room to rock them. It immediately was moved to our room where it was designated for pumping. Notice the mugs? I would down both of them while pumping. I always got so thirsty! I got pretty good at balancing the 9 oz bottles on my knees while holding a book so for the 15-20 min I would rock and read. I have read probably 25 books in the past 9 months just from pumping sessions. I made it 9 months, 100% pumping for my babies. Thought the massive amounts that we froze would last a month or so. WRONGO! It lasted about a week. I can't even tell you how much better life is now! It has been night and day in regards to my hormones! They feel very well balanced now and I don't feel at all depressed. It's amazing. I no longer every lay down or sleep during the day. I actually feel like a regular person and get up and clean and cook and play with my babies more. I have energy and just feel so much better! I'm glad I could pump for as long as I did, but wow, do I feel great! Sorry kids, you get 3 months of formula. I did the best I could. So here's what's been happenin in our lives the past 9 months:

We took the twins camping in August. (the pic looks horrible because I didn't know how to use my camera outside). This is the one and only pic I took with grandma. Everything was fine and dandy until we went to sleep. Mercedez was so cold and in unfamiliar territory so she kept crying and I had to put her in my sleeping bag to keep warm and neither of us slept the entire night. Worst night ever. Other than that, we had a good time.

Hanging out with twins. We really try to put them in matching outfits, or at least coordinated outfits but it is so hard to find cute things that go together for a boy and girl. Me and Justin are thinking of creating a store for multiples!

Justin had a birthday!!! He's 28 and here he is sporting his birthday presents all at once. New crosstrainers, a freaking sweet bat that I surprised him with (he's already hit like 4 homeruns with it) and a backpack. The one he was using was from high school and his mission and like a million hikes and vacations we've gone on. Happy Birthday honey! I'm so glad you were born! Sidenote: You may be thinking, "backpack? What for? Didn't he graduate in December?" . Yes he did. But he's decided he wants to be a chiropractor, which I am all for! So he has a few pre-requisites so he went summer semester, is in school now for fall and we're headed down to California in January to do some accelerated classes before next fall when he will start the Chiropractic program. We're still looking at schools. There's one in Cali (which we've already vetoed because we were not impressed), Oregon, Texas, and Iowa. Those are the ones we've narrowed down. We just need to go and visit the campuses to get a feel for them. Except the Cali one. We already visited that one and it's out, to our dismay. I was really rooting for that one because, come one, it's Cali and we'd be close to family. Sad.

As mentioned above, Justin is in a couple softball leagues, team name "Pitch Slap". Last month he got in a pickle between second and third base, and the amateur third baseman went to throw it and failed to reach his desired location which would have been the second baseman's glove. Instead, from like 3 feet away, at Moch 5 came a softball smack into Justin's face. I saw him on the ground and still didn't know that it was his face that got hit. It had looked like his shoulder. Then he stood up and started spitting out blood. So I went over and he'd come off the field and was pacing and spitting more blood and his teamate came over and handed me his tooth! Root and all. I had no idea tooth roots were so freaking long! I was a little in shock (even though I'm a nurse, I think it's so different when it's your husband) and I looked up at him and said "What tooth is it?" He opened his mouth and there was a huge gaping bloody hole. It was his right front tooth. It was ghastly. I'm sure the look on my face right then was not reassuring for Justin because I just silently looked at him with wide eyes. I had no idea what the next step was. Luckily, everyone around me was thinking for me. A man ran over and said to put the tooth back in! I would have never thought to do that in a million years. So they shoved the 2 inch root back into the gaping bloody hole and we got ahold of our detist after hours. We headed to the dentist and that's when I got a good look at his lip. There was a gaping hole there as well!!! The tooth had pretty much came out, then shot through the inside of his lip and out, cutting the inside pretty good and leaving a ragged hole on the outside. I thought for sure it was going to leave a gigantic scar, but luckily the face and mouth heals up real quick and nice. We went to the dentist, had him secure it with some bond and wire, went to the ER to get stitched up. No dental insurance. Awesome. Two root canals later, the dentist said the tooth could still die so watch for discoloration, but we did everything we could to save the tooth. But it looks good now and you can barely see the scar. I actually think the tiny scar makes him look a little hotter! Nice war wound honey! (the pic is two days after the stitches. His lip was so much more swollen!)

Justin ran the Ogden Marathon (this pic from St. George). I didn't get any pics of him sadly. But I did venture out on my own with 4 month old twins in the stroller to meet him at the finish line. We waited, and waited, and waited. I finally figured we must have missed him seeing as it was like over an hour past the estimated time he was going to finish. We left and not 2 min of driving he called. We barely missed him! Apparently this race was very harsh on him. He started cramping up really early and it was torture the rest of the way. But at least you finished honey! And in pretty good time for being so cramped! I think he's done with marathons though. He'll be sticking to halfs and 5k's.

