Various Important Updates

I know, really creative title, right? Well, that's basically what it is. And I'm not feeling particularly creative. But we do have some updates, and I think I'll go by family member.

So Mike had an interview in Albany, NY two weeks ago. Exciting, right? We'll see how he did. BUT. The trip was exciting for more reasons than just his interview. Remember that giant storm last weekend that they named Nemo? Well, that was the same weekend as his interview. So as soon as he actually got to Albany, he discovered that all of his flights home had gotten cancelled in preparation for the dreadful weather they expected to have. Woo!

So he interviewed on Friday, Albany got a couple of inches of snow Friday night, and he was stuck in a town full of closed in preparation for inclement weather stores Saturday. And then he flew home with several really long layovers on Sunday. Yay! Yes, perhaps the storm was really terrible in Boston and other such places, but . . . not in Albany. They just wanted an excuse to close up I think.

Luckily, my sister Sarah came and spent the whole weekend with me and Katie and took care of us in our intensely pitiful daddy-less-ness. Also because I get contractions whenever I do anything . . . like sit.

Which is what I did last night at my baby shower. I have such cool friends. (The shower would get its very own post except that if I waited for that I would totally forget until it was time to blog about little boys.) Anyhow, I know I had a shower for my mom's ward and all those friends a couple weeks ago, but last night my friends threw me a shower for my ward (thank you Dakin, Laura, Kelsey, and everyone else who was involved!)

The coolest part? It wasn't just for me. It was a double twins shower. A shower for my baby boys, and also for my friend Valerie's baby girls. Can you believe it? She's due just a few weeks after me. And when she called me and told me she was also having twins, I laughed really hard. (But only because I love you, Val.) But we had a pink-and-blue shower and it was quite enjoyable. And there are a lot of super amazing, generous people in my ward. And I think I ate way too much candy. But no contractions! (At least until this morning . . .)

Aren't our bellies so cute and intimidating?

Katie brought home her favorite part of the shower to show Daddy.

Speaking of me and contractions, I'm totally on "modified bed rest" now. It's a lot less restrictive than I had planned on, but perhaps it should be more so. The starting point (I'm pretty sure they'll limit me more as I get further along) is I have to be in bed 8-10 hours a night (easier said than done, you lame 'ole heartburn) and I have to sit with my feet up for at least an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. So I was pretty much already on this kind of bed rest just because it hurts if I try to not be sitting with my feet up.

But I'm 30 weeks now. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but we're really trying to not have babies yet. Which makes this really frustrating. Unfortunately, I'm not getting a lot of help from the Katie department. See, early Monday morning (it was still dark, so I consider it night time, really, even though Mike was already up getting ready for work), Katie woke up screaming from a nightmare about a robot getting her and had to come in my bed. And therefore I didn't get much sleep, even when she snuggled up and fell asleep on me, just because I get stiff whenever she does that even when I'm not pregnant, and being stuck in one position now is like torture. But the biggest problem is that whenever I'm uncomfortable (even when lying down) I start to get contractions. I don't have to exert myself or stop drinking water; I just have to have a sore hip from sitting at the same angle for fifteen minutes and I get all . . . contracting. Yuck.

The sad part? Katie had a play-date the other day at her friend Marley's house (thank you, Chandra!) and was gone for a couple of hours in the morning. While she was gone, I took a fast shower, then sat on the couch and sipped liquid and kept my feet up and breathed as deep as I could and I had zero contractions. And then Katie got home. And we did the exact same thing--me sitting on the couch with a blanket doing nothing--but with Katie playing on my legs on the other end of the couch (perhaps with PBS on also . . .) and I started getting contractions again. So I think I just get them with emotional stress too, because Katie doesn't know how to not jump around and make me think she's going to fall over and break her head open (which she has almost done lots of times).

Ugh.

I can take care of us in spurts, like to make lunch and such, but I can't sit on the floor to build with blocks, or climb in the cave (the big box that our new second infant car seat came in) or race her up the stairs. So if anybody needs a play date, or just some good solid entertainment, call us. Katie's your girl.

Katie, to make a transition, is no longer even a toddler. At least not in the way you think of toddler. The word implies some form of infancy or physical uncertainty, doesn't it? Well, Katie has firmly taken both of those principles, beaten them to a pulp, and thrown them out of a 15-story window. She talks better than a lot of three- or four-year-olds I've met, insists upon making her own lunch and putting on her own clothes, and only wants to hold me because I'm not allowed to do so. She's a kid. The only reason she's not potty trained is that I can't really get proactive about that right now. And she kind of is. Today's the second day in a row where I haven't really changed a wet diaper at our house because she announces that she has to go potty and then . . . does. It's pretty fantastic.

