beauty all around.....

I am surrounded by beauty these days...in an almost unnatural, yet supernatural, way. The colors that my farm boy has planted everywhere in our yard are beyond description. They are unreal. This is my favorite view out my front door (and bedroom window):

And here they are close up:



















Those colors are seriously unbelievable.

I am also filled with beauty as my two babes are doing great, heads are down and they are at a healthy weight of 6.5 lbs each...yes, that's about 13 lbs of babe in me -- on only my 35th week. Yikes. And yes, I am ready to get them outta me. It will feel soooooo good to be able to move around, find a comfortable position at night without a struggle, and to just plain have my body back. I am so very tired from not sleeping well and I am unable to get much of anything done during the day, so I would really like to at least be sleep-deprived and getting nothing done but nursing and changing diapers with a body that isn't so freaking uncomfortable. I'm as ready as I'll ever be -- so bring 'em on! It's time for me to meet the challenge of my "new normal" as a mother of twins...and a mother of four kids under the age of six. As I've been hearing ad nauseam, I'm "going to be very busy." Ya' think??

Mr. Incredible finally took a picture of me at 34 weeks:

Do me a favor and PLEASE don't comment that I look small, ok? There is nothing "small" about 13 lbs of baby in a woman's belly.....

whine and cheese

I'm not feeling good these days. I don't feel like doing much of anything except the things I really need to do. That's about all I have the energy and motivation for -- just the absolute necessities of daily living. There are so many things I want to do, but simply can't bring myself to get around to doing them...oh so many things...... Like taking pictures of the gorgeous flowers springing up in our yard, calling people I need to call, picking things up that need to be picked up, updating my blog, among so many other things.... I feel especially yucky today and can't seem to make it go away. So -- I'm updating my blog with my whining...but ending with a lil "cheese" since there is almost always good with every bad experience. This is definitely an experience that has so much good along with lotsa bad. While the last few weeks of pregnancy are incredibly difficult, it is even more difficult to forget what a blessed, privileged and joyful experience it is.

However...I always like to "keep it real" and let people know what's really goin' on...... So here is my whine and cheese served up for you as I enter my 34th week of being preggers:

WHINE:
What I won't miss about being pregnant:
- the nausea and yucky taste in my mouth all the time
- the coughing...the constant, horrible coughing.....
- the waddle walk
- the very achy, painful, stretched out, bulky belly that feels like it can't stretch out any more, and then it does....
- feeling HUGE and hearing so many people tell me how "small" I look (seriously, nobody will offend me by telling me I look huge -- even if you don't think I look huge, just tell me I do, ok? Cuz man, I FEEL huge...in a very uncomfortable hugeness way, not an "I'm so fat" way.)
- the puffiness

(this is how I feel -- pretty much all of the time)
- the immobility
- the dread of having to bend over and pick something up
- being out of breath all the time
- the incredibly painful heartburn (which I have NEVER had in either of my other pregnancies)
- the difficulty in finding any sort of comfortable position at night -- or during the day, for that matter
- the horrid sinus headaches -- and all the issues with my sinuses that happens with pregnancy
- the constant peeing...and not necessarily always in the toilet.....
- bumping into everything -- wide load a'comin!
- realizing what a slob I am when I look down and see crumbs and drips on my belly

CHEESE:
What I will miss about being pregnant:
- the kicks and punches and wiggles of two separate lil babes in my belly
- all the new things I'm learning about being pregnant with twins
- the anticipation of what is to come.....
- the joy of sharing this anticipation with my hubby
- hearing my hubby tell me how great I look, knowing it comes from a very loving heart
- the joy I see in some mother's eyes when they look at me and ask when I'm due (and then the look they give me when I tell them I am having twins...when the "joy" in the eyes completely goes away...nuthin' like the understanding of a mother!)
- being able to use the excuse that I'm pregnant when I am forgetful, spacey, slow, etc. -- when really that's how I am all the time.....
- the fun my kidlings are having with everything about my pregnancy

My girl wakes up way too early in the morning and since I need to lay in bed awhile to not only adjust to being awake, but to simply enjoy my last few minutes laying down getting relief from all the pregnancy woes, I have her crawl into bed and snuggle as long as she will last....which usually isn't very long. However, this morning she was in an especially snuggly mood and Mr. Incredible actually wanted to take some pictures...so he did.

I still simply can not believe that I will have two more lil ones to love, to snuggle, to share in all the joys (and frustrations!) of being their mommy.... It still feels VERY unreal to me that I am pregnant -- as horridly uncomfortable as I am all the time -- and will be adding two more bundles of pure joy to my world. Since I still haven't fully grasped that I have the two I have, I seriously doubt I will ever grasp that I am a mother of four children (yes, I have said it many times before, and I will be saying it many times more). I have no doubt that this is a dream come true that will always feel like a dream...in good moments and in bad.....

birthday girl!

My girl turned 4 yesterday. Four candles to blow out:


She wanted a caterpillar cake that looked like this (she picked it out of a cake book I have):

I had an especially rough day yesterday. I feel like the beginning of each week I make a major drop into the next level of difficulty of this pregnancy. I'm in a lot of pain and have barely any energy or motivation to get much of anything done. But...there are cakes to be decorated and parties to be had...and it's very difficult to stop a mom from making that happen!! I didn't quite go all out with the cake decorating the way I had envisioned...but she loved it and that is all that matters...and I truly wasn't sure if I had the energy to put it all together...but I did. *phew*

This is the last birthday we will be celebrating as a family of four...on her fourth birthday (as Soren points out with his four fingers).