In May, our Aflac check that we banked out on (thank you twins for cashing out from being in the NICU, at least there was one positive thing about being there) ran out. Therefore, I decided I better get a job. I was a little rushed seeing as at about the same time Justin became commission only. No more salary. We were counting on that salary. So I seriously applied for like 30 different RN positions. And of course you have to do it online and answer a million questions which answers to those questions either give you a shot at an interview, or bump you out of the running before ever even looking at your resume. I have 5 years nursing experience. All that experience being at Primary Children's Hospital. Also over 2 of those years being the Nursing Director at the Residential Treatment Center I was at. I'd say I have a good foundation and experience. I couldn't even get an interview for post-partum. There are no major pediatric jobs other than Primary's which are hardly hiring, so almost all the calls I got were for Psych! Ok, the RTC was NOT psych nursing. Hospital psych is a whole different world. I found out in one of my interviews that basically right now, there is such a shortage of nursing jobs, that there's like 350 applicants for each job and so there's those questions to weed out all applicants but 20 for interviews. So even if I have 5 years experience, if I answer NO to "have you ever worked post-partum", even if all my other answers were awesome, the person that has been a nurse for 4 months and has worked post partum pretty much gets the job. Long story short, I had two offers in a step-down ICU, both in Salt Lake, but I really didn't want to drive that far. A hospital 7 min away from my house had a psych position and a super flexible schedule. So I took it, after touring and realizing it really wasn't that bad and pretty much just babysitting. WRONG! I couldn't stand it. I really gave it a good try but it was awful. I'm not going to get into all the details cause this is already turning into a super long post, but holy crap. My mind, body and spirit could not take it. It was flat out evil at times. Like the devil himself was there. Emotionally I couldn't handle it. Then a job that I'd applied for and pretty much got, but they just didn't have anything for me called. KidsOnly Home Health. Sweet! I took the job. I'm the nurse for the Northern Region. Sadly, they don't have much referrals yet coming my way so I have a job, but really not working. Hopefully they get some cases soon for me.

June 8th was our anniversary and we spent it down in California with Justin's family. His parents were awesome and watched the babies 2 days and a night so we could go play. Well, tried to play. I was a walking zombie, still having to pump in the middle of the night. So I had to drag all my pumping equipment with us to the hotel. I certainly didn't feel up to getting into a swimming suit, so we pretty much just relaxed and slept a lot. Went to dinner, then the next day went to Knotts berry farm. We both thought it would be a lot funner. Standing in line with 12-14 year olds was almost comical. Seriously, there were hardly any grown people. And it was hot and all these kids were wearing shoes, socks, jeans, and hoodie jackets! What the? I was sweating to death and I had on half the stuff these kids were. It was weird. They did have some fun rides though, and Justin had been eyeing the 3 point shot basketball game that you could go try. There were like 4 different stations and 5 balls at each and you had like a minute to shoot them all. All these little kids were barely making like 2 or 3 out of the 20. So Justin was itching to show them up. So he took his turn. He didn't make one!!! It was hilarious. It's ok honey, I know you're a good basketball player! So there's our life in a nutshell.

Is it possible to get post-partum depression 8 months after giving birth? Seriously, I don't know what's wrong with me. I would say I definitely had the "blues" at the beginning, although it was managed easy enough and since I knew that was normal I was able to consciously know that I was really fine and able to concentrate on all the wonderful things happening in life. Or maybe the lack of sleep is finally catching up to me. Although the babies sleep pretty dang good, up until a couple months ago I was still waking up at 3-4am to pump, and then they'd wake up at 6-7am. Now I can go the whole night, but I'm still SO tired during the day. Every time I put them down for a nap, I look at my messy house, my un-showered self and get overwhelmed thinking about cleaning or even getting ready for the day. So I climb into my bed. Then it takes me awhile to finally go to sleep only to be awakend from the babies waking up from their nap. It's pretty much torture. I'm sure I'd be less sleepy if I didn't try to take naps when they do because I don't get good sleep, yet I can't bring myself to NOT climb into bed.

When they were newborns, people that had had twins kept saying "it gets easier, don't worry. Just get through these first months." In some ways, yes, it's easier. But it seems like I just traded in the hard parts for other hard parts. I actually liked that those first 4-6 months they slept ALL THE TIME. It was wonderful. I showered, cleaned, felt like a normal human being. When they were awake I could just prop them somewhere and get more things done. Now they're sleeping less during the day and demand much more to be entertained. Sawyer has decided he doesn't need as much sleep as Mercedez so while she naps I usually have him and then they overlap so when he does sleep, there's only a little bit of time to myself then I have Mercedez. So there's even less time to myself because of the nap/wake overlap.

There's only 3 things I want to get done in a day: Clean one room, make dinner and exercise. Notice showering isn't even on that list. Is that too much to ask? And yet, when I get up and feed babies milk, then solids, then put them in their walkers to play while I fix myself breakfast and clean up the kitchen a little then it's ready to go back for a nap, I can't bring myself to do one thing on my list. I feel so tired I lay in bed as soon as they're in their cribs.