She is, however, getting cabin fever like it's nobody's business. On days when she doesn't have friends or Grandma, she gets quite tired of me and our house. Today she woke up and asked me first if we could get our swimming suits and go swimming. When I explained that it was way too cold to think about swimming, she asked if we could go outside and play on some slides. Luckily, my mom came to the rescue and took us to a park. (And don't freak out, Mike. I sat on a comfy bench with several blankets while Katie yelled "roar" at all the ducks and went down every slide she could find several times.)

One thing that we totally did right as parents recently was Valentine's Day. First thing you have to understand is that I have the best husband in the whole world. All you other girls can be like, "no, you're just saying that because you don't have my husband." But you're wrong. You're just deluding yourselves. And you're all jealous of my husband because he's the best. So there.

So the day before Valentine's, Mike came home with a dozen long-stemmed roses. I know, they're all traditional, but they're still my favorite. So he wins.

Correction: he came home with eleven roses for me, and one for Katie. She was thrilled. She ran around the house waving it like a wand and singing songs about it until I convinced her that flowers need a drink of water to be happy and gave her my skinny vase for her flower. Now it's next to her spot at the table and she hugs it at every meal.

This has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, but it's really cute.

The following morning, when Katie and I woke up, we discovered valentine's cards all over the house. Katie's were mostly just spread out at her spot next to her flower and on her tub o' blocks, but mine were hidden all over the house--in my scriptures, in the silverware drawer, next to my toothpaste in the bathroom cupboard--and I didn't find them all until almost when Mike got home. They all had little bitty notes written on them that made me all super happy. At breakfast when Katie had all of hers gathered into a pile, she had me read them all to her: "Have fun playing today! Love, Daddy." "I love my Katie tons! Love, Daddy." But her favorite was one where he wrote, "Don't eat too much candy today!" When I read that, she actually burst out laughing. "Don't eat too much candy? Silly Daddy!" Darn my little kid's intelligence and sense of humor.

So Katie and I had a pretty good day not doing anything, except that I had a doctor's appointment that afternoon, so Katie had to take an early nap and I had to get all pretty before 4:30. My mom took us to my appointment, and I have really fat boys, and then Katie went home with Grandma and Abuelo (Abuelo was taking some sisters on a date because it was a Thursday) and Mike and I got to go be on our own for a while.

You know the best part? We couldn't really have a fancy date because I'm not really able to do very much, but that was totally cool. We brought pizza home and had pizza and played Scrabble and just hung out being grown-ups together for a couple of hours. And it was perfect. And when we went to get Katie from Grandma's house, she didn't want to come home because she was doing Grandma's dishes (I know, right? I'm so spoiled!) So at the end of the day, Katie ate way too much candy, but she had a fantastic day, and Mike and I had an at-home Katie-free date, and there was plenty of chocolate that we are still nibbling our way through. (Okay, fine. Maybe I'm chomping rabidly through it instead of nibbling. Whatever.)

Now, about my boys.

Remember how there are two of them and we're all worried about them being pre-term and having low birth weights and all that stuff? Well, I don't think we need to worry much about their weights. So I had my doctor's appointment on Valentine's Day, and we got our usual ultrasound, but because I was 29 weeks he started doing measurements instead of just checking their heart beats and membranes and stuff. And he said that one is 3 lbs, 3 oz, and one is 3 lbs, 11 oz. Now, that sounded huge to me even before I had a reference point. There are almost seven pounds of baby in me right now. (I'm going to be so skinny this summer! Woo!)

But then I went home and got one of my pregnancy update emails, which said that at 29 weeks, my (one) baby should be close to three pounds. You know what that means? I'm having two, and they're BOTH fat for their age. Oh man. No wonder my belly is so huge and grotesque. But that's okay. I would much rather have healthy, fat babies and have to deal with some back pain and stretch marks.

Want to see pictures? Here's Thing 1, being all shy and modest (or maybe just saying, "Dude, I'm trying to take a nap here! Leave me alone!")

And here's Thing 2. Prepare for a lot of "Holy mackerel! Look at that cute baby!"

And now I'm at 30 weeks, which feels like a big accomplishment with everything I've been hearing. So here's to at least five or six more weeks! (I'm trying to be positive so I don't just find a shotgun and pay a visit to my neighbor's dog, which barks incessantly for hours whenever its owners are not home. Especially during nap time and at 1:30 in the morning.) (It's howling through the wall at me right now.)

I know, it's not the shirt I usually wear, but I forgot to take a profile picture yesterday, okay?