Soren giving his traditional birthday hug...such a great big bro! And I love their friend in the background giving herself a hug watching them...sooooo dang cute!

I do home-school pre-school for my girl and two other girls her age and I invited them and their families to her birthday bash:


Just like I never thought I would have twins, I never thought I would have a baby girl. I was convinced she was a boy when she was in my belly. But...out came my girl...and I thought Jim was joking when he announced her arrival. But he obviously wasn't. That's why I don't want to know the sexes of my babies...I just love that moment of surprise when they come out and their daddy announces if we have a son or a daughter...and next time that happens it will be two separate moments within minutes of each other. How cool is that????

Probably as cool as it was for me when I realized that I would love having a girl way more than I ever thought I would.

One week old.


One year old.

I honestly and truly never thought I would love having a girl as much as I do. Having said that, she is an incredibly difficult child for me. In so. many. ways.

But....

....then she looks at me with those eyes....



And I fall in love with her with such a profound and deep love that only a mom can have for a girl like her...who has yet to be potty trained...and who pushes every single button...bad buttons...reeeeeally bad buttons...so much of the time....

But she never ceases to make me melt, fill me with pure joy and I love her more every. single. day.

happy easter!

Easter prepping:




Easter morning:

(We left some carrots out for the Easter bunny to lure him to find the eggs we colored...and this is what we found the next morning)



They were silly all day long, so I never was able to get any good Easter pics of them...oh well. These pics show their goofy selves...with Doggy Diva showing off her diva self as usual......

It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend. Mr. Incredible was with his dad in Wisconsin helping him put all his taxes together -- he didn't know it was Easter weekend when he booked the plane tix. He was sad. We missed him. But he was doing good stuff for his dad. He's a good man. Easter was still fun-filled, even though I was the lone Easter Bunny in our home.

I hope you had a very HAPPY EASTER!!

week 31

Here are some things that happened during my 31st week of pregnancy....

It rained...and rained...and rained...and rained.... The most rain in recorded history for the month of March!! Luckily we didn't have any major flooding like some areas -- but we certainly had our share of flooded areas of water. Like, for instance, our back yard:

This is actually the path to Jim's garden of corn and squash in our way-back yard...all covered in water.

Our neighbor's pond used to have a little pier for them to fish from, but the water was so high, it made the pier float away....


This pond has never been this full -- and the water from further back in the yard was coming together with the pond water:


I also had one of my last(!) ultrasounds, and it was VERY difficult to get good pics of the babes since they were basically snuggled up together. They both have their heads up at the top of my belly -- hopefully that will change in the next few weeks so I don't have two breech babies!


This was the best shot of a face...but I know it's difficult to see if you have no idea what you're looking at, so hopefully my labeling helps:


They are both about 4 lbs. -- which is great that they are so healthy 'n all, but that means I am carrying 8 lbs of baby around -- and I still have at least 6 weeks to go! And the upcoming weeks are their period of the most growth.... Yikes....

Since Jim keeps saying he's going to take a picture of me and my belly growth -- and never does -- I finally took matters into my own hands and took a pic:


I will be very interested in seeing how much more this belly can handle stretching out (I am pretty sure it's currently where it was when Soren was born at full term!)...and how much more I can handle these babes taking over my bod. This here belly is one heckuva load to carry around, lemme tell you....

april fooled?

Were you April fooled today? I wasn't...but I was going to tell lotsa people I was up all night with severe contractions and was about to birth my babes any minute...but I only tried that one on Mr. Incredible and he has finally clued in that I fool him every year -- except this year. It took him seven years to figure out my April Foolin' -- at least I got him 7 other years!

Anyway...so I decided not to fool anyone today (it's just too close to being a reality that I would be birthin' babies...I didn't want to freak everyone's freak too much) and nobody fooled me (although that's very hard to do since I am rarely fooled on April 1st since I rarely forget the Fool's Day...being the fool I am....). BUT, I decided to at least do something silly and fool-like and have breakfast for dinner (which I know a lot of people do on a regular basis, but we never do).

Pancakes for dinner! I put sweet potatoes in the pancakes just to have at least a wee bit of veggie with our meal -- but the kidlings didn't know that! They're used to it anyway since I almost always put sweet potatoes in our pancakes for an added vitamin boost...or sometimes I put mashed bananas, or pumpkin, and almost always add some flax seed or wheat germ for good measure. I don't consider myself a health nut, but if it's easy to add just a bit more nutrition to something I'm making -- and it doesn't effect the quality and taste so much that it is dry and tasteless -- I add it.

And speaking of eating...I had yet another first in this pregnancy. I had one of my many doctor appointments today and, for the first time in all my three pregnancies, the doctor asked me if I was eating because I hadn't been gaining any weight! Now this may not be a big deal to most mommas since most mommas don't gain 5 to 10 lbs. every time they visit the doctor...but it was a huge deal to me! I never thought I would hear that from my OB!! So I celebrated by eating every dang thing I could get my hands on when I arrived home. I ain't kiddin'. Not that I have been holding back on eating -- believe me (which is another reason I was completely astonished that I hadn't gained any weight!) -- but to hear that I actually hadn't gained weight after eating as much as I have been, well now what better way to celebrate than to stuff your face with all the chocolate and goodies you can find in your kitchen?! I'll have to celebrate some more tomorrow by baking some cookies......

Since I of course finished off the ones I had baked earlier this week.....