Also, I feel like I'm just stuck in my dark cave all day every day while life is happening outside. Why don't I go for walks and get out of the house? Because I always look like a beast! Then I get all depressed about all the extra weight I have and feel ugly and I have about 3 outfits that fit that I'm sick of wearing and I'm sure everyone is sick of seeing. So why don't I go shopping? Same reason as above, and the last thing you want to do when you feel fat is go try on clothes and be seen in public. I just want my energy back, so I can have the energy to exercise and get my body back, which in turn I'm sure will give me more energy. It's a viscious cycle I'm in right now.

And then the last phase, guilt. I feel so guilty that I feel this way. I spent my first 3 years of marriage working, and just wanted to be a stay at home mom. "I can't wait till I can just worry about cleaning. cooking and taking care of my husband and babies" I would say to Justin. Then when it took us awhile to get pregnant, I prayed and prayed to have a baby. Now, my prayers duobly answered, and not only answered, I'm blessed with such good spirited little babies and above all else, they're healthy and growing and developing well and normal. What more could I ask for? I start to get all resentful towards Justin because he gets to actually have a "life". He leaves the house for 6-8 hours a day and goes to school. And now that he's actually studying things he loves, it's not such a burden to be at school. So I start feeling sorry for myself that he gets to go enrich his mind and start feeling like my mind is going to a waste! I have a degree! A nursing license! I felt smart once! But really I don't wish I was working necessarily, that would add more stress. I tried that a couple months ago and it didn't go so well. I don't know what I want. I guess mainly energy. Give me energy to get the things done in a day I need to get done. There. Venting has helped.

DoUbLe ThE FuN

Justin's aunt sent us these adorable personalized blankets she made and I've been wanting to get some pictures of them ever since. So we had a little photo shoot. Note to self: Don't ever try to have a photo shoot by myself again! Definitely need two hands for that!

These little munchkins are almost 8 months old. We've been trying out solids for a little over a month now. They're doing pretty good with it, but it can get overwhelming at times trying to bottle feed PLUS try to feed them solids when I'm by myself. Sawyer took a week or so to catch on and Mercedez took right to it, but now Sawyer's doing awesome and she's wanting nothing to do with it. A common saying in our household "If it's not one, it's the other."

These babies are 100% bottle fed with 100% breastmilk. I have been pumping for almost 8 months now. I didn't think I'd be able to last this long pumping, but with the help of the lactation specialist, a hospital grade pump, herbs and a dedicated 2 hour pumping schedule that first month of their life, I was making enough milk for triplets! Seriously, I can fill two 9 oz bottles after a pumping session. I'm sure I could have nursed if I wanted to be a depressed, anxiety nut case for 3-4 weeks until they got big enough to catch on. Mercedez mouth was so tiny she could hardly get any part in and they were just so little. My plan had been to nurse and I remember sitting in my bed with my twin nursing pillow, babies in their bassinets and working with them to nurse. I sat there 3 hours never moving from that spot. By the time I had tried to feed both, neither one had eaten enough and were fussy,and couldn't sleep and it was almost time to feed again! I pretty much had a breakdown and decided I couldn't wait the few weeks it would most likely take for them to get big enough to catch on, but I was determined that they get breastmilk. And here we are 8 months later. Has it been hard and time consuming? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.

I have the pump for another month so they'll at least get 9 months worth, then I probably have a month or so frozen. I get anxiety thinking about them having to have any formula (I know, weird) but I really am ready to stop this pumping business. Contrary to what 90% of nursing mothers tell me, I am NOT shedding the weight and definitely not doubly so! My body is hanging onto every ounce of chub I have no matter what I eat or do. I'm hoping it will decide to let it go happily when it realizes it no longer has to make enough milk for 2!

I love to pinch these cheeks!!!!!!! We've put them on a schedule from the beginning (also thanks to the NICU for adding to the strictness of that schedule). But occasionally one deviates from the schedule due to the fact that they're two completely different people and therefore have different sleeping needs at times. I'd say those are my hard days, when one wants to sleep longer and the other decides nap time is over and wants to eat. I'm literally feeding one, playing, then putting them down for a nap only to get the other one up and do the same thing. When this happens when do I eat? When do I pump? When do I shower? When do I pee? Pretty much don't have time for those things.

But really it's my own fault. All the books say when this happens you just wake the other baby up, but I have such a hard time doing that. And it's so rare really, that I figure I'm just home caring for babies, let this one sleep if they need more sleep. Also, when this happens I get uninteruppted one on one time with them which is priceless! I'm sure if I had other kids though, I wouldn't be able to let one sleep longer. That would be complete chaos.

So there's their cute faces and an 8 month update! They've been rolling around like crazy and can sit up for short periods of time and love to cruise around in their walkers. I'm happy to let them take all the time in the world to figure out how to crawl! Life might get a little crazier when they're mobile!