The Unpleasants

When I was 32 weeks pregnant with the twins, I felt like a small whale. Or a large whale. Something gigantic. I had over 10 lbs of baby inside of me, in addition to two placentas, lots and lots of fluid, and all my usual organs, which felt like they were being reduced to the size of peas. I was uncomfortable, to say the least. Caroline was up so high that I had to constantly push her legs and elbows out from under my rib cage. Charlie was so low that anytime he hiccupped, kicked, or wiggled at all, I peed my pants just a little bit. I generally prefer not to ponder on these "unpleasants" of pregnancy, but now that I am feeling as giant as a whale again, the memories are flooding back in.
While I was in the height of my discomfort with two babies inside of me, Forrest's work held an end -of-busy-season party. It had been a particularly awful busy season, where they were working 80-90 hour weeks for nearly 5 months. So to celebrate surviving the madness, we were invited to a lovely weekend resort stay, complete with meals, spa treatments, unlimited golfing etc. And it was wonderful.
I was treated to a facial, an hour-long pregnancy massage (with a giant pillow with a hole in the middle so I could actually lay on my stomach - pure bliss), an entire afternoon in the spa.. it was heavenly. One of the evenings, the company had arranged for all of us to get together for dinner at one of the fancy resort restaurants. I dressed up as fancy as is possibly for a small whale, and headed to dinner at 8 PM. That was a little late for me since my usual pregnancy bedtime was between 8:30 and 9:00. But I went anyway, and guided Forrest to a seat near the exit so I would be free to get up and use the restroom as needed. What I didn't know when we showed up was that we were about to be served a 500 course meal. Seriously, the food just kept coming. With plenty of time in between each course to cleanse our pallets, I suppose. I tend to drink a ton of water when I'm dining out. Especially when I have to wait a long time for my food. So I was drinking a lot of water, and my tiny little pea-sized bladder kept filling up all too quickly. And then Charlie felt it necessary to do a little jig at frequent intervals. All of this meant that I needed to use the restroom. A lot.
And the restroom was nowhere near where we were sitting. And it wasn't the "weave your way through all the tables to the other side of the restaurant" kind of trip to the restroom. The restaurant itself didn't actually even have a single toilet anywhere inside of it. Instead, guests had to stand up, weave their way through all the tables to get the to door, walk out the door and into the resort, and then walk another half-mile to the restrooms in the hotel lobby. It was quite the trek.
The entire journey to the restroom and back took me about 10 minutes. Which is about the frequency at which I felt I needed to use the restroom. So my night looked a little something like this:
8:00 - Seated
8:10 - Restroom break
8:20 - Eat first course, drink lots of water
8:21 - Restroom break
8:30 - Eat second course, drink a gallon of water
8:35 - Restroom break
And that was only the first half hour. This dinner continued on well into the 11:00 hour. And everyone seemed to be wide awake, with no intent to wrap it up anytime soon. Sometime after my 137th trip to the restroom, one of my husband's coworkers leaned in close to Forrest and quietly asked if I was ok. Forrest just laughed and responded that yes, I was fine, but pregnant women just have to pee an awful lot. Finally around 11:30, I could barely keep my eyes open. My legs were numb from sitting in the same chair for so long, and I needed to use the restroom yet again. I decided it was time for me to call it a night, so I excused myself for one final time and headed to bed while everyone else stayed and chatted and ate until heaven knows how late.
Thankfully I haven't had any experiences with the unpleasants this pregnancy that have even come close to that one. Even last night at Chili's, when I had to use the restroom four times during our hour long dining experience - it didn't even come close to what I experienced at the resort that night.
I had actually somewhat forgotten that resort dining experience until now. I think when I was pregnant with the twins I was just so beyond exciting to finally be pregnant that I blocked out all of the difficult and uncomfortable parts. I had waited so long for the experience, and it was something that I didn't know if I would ever get to experience again. So I chose not to dwell on the unpleasants, and to some extent I don't think I really noticed them. But let me tell you, I sure have noticed them this time!
It's a good think this pregnancy has been unpleasant, though, because otherwise I think I would want this baby to stay inside of me for as long as possible. Unpleasants make it exciting to think of the new baby finally being here, and help to drive away the terror of having 3 kids under the age of 2! Actually it doesn't completely drive away that terror... but it helps a little.

Travelling with Two

Last week we ventured out on our first vacation as a family of four. Forrest and I, Charlie and Caroline, and my sister and her little girl all loaded into our van and made the 10 hour drive (which really look us like 13-14 hours with stoppage time) down to Southern California, where the twins were born. We stayed for almost a week and we had a blast! I was really nervous about travelling with the babes, and with good reason. I think most nine and three-quarter month old babies don't love spending an entire day in their car seats. But they handled it like champs!

The things I most worried about were food/meal times, sleeping, time in car seats and sun exposure. Especially with Charlie being so fair and light sensitive, the sun exposure worried me a lot since I knew we'd be outside most of the time. But we made it all work, and this is how:

Squeezable baby food pouches are the best things ever. I'm not exaggerating. At all. I have some refillable pouches that I use around home to fill with my own homemade purees. They are great, but have the down side of requiring refrigeration. The store bought ones don't. So for the month before the trip I shopped as many sales as I could to get as many of those little life-saving pouches as possible. Charlie and Caroline each eat about 3 of them per meal. So that's 9 pouches each per day, or 18 total. Every day. That's a lot of little food pouches. The cheapest I've found them is 88 cents each. Not too bad, but still cheaper to make my own. Before we left Forrest and I had a puree party and we made a whole bunch of baby food, stuffed all the pouches that I own (which is 13) and froze them. So I took those in a cooler for the ride down, then had all the pouches that I bought for the rest of the meals. It worked great!

