Happy Birthday Babes

So these guys finally reached their birthday. The day there were SUPPOSED to be born, that is. Yesterday. Every time I get frustrated with their lack of eating skills or lack of pooping skills or lack of head-maneuvering skills, I get all kinds of attitude and say things like, "why can't you figure out how to eat you nitwit! It's not like you were born yesterd.... oh, wait, it IS like you were born yesterday. nevermind." A close variation on this sentence has come out of my mouth several times today. Okay, minus the "nitwit" part. What do you think I am, verbally abusive?

Anyway, as such their lives really should start counting from now. Pretend I had a coupla babies yesterday, and they will start moving and laughing and batting at objects all in due time. And unfortunately sleeping more than 2 hours in a row at night will take that much longer too.

Speaking of which, Jared and I have this brilliant shift-sleeping plan that is making all this quite do-able. He goes to bed around 10pm, but I stay up until 2 or 3am. I handle the feedings/burpings/cryings/poopings during that time, and after that I get to go to bed. Jared wakes for the 4am-ish feeding, but goes back to bed for a couple of hours before he gets up for the day (he doesn't have to do things like nurse and pump when he feeds them, so it's pretty quick. Nothing like the 2 hours I spend at every feeding, only to eat a snack, put on some clothes, go to the bathroom and figure out how I get to spend the next 15 minutes before it's time to start over.). Anyway, I sleep until about 10am (a million thanks to the folks who are coming over in the morning to let me do that!). And so far there are some great things about this. Mostly I find that as long as I get sleep I can deal with just about anything else. I may have 3 people screeching bloody-murder at me during the day, but if I'm well rested, I can tell myself that, in fact, no one is dying and we're all going to be fine. eventually. And furthermore, I'm not fighting my natural night-owl nature, and there's something soul-recharging about that. I just go ahead and stay awake during my creative time (late at night) instead of squashing it trying to force myself to fall asleep at a decent hour. Even though I have little time for actually DOING anything creative, just being awake for it and having creative thoughts is more than I've had in ages (you wouldn't believe all the really great blog posts you've been missing. I've thought them though! Does that count?). Jared even claims that he gets more sleep now than he did before because I'm not keeping him up with my tossing and turning and reading and fiddling with tea cups and chapstick and iPhones and magazines next to him in bed. If this new plan didn't mean that we spend virtually zero time together we'd probably keep it forever. That and the fact that we need to have someone over here in the morning so I can sleep, which works while people are taking pity on us, but probably won't last for long.

By the way, if you'd like to be one of those great folks that helps us out, you can sign up! We have this "Care Calendar" thing, where you can sign up for meals and baby shifts and things like that: www.CareCalendar.org. Our calendar ID is 36494 and our password is "engstrom." We are SO grateful to all the generous people are making sure we are fed and rested, which makes this twin experience actually enjoyable, instead of harrowing. Thank you!

Here are some pictures from our at-home adventures:

Seville meets her brothers for the first time.

Checkin' out Brickley

Now that they're home, we can snuggle them up like this.

....aaaaaaand the excitement starts to wear off. :)

Actually, Seville is being quite sweet with them, holding them all the time, shoving pacifiers into their little mouths every time they whine. She's had a tough adjustment, and she's being a doll, all things considered (at least she takes out her anger at being de-throned on people like Grandma. And Daddy. Not her brothers. so far).