Goodbye

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am saddened to report that the golden period of twin-parenting is now over.  It was a short but glorious time.  A time when my Turtles were mostly sleeping for 11 hour stretches.  A time when they could sit in one place and happily amuse themselves.  A time when I could use the bathroom and know that when I came out they would be exactly where I left them.  A time, I knew even while it was happening, that I would miss when it was over. 

And over it is.  BIG TIME.

Not only are the Turtles moving but they are two disparate paths of destruction.  Eliya takes to climbing on things and pulling stuff off shelves while Jude has a penchant for scooting around commando-style, tasting power cords, and getting herself stuck under the couch.   

One would think that all the movement would make them more tired but I've not found this to be true.  The inability to sit still results in very short nursing sessions, for Ellie in particular.  (I swear her baby cooing can be translated into, "Why drink milk when I can get my hands on that delicious People magazine?")  I know that she is still hungry because ten minutes after she has moved away from the breast, she will be back crawling on my lap trying to nurse.  When I attempt to refocus her, she bites me.  Not in a malicious way, of course, but enough so that she drew blood once and now I am just a wee bit skittish about putting my boob in her mouth.  All in all, this lack of focus is causing her to wake at about 3 a.m. to feed. 

The naps and night rest are also complicated by the fact that Ellie can pull herself up to standing in the crib.  I barely have Jude in her crib before I have to return to put Eliya back down.  She hasn't quite figured out how to get herself down once she has gotten up so it often takes several trips back into the room to move her  before she actually conks out.  The one mitigating factor in this is that Eliya just looks so pleased as the queen of her castle that I have a hard time not smiling at her each time I go in. 

Not to be outdone by the Turtles' silliness, Vivi thought it would be hysterical to lock me, my husband, and the babies in the basement this morning.  Yeah, that's right.  We have a playroom down there and while my husband and I were wrangling babies, Vivi ran up the stairs, shut the door, moved the kitchen chair over and pushed the lock closed.  (The lock, by the way, is about six feet high on the door.)  I took the highly unsuccessful approach of  yelling and threatening all sorts of things if she didn't "open the door right this minute."  My husband, on the other hand, used his gentle voice of reason and got her to unlock it after a couple of minutes.  (Let this be yet another lesson to myself:  threatening hardly ever works with her.)

All this being said, I'm going to try to keep regularly updating this blog.  If you don't hear from me for a week or so, send out the guard.  This mama will likely have been taken hostage.