For meal times, I have two bumbo's. One that I bought used, and one that I borrowed from my sister. We don't use them much around the house, but when we are at Grandma's house or anywhere else away from home, they are great. I loaded them both up at took them on our trip with us and they worked perfectly in place of their high-chairs. Food and meal times problems = solved.

The sleeping situation could not have been better. We stayed with our very best friends in California and they were so awesome to give up their kids' bedrooms so we all had beds to sleep in. They even put their sweet little 3-year old in a pack-n-play so that Caroline could sleep in her crib. Then we took our pack-n-play and set it up in the bedroom by the crib and that's where Charlie slept. They did great in there! It couldn't have been any more perfect. I was a little worried about them not napping etc. but I just had to prepare myself in advance to know that we were on vacation, and that it was ok if they didn't stay on schedule. And they didn't. They napped in our arms multiple times out of sheer exhaustion (which NEVER happens). But it was fun! They were really really good despite being thrown for a bit of a loop. Sleeping difficulties = not so bad after all.

The car seat issue is just difficult. My kids usually do pretty well in the car, but I think anyone would get sick of being strapped in a car seat for that long. We tried to break up the trip by stopping for meals, bathroom breaks, gas etc. and getting everyone out of the car to stretch every time. It was perfect for my 4 year old niece to run around. And it was good for the twins to get out of their seats, but a little hard since they just wanted to crawl around and there wasn't much space to do that. On the way back we stopped at a park and let them crawl around on the grass and that was perfect. It took a little longer for us to get to our destination, but getting the kids out of the car every few hours was absolutely essential. Time in car seats = not fun, but doable.

From the time the twins were newborn, I knew taking Charlie out in the sun would be a bit of a challenge. But I also knew that we couldn't never go outside because it was hard. He needs to experience the outdoors just as much as Caroline or any other person does, and I didn't want him to grow up in a bubble just because of his condition. So we just have to prepare a little bit more. Any time we go out, he wears a hat and his sun glasses. And sunscreen. I bought him a cute little one-piece swimming suit/rash guard that covers most of his legs, arms, chest and neck. And we have a pop-up sun shade that I take with us on our outdoor adventures. He hasn't had a sunburn yet, and his eyes seem to do ok with the hat and glasses combo. So being on vacation it wasn't much different, we were just outisde more often. We did go to the beach a few times. I bought an inflatable pool for the littles and we set it on the sand, the kids filled it with buckets of ocean water and we let it set in the sun to warm up a bit before putting the babes in it. They LOVED it! It was perfect for them to get to play in the water but not have to be down by the waves (which they were fascinated by but did not want to touch). The pool made for a great time at the beach and the sun exposure = conquered.

We had a lot of really fun adventures on our first family vacation. We visited the Aquarium of the Pacific, which the kids were thrilled about. Charlie loved the fishies, Caroline loved the stairs and chasing her cousin, and Hallie loved just about everything. We did a little bit of hiking, went whale watching and saw tons of dolphins, and ate frozen bananas on Balboa Peninsula. We visited with family on Sunday and played some fun games, saw friends we haven't seen in 8 months, and had a good time catching up with everyone. Oh yeah, and Ashley, Forrest and I did a triathlon! I almost forgot. It was really fun and we all did pretty well. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and we were sad to leave. Hooray for surviving our first road trip with twins! Now to prepare for our trip to Michigan this fall... :/

          (Excuse us for all looking a little worn down - this was right after the triathlon!)

CA vs. UT

Eight months ago we moved from SoCal to Utah, where we are originally from. We had lived the previous 3 years in California and we absolutely loved it, but with the twins coming and me needing to quit my job to be home with them, we felt the need to be back in Utah close to our families and where the cost of living was a little more reasonable. Though both Forrest and I grew up in Utah, we've lived half of our married lives in California, and half in Utah (with a short stint in Vegas, but we don't really count that). After experiencing life in CA and then coming back to life in UT, there are certain things about both states that I LOVE, and also things about both that I really don't like. This is CA vs. UT, the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Note: CA is coming first solely because it comes first in the alphabet.)

California                                             Utah

The good: clean air                                         The good: four seasons

                  the beach                                                        UT ghetto = nothing compared to CA ghetto

                  Disneyland                                                      not expected to work on Sundays

                  mild weather                                                   traffic = bliss

                  excellent Mexican food and produce               cost of living

                  fantastic entertainment                                    DMV 

                  great shopping                                                wide open spaces (Dixie Chicks anyone?)

The bad:    people aren't very friendly                              really friendly people

                   so many people                             The bad:   long way from Disneyland and the beach

                   takes forever to get anywhere                       hot summers

The ugly:    the DMV                                        The ugly:   post-Christmas winter

                   the cost of living                                               inversion

                   traffic                                                                

If I were to make this more personal, I would add awesome friends and extended family to the CA good side and immediate family and "home" to the UT good side. Truthfully, I couldn't say that we like living in Utah more that we liked it in California, or vice versa. Each state was right for us during that time of our lives. And right now, what we need is to be close to our family, and be somewhere with a low cost of living. Utah is my home and it always will be, regardless of where we live. But we absolutely LOVED our time in CA and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Being able to ride my bike or run to the beach anytime I wanted was something amazing. And we made friends and grew close to family that will always be close to my heart. So which state wins? Neither. Or both. However you want to look at it. 

PS - This post is coming now because tomorrow we are taking a vacation back to California to visit family and friends, go to Disneyland and compete in a triathlon. So excited! Three adults and three kids on a six day adventure.. Wish us